There is a story in the Gospel of John that you surely remember: the Samaritan Woman at the Well. She was a woman with a “past.” She’d had five failed marriages, and was now just “shacked up.”
And Jesus reached out to her in that searing noonday heat. He reached out to her across the barriers of race and sex. He endured her initial anger and stayed in a conversation with her. He spoke to her of her struggle with sin; as she recounted it, “He told me everything I ever did” (John 4:2). Yet despite this she did not feel rejected.
Jesus reached her soul that day and she realized that the “well” of this world could never really satisfy her. In a glorious sign of newfound freedom from sin and detachment from the world, she “left her water jar” and ran to town to tell others of her healing. “Come and see,” she told the townsfolk.
And the procession began.
That procession of a woman leading many lost souls across a field to Christ is beautifully show in the video clip below, from the movie The Color Purple. It features a woman named “Shug” (Sugar), who has lived a sexually indulgent life and pridefully absorbed the attention of many men as well as the accolades of her fans (she was a singer). But suddenly, after another night of carousing in a backwater speakeasy, she hears the distant sound of an old hymn: “God is trying to tell you something.”
And the procession began.
Just like the Samaritan woman of old, “Shug” set out for Jesus. Her fans and lovers fell in behind her, down the path and across the field.
Of that ancient procession of Samaritans coming across the field, Jesus beautifully told His disciples,
Do you not have a saying, “Four months then the harvest”? But I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest (Jn 4:35).
You’ll see that same procession in the video below. It is set in the Deep South, but it’s the same procession. Behold, a beautiful picture of evangelization! Look at the fields; they are ripe for harvest.
One of the most beautiful stories in the Gospel. The woman getting water at the well at noon is isolated and afraid of the gossips of other women and says to Jesus, at first ‘You, a Jew’, a somewhat derogatory identification among Samaritan, then ‘Sir’, then ‘Prophet’, then at last ‘Messiah.’ This time she goes out of her way and calls everyone about JESUS. Yes, a procession follows wanting to hear the proclamation of the Kingdom by the preachings and miracles of Our LORD JESUS CHRIST. When JESUS touches our hearts, how can we turn away from the Good News? HOLY SPIRIT, please work on us that we can declare with boldness the wonders of GOD’s LOVE on us. YHWH SHEKINNAH!
Good insight Edra: Jew, Sir, Prophet, then Messiah. Wonderful!
God bless you Msgr.Pope. Thank you.
I know with the controversy surounding marriage this is good timing. but I thought that the story was about the samaritans mingling with 5 other nations in their captivity, and with that 5 false gods
Scott Hahn discusses that interpretation in his work on the Gospel of John. However, the woman’s personal history and the larger picture of historical idolatry can both be part of the Gospel’s meaning.
Maybe, But I’ve always been less than impressed with the evidence for the 5 gods theory.
why did the Lord say the one you have now, is not your husband, that makes six. it seems that the samaritans were to jews of that time what jehovah witnewwes are to christians,they have taken a little bit of various protestant teachings and formed a belief system,seems to me this is better than the zsa zsa theory
So appropriate in light of the Clerk in Kentucky who is being persecuted for her religious beliefs. Instead of defending her right to protest a decision that was foisted upon all of us by a majority of nones on the Supreme Court, her past is being flouted as a reason to denigrate and dismiss her religious convictions. If she experienced a conversion, how arrogant and hypocritical of those same people who defend some but not all people. Who’s condemning whom here?
So, the woman was at the well alone. Was she shunned because of her scarlet past? Women likely went together to the well in those days for mutual protection and to have ‘chaperons’ one may surmise. So Jesus spoke with her, this scarlet outcast, and told her everything she did; as a confession in reverse or an examination of the Book of Life. And then He instructs her to go and sin no more(absolution). So, is she to be chaste then and without a man or family for protection?; or return to husband number one if possible?; or return to husband 5 and stop her seductive activities?. Jesus frequently told us to sin no more but all of us continue to fail, living in the humility of the flesh.