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Strange...

             God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)

 

            This is a strange verse from a strange conversation between two strangers. One of the strangers was a Samaritan woman. Different stories have been told about how she came to a well in the middle of the day. What we know is that she was there, and she had had five husbands. The man she was living with wasn’t her husband. No whispering behind hands, folks – she could have been a slave or a concubine with little choice about her status. If she was a slave, she might well have started out as something far better and fallen on hard times. That might bring a woman to the well at a time when other women wouldn’t be around just as readily as her shacking up with some loser.

            The other stranger was a Jewish rabbi who had not attended any of the accredited rabbinical schools. As a rabbi, he shouldn’t have been in Samaria. He shouldn’t have talked to a woman, especially not a Samaritan woman. And, if he had to speak to a Samaritan woman, apparently, he extra-especially should not have been talking to this woman.

            Then, to make matters worse, when she tries to side-track the conversation into a safe dispute about where one should worship, he brushes the issue of location, location, location aside, though that was one of the big disagreements between the Jews and the Samaritans. Since God is a spirit, it doesn’t matter where one worships Him.

            But, the Samaritans had a second problem. They contended that Abram bound and sacrificed Isaac on Mt. Gerizim (in Samaria) not Mt. Moriah. They accepted the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) but rejected everything after that. Because of that, they would be forever unable to know the truth about who the Messiah was.

            This is the problem when we take our religion into our own hands, when we decide we are wise enough to decide for ourselves what is true and what isn’t. When we start leaving out the Old Testament, or the New Testament, or voting to decide what words of the “Lord’s Prayer” Jesus might have actually said (and coming up with “Father.”)

            And we all do it, which means we should be grateful when a stranger shows up and reminds us that it’s about Him. 

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