John 4:1-45;
Matthew 4:12-22; Mark 1:14-20; Luke 4:14-30
Today Jesus passes through the region of Samaria and stops at Jacob’s well to rest and get a drink of water. There Jesus interacts with a woman who is surprised (or, I daresay, shocked) to find that this Jew would have anything to do with a Samaritan. (For some brief background on the hostility between Jews and Samaritans, see my comments on the January 21, 2021 post, especially if you missed our journey through the Old Testament.) We might note that Jacob’s well sits deep inside what is now the Palestinian-controlled territory of the West Bank, so we might imagine a modern-day Jesus in the same place facing similar challenges encountering a Palestinian…
Aside from Jesus’ prophetic knowledge of the woman’s marital status, nothing in the text suggests that Jesus does anything miraculous among the Samaritans, yet many in that city come to faith, fully convinced that Jesus is the Messiah (that is, the Christ, the Anointed One), the Savior of the world. They come to believe based on words, first the words of the woman about Jesus, and then because of His own words. (John 4:39-43) Maybe we, too, should pay attention to what He says.
See also:
- January 21 (2021) / John 4:1-26
- January 22 (2021) / John 4:27-45
- January 23 (2021) / Matthew 4:12-22
- January 25 (2021) / Luke 4:14-37
One more thing…
If you have not previously spent much time reading through the Gospels, you might be surprised at how different the Gospel of John is from the other three. These other three — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — are called the “Synoptic Gospels“. If you pick “synoptic” apart into “syn” (meaning “together” or “same”, as in “synonym” or “synthesize”) and “optic” (meaning “seeing”, as in “optics” or “optician”), we can see why that is a good descriptor. These three Gospels all present a similar (though not identical) perspective, with a lot of overlapping content. The Gospel of John, on the other hand, stands apart: most of its material (like today’s reading) is not found in the other three, and most of their material is not found in John. As we move forward, it may be helpful to bear this distinction in mind.