Thuursday ... well, it was morning!

 Before today I’ve always missed the set-up to Jesus’ s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. The first verses of chapter 4of John’s Gospel say, “Now, when Jesus had heard , "Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John "– although it was not Jesus himself, but his disciples who baptized– he left Judea and started back to Galilee,”  I don't know why it was such an urgent matter but it obviously was and off he went. On foot.  

Later, now in Samaria, tired and thirsty, Jesus sat down on the well to rest. Which is when the Samaritan woman came along with a bucket to draw water. The rest we know. (If you don’t, you don’t, the  whole of the reading is  reading is John 4:1–15.)I was supposed to have lunch with a friend who texted and said “Something’s come up - could we change it to next week?”  It got me thinking about the morning’s reading. Jesus was on his way to take care of the misunderstanding - at this point I really don't know why it was important or what actually the misunderstanding was about- I only know from his actions that it was important to him because he next sentence is: Jesus “left Judea and started back to Samaria.”  As you may recall, Jews and Samaritans didn't see eye to eye. No doubt both thought the other was wrong in their understanding or approach!  But that internecine dispute had no hold on Jesus because, unlike a “good Jew”  he spoke to her right away when she came. The came the well-known conversation )promise?) about living water.

I was put in mind of the saying that I think Janet Shaw introduced to the Junior Daughters of the King when she was heading that up:  “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways as you can, to all the people you can, as long as you can.” In Wikipedia it  says it’s  "a phrase that is the famous extension of the ethical and spiritual guidance attributed to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, emphasizing pervasive, ongoing, and inclusive altruism.” John Wesley was in Episcopal (Anglican actually, seeing that he was English) priest and he didn't set out – I don't think - a separate church.  Rather, he had developed a “method” to teach- or live?-  the faith. Which sure seems to me what Jesus did. He was on his way home and he stopped there to just catch his breath and then continue on.. But a woman in need came along, and he responded to her need.  And the beat goes on.   

To be a Christian seems less about belonging to an institution than to a way of being in the world, a Christ-like: being willing to put your own self-determined goals aside to respond to what the day brings us and the circumstances we encounter in out paths back to Galilee.  Maybe next time I get “interrupted” in my myopic self-determined goals and lament that “I didn’t one today!” I can take another God, a God look, at the people I encountered and the conversations that we had. Maybe I can see  that This was more imortant that any anyway…