In the imitation

(To the Sources)

‘… Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman.…’ (John 4:27)

From John 4:5-42 (Year A: Lent 3)

Talking to people who are very different by reason of background, orientation, status or outlook in life says something about us. Not infrequently to be seen talking and associating with the wrong people – people do not belong to ‘us’ or who come from the opposite or even enemy side in whatever stance, struggle or contestation ‘we’ are part of – attracts negative comment. Taken to its extreme expulsion or marginalisation may be the price of ‘talking to the other side’.

The unfortunate aspect of many human associations and belongings is that such belonging can be exclusive, excluding and sectarian. We are right; they are wrong. Justice and truth is on our side; wickedness, folly and betrayal is on the other, so it goes.

For Jesus, a Jew, to associate with a woman, a Samaritan was a big No, No in the Palestine of his day. Even today, many who claim to follow Jesus operate like as if they are part of a doctrinally pure, liturgically valid-only and error-excluding self-contained island. The One True Island with the drawbridges pulled up and everyone safe and cosy on the inside.  Sharing the Table of our Master’s Word let alone his Bread is seen as betrayal of first principles. One must ask what principles and whose principles?

In that famous spiritual classic much loved by generations over the centuries it is written ‘I am the worst of all sinners’ as in the first letter of St Timothy (1:15).  Perhaps a ruthlessly honest appraisal of where one is at is the best antidote to sectarianism, superiority, presumption and exclusion.

We would do well to aim to live by the Wesleyian maxim of ‘friends of all; enemies of none’ even if it is not possible to fulfil this at all times and with all peoples. It is worth the try.