3 March 2024 John 4:5-42
The Jews and Samaritans are the West Side Story of the Bible, people tragically separated by something they have in common.
Like the Sharks (Puerto Rican teens) and the Jets (White teens) of the Broadway play and 1961 movie, with the Jews and Samaritans it was a turf war, complicated by ethnicity. Samaria had been conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C., and following the custom of that time, the Assyrians deported all the potential leaders of Samaria, replacing them with foreigners from other parts of their empire. These foreigners mingled with the locals, and over time adopted the religion they found there, becoming Jews. Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 597 B.C., and the Babylonians did the same thing, deporting all the potential leaders and replacing them with foreigners. When the exiles from Babylon returned in 538 B.C. the Samaritan Jews at first welcomed them, and wanted to help them rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. The Jews returning from Babylon saw in the Samaritans only foreigners, and wanted to have nothing to do with them, reasoning that too much coziness with foreigners was what had caused the Exile in the first place.
And so the hatred began. It looked briefly like the hatred might be resolved when Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well. Although she only wanted to talk about the things that separated them, Jesus finally persuaded her that He was the Messiah, and then she persuaded the people in her town. For a few moments it appeared that the centuries-old hatred might be healed in Jesus the Messiah, but the story ends the same way West Side Story ends, along with Pyramus and Thisbe, along with Romeo and Juliet, and dozens of other stories like them. Tony dies in Maria’s arms in West Side Story, but Romeo and Juliet both die, Pyramus and Thisbe too, and the feud goes on. The Samaritans and Jews were never reconciled. The Samaritans have dwindled and dwindled over the centuries. Today there are only about 800 left.
It would be nice to think that all fights are finally resolved into friendship, but that is almost never the case. The reality is that most fights end when the last person who can remember what the fight was about finally dies. The Samaritan woman at the well is memorable today not for helping heal the wound between Samaritans and Jews, but for being the second missionary to the gentiles. The first was the Gerasene Demoniac, whom Jesus sent back to his own people, to witness to them, and by whose efforts the Decapolis (the east side of the Jordan River) became one of the most densely Christian areas in antiquity (cf. Mark 5:1-20). The Samaritan woman at the well, and the people in her town whom she brought to Jesus, created a safe place for Christians who were fleeing the persecution that broke out after the stoning of St. Stephen (Acts 8:4-8, 14-17). Many Samaritans believed after that, motivating some to continue northward to Antioch, and from there the gentile mission began under Sts. Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:1-3).
Some fights cannot be resolved. Some fights keep going till somebody dies, and there is nobody left to remember the fight. Sometimes the best we can do is to create pockets of faithfulness, from which, in time, new missions can grow. That was the gift of the Samaritans to the Church – they were a safe place for the faithful in a dangerous time, and from that safe place the Church grew. Making our families, parishes and schools similarly safe places is a heroic and deeply faithful act. The Kingdom can grow from faithful patches like that. It always has.
Comentarios