Outcast woman - 1

She is a shunned outcast, a woman alone, a foreigner, one of the heathen, 'the enemy'. And a disreputable woman at that, the sort respectable people cross the road to avoid.

He is tired and hot. He really needs the water he asks her for. Does he look into her eyes? Many men have, and do. She is doubly, trebly unclean, yet he will take water from her hand, share her cup. Appalling, to the law-abiding. How could he?

When He speaks of living water, she mocks him. He just repeats and underlines what he said before - ignoring her mockery. He again holds out a strange promise, with echoes of their common prophet Moses. She recognises something of great moment happening, but what?

When finally she stops playing games and asks for the living water, he stops her in her tracks with his knowledge of her private life. But he is not from 'around here' - how does he know all this? WHO IS HE?

He tells her that the awaited time is now here. That neither the Samaritans' holy mountain nor that of the Jews will do, but that from her people's enemies, the Jews, salvation will come, and very soon.

The conversation is serious now. He is talking to her as he would to a Jerusalem Temple doctor. Seriously, respectfully, as no-one else has ever spoken to her, a mere woman, let alone a lower-than-low outcast with a despicable personal history.

She looks into his eyes, in awe. She acknowledges that Messiah will come. He says, I AM HERE, talking to... YOU.

When they are interrupted by his companions, she is embarrassed even though they do not interrogate her, do not even address her. She breaks away, runs home, probably wondering if she had imagined what He seemed to be saying.

Shunned she may be but she cries to anyone and everyone that maybe, just maybe, she has met the Messiah, but surely not? Would MESSIAH speak privately to her of all people? This is NOT how one expects the Messiah to behave, to announce his millennial arrival!  (But... but... Elijah's still small voice...)

He tells the disciples to look around them at the harvest ripe for reaping. Look around at this small Samaritan village. Harvest. In unexpected places like this, He says.

And then some of the villagers came to Him because of her frantic earnest report about Him. They had to see for themselves. They saw for themselves and believed, and told her so.

WHAT exactly did they see for themselves? The Gospel does not tell us. But he stayed with them for two days before moving on to Galilee.

How did the disciples feel about staying in a Samaritan village instead of going home?

'We realised that this was a completely new and huge thing, If we wanted to stay with Jesus, we had to change our thinking and abandon all our preconceptions. Our prejudices.'

Children's conversations

I saw the small Child sitting on the wall by his mother's house in the sun-bleached hill village, in the shade of a fig tree.

'Will you be my friend?' he said.

I nodded. He smiled, and beckoned to me to come and sit beside him on his wall. We sat there for a while, not talking, just looking around together at the village going about its day.

'My mother is making raisin bread,' he said. 'If we go inside she will give us raisins.' We slid off the wall and crept into the kitchen, where his mother was at the table, kneading dough. We stood on our toes and peered over the edge of the table. She had a basin of raisins.

'This is my friend,' he told her.

She looked up and nodded. 'I know. And I know what you and your little friend want.' She smiled as she scooped up two handfuls of raisins and dropped them into our outstretched hands. We ran out, triumphant and laughing, and got back up on the wall. We munched his mother's raisins amicably and carried on watching the village going about its business.

We were firm friends after that.

_________

Later, not looking at me, he asks: 'Will you go away?'

Shock. He's my friend! How could he ask this? And how could I do this to Him?

But I do.

And when I return, broken and worried, there he will be, sitting on the wall, waiting. For me. And he will offer me more of his mother's raisins, still in His hand.

____________________

'If you go away, I shall come looking for you, and bring you home. But only if you want to come. I shall carry you on my shoulders like a shepherd with his little lamb when it's lost and he finds it crying alone in a ravine.'

'You are too small to carry me.'

'Now I am, but I shall be big, then.'

____________________

'It will not always be happy like now. When I am grown up, I think it may be horrible. But not at first. I will go everywhere, and I shall have new friends. Will you come with me and be one of my friends, when we're grown up and I have to leave home?'

'What about your mother?'

'She knows I will have to go. She always knows. Mothers do. It will be hard for her when I go. But she will come to meet me often, and I shall come home to her when I can. And bring my friends. She will make raisin bread for us!'

'She will cry when life is horrible to you.'

'Yes, but inside she will know that everything will be all right. She has me and my Father in her heart always. We will never let her go, and she will never let us go. Even when I leave never to come back, not as I am now anyway, she will have my Spirit in her heart and she will be peaceful. I will never leave her. Never. I will never leave you alone without me, either. Never. So will you come with me when I am a man and have to go away? Will you?'