A Jewish Man & Samaritan Woman Walk Into a Bar…

Jan 30, 2022 | Megan Ramer, Narrative Lectionary - Year 4, Sermons, zoom church

Okay, they don’t precisely “walk into a bar”, but they do meet at their local “watering hole”… the well… literally a hole with water in it. Ha! Do I have your attention yet?! Two people like them are NOT supposed to interact at all, but these two beloved humans conspire to cross religio-socio-cultural boundaries to encounter one another: human to human. Neither do they shy away from the most pressing theological dispute that fuels the sometimes violent antagonism between their respective peoples. The Samaritan woman (anonymous) dives right into the thorns with the Jewish man (Jesus), and by the end of it all she goes to her people with 1) an invitation: “Come and see…”, and 2) an open question “Could this man be…?” Stick around through all the noticings in this gorgeous story, and be treated to a “biblical experiment in decolonization,” thanks to the compassionate heart and imaginative mind of one baptized with the waters of Shoal Lake 40 in Treaty 1 territory, Canada.

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Audio

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Preacher

Megan M Ramer

Series

Narrative Lectionary, Year 4

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Passage

John 4:1-42

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Resources

Bibleworm podcast: Episode 324 – The Woman at the Well, Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr.
JOHN: Believers Church Bible Commentary, by Willard M Swartley, Herald Press (2013).
Women’s Bible Commentary, eds. Carol A Newsom and Sharon H Ringe, Westminster John Knox Press (1992).
“Stolen Waters, Thirsty People,” Susanne Guenther Loewen, from Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization, ed. Steve Heinrichs, Mennonite Church Canada (2018), 220-221.
Image: JESUS MAFA. Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48282 [retrieved January 31, 2022]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).
Note on JESUS MAFA (Vie de Jesus Mafa): French Catholic missionary François Vidil worked with Mafa Christian communities in Northern Cameroon in the 1970s to create a set of 63 paintings depicting the life of Jesus as if they’d taken place in a Cameroonian village.

Hymn: VT 536, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. Contributors: Ralph Vaughan Williams, ICEL
Tune: Music: traditional English melody, arr. By Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1872-1958 © Oxford University Press, London. Text: Text: Horatius Bonar, 1806-1889.