Chapter III: The Samaritan
Luke iv. 14; John iv. 4-42.
Jesus having learned of the imprisonment of John the Baptist, retired into Galilee, not of His own desire, but "by the out of the Spirit;" apparently this interior Guide revealed some impending danger to Him, for John Evangelist states that the Saviour was not free to choose what way he kept he would take: "He was of necessity," he says, "to pass through Samaria."
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| Samaria, showing Jacob's Well. |
Jesus, left alone, sought shelter beneath the archway overhanging the Well, and from the spot, as He sat gazing out over the valleys spread before Him, the scene may well have brought up memories of many ancient happenings in Israel. Here, under the oaks of Moreh, Abraham had pitched his tent, and raised the first altar to Jehovah. Jacob, on his return from Mesopotamia, had bought this very land which Jesus now trod, and here too he had dug this well, although there were fountains of water round about him, because he wished to be free from any subjection to the neighbouring domains. Still later, when his sons had rashly wiped out the dishonour of Dina in the blood of the Sichemites, the Patriarch, though obliged to flee, yet always retained such tender recollections of this valley that he bequeathed it to his dearly loved son. He also was the spot where Joseph was to be endowed with every blessing, showered upon him from the heavenly heights and rising from the depths below, while he himself would be upheld by the blessings of his father, whose God was forevermore to be his helper. Here Ephraim, mindful of the same precious heritage, laid to rest the embalmed body of Joseph, and so for centuries made Sichem the principal city of Judea.
Over yonder, upon the opposite slopes of Ebal and of Garizim, the eleven tribes, with solemn anathemas against all transgressors, had once vowed eternal fidelity to the Law. At the foot of these very hills, for many long years, Israel had held her councils and courts of law; and when Sion was become the capital of Judaea, we still find Roboam inaugurating his reign at Sichem.1
But what was then known remaining of these old and splendours? The hills and valleys of Ephraim had forfeited their ancient renown by taking the name of Samaria, a new town of schismatic tribes. The Field of Jacob was now an unhallowed region, through which travellers passed in haste lest they should come in contact in any way with its inhabitants. How deeply must not Jesus have grieved over such said changes of faith as these! Thus, in weariness of body and of soul, He sank down upon the lower curb of the well; a divine despair which Saint John pictures in one word, which it is impossible for us to translate: "He was seated after this manner by the well." The Church standing above the Graves which she has blessed, loves to recall that mysterious lassitude:
Quaerens me sedisti lassus.
Redimisti crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus!
In weariness You sought for me,
and suffering upon the tree!
let not in vain such labour be.
Lit: Seeking me Thou didst sit down, weary; Thou didst redeem me, having suffered crucifixion; So great a labour, may it not be in vain. From Dies Irae, traditionally ascribed to Thomas of Celano (d 1260), but now usually attributed to an unknown Franciscan of that period. The piece is based upon Zep 1:14-16, a reflection upon the final judgment.
And very shortly there came up from the little city of Sichar the woman who Jesus had come to seek at the cost of so great a weariness. She was a Samaritan, of evil life. With her slender jar poised upon her shoulder, she passed by all the springs nearer the town, and wandered up to Jacob's Well, drawn thither by the freshness of its limpid supply, and by something perhaps of traditional respect for the Patriarch. In fact, women of the East do not often go out to draw water in the middle of the day; fearing to encounter some insult, they are never seen around the fountains, except in little companies, and at sunset. But this one had long since lost all timidity and reserve, and she approached the well without concerning herself about the presence there of a man.
"Give Me to drink," was Jesus' quiet request of her.
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| Christ and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well. J-J Tissot. |
"How," she said, "do you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, who am a Samaritan? The Jews have no dealings with Samaritans."
It was a refusal, rendered to the more offensive by its ironical terms; and to appreciate its harshness it must be remembered with what readiness even Bedouins proffer this blessed service to the thirsty traveller. Nothing could show plainer to what extremes the animosity of the two nations had been pushed.
To this unmannerly reply Jesus only uttered a gentle objection.
"If you knew the gift of God," He said, "and Who it is that says to you: ‘Give Me to drink,’ by chance you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water."
This gift of God was grace, but the Samaritan did not understand; the thought of living water turned her mind to the streams she had often seen sparkling in the depths of the well.
"My Lord," she said, "you have no vessel, and the well is deep. Whence will you draw this living water?"
Her language had become respectful; for by the majesty of Jesus, and by the nobility of His utterance, she divined somewhat in Him above any ordinary Jew.
"Are you greater," she continued, "than our Father Jacob, who has given us this well, and he drank thereof, he, and his sons, and his cattle?"
"He who drinks of this water," answered the Saviour "shall thirst again; but he who drinks of the water which I will give him shall never thirst. The water which I will give him shall become in him a fountain springing up to eternal life."
Jesus evidently did not speak of the springs which water the earth, but of those which are opened up in the heart, making it pure and fruitful. Under this figure He would typify His grace, and show her how man may find in it all that he can desire, without fearing that this bounteous repletion should ever turn to satiety.
Not grasping at all the deep significance of the words she heard, the Samaritan besought Jesus to disclose the whereabouts of the spring of life, as she conjectured it.
"Lord," she said, " give me this water, that I may no more thirst, and that I may be no more obliged to come here to draw water."
The Master was not disheartened; in the sinful nature of the Samaritan he saw only an illustration of the truth He had taught to Nicodemus, that the soul which is as yet in bondage to the flesh is incapable of conceiving things Divine, and hence the surest way to enlighten the mind is to purify the heart; therefore he at once turned aside the current of her thought, that He might recall this woman to a sense of her sins.
"Go," he said, "call your husband, and come hither."
"I have no husband," she responded instantly.
"You are right in saying, I have no husband," replied Jesus; "for you have had five such, and he whom you have now is not your husband; indeed, you have spoken very truly."
So it had been useless for the Samaritan to seek shelter behind that ambigous answer of hers, "My husband! I have no husband." Jesus swept aside her feeble defences, and throwing open the gates of her soul, He laid bare its ill-gotten stores, all the accumulations of a guilty past, divorce, and not death, that had freed her from each of her five husbands in a shameful succession; a faithlessness which soon degenerated into debauchery, into scandalous connections, no longer protected by any thin veil of legal formalities.
The Samaritan, in her confusion at finding herself so easily exposed, now ceased from any further feigning.
"My Lord," she said, "I see that you are a Prophet."
Then, immediately turning the conversation from this humiliating theme, she took refuge in a question of doctrine, such as she thought would be likest to divert the mind of a Rabbi of Israel. She recalled the rival pretensions of Sion and of Sichem; their own traditions which told how the ancient Prophets were the ancestors of the Samaritans, and so represented them are sacrificing upon Mount Garizim.
"Our Fathers," she said, have worshipped upon this mountain, and do you say that it is at Jerusalem we must worship?"
Jesus, satisfied with having awakened something like penitence in the heart of this sinning woman, would not refuse to follow her thought upon this new track.
"Woman," he said to her, "believe Me: the hour is coming when you will no longer worship the Father, either upon this mountain or in Jerusalem. You worship that which you do not know: as for Us, we worship that which We know, because Salvation cometh of the Jews."
By those last words Jesus recognized the Primacy of Juda: to Juda alone belonged the Promises, the sacrifices acceptable to the Lord, the revealed Law, and the Ark of Alliance, overshadowed by the Glory from on high, in token of the presence of Jehovah; but at the same time He announced the end of these prerogatives.
"The hour cometh, and it is already here, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for it is this that the Father wishes of those who worship Him. God is a Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."
The Samaritan, drawn two Him by something she dimly discerned shining through these words, but dazzled and lost in this strange new world of thought, was now vaguely reminded of the Messiah, of Whom her fellow-countrymen were in expectation, Who was to be unto them for a Guide.
"I know," she said, "that the Messiah, the Christ, is to come, and that His coming will teach us in all things."
Jesus made answer to her, "I am He; I, who am speaking with thee."
He went no further at that moment; for the disciples were coming up towards them; but the woman, forgetful of all else besides, leaving her jar lying there at his feet, hastened back to the town, calling to everyone she met, "Come, see a Man who has told me everything I have done. Is He not the Christ? And the latter were so thrilled by her words that they hurried out from Sichar in throngs, taking the way which leads up toward Jacobs Well.
But the disciples had returned, just on the closing words of this interview, and great was their surprise at seeing the Master in private conversation with a woman, and, of all things, a Samaritan! Nevertheless, none of them said to Him, "What were you asking of her? Why were you talking with her?" They offered Him the provisions they had brought.
"Master" said they, "eat." But Jesus’ mind was filled with sadness at having garnered the first-fruits from among the Gentiles, in the person of these poor Samaritan; and so deeply replenished with delight was His heart that it caused Him to forget all other hunger.
"I have a food to eat," was His response, "of which you know not."
The astonished disciples murmured to each other, " Has any one brought Him food?"
"My food," Jesus replied, "is to do the will of Him Who sent Me, and to accomplish His work."
Thus then the work of God was the conversion of the Samaritans, who were now advancing toward Him. The swaying crowds, with their white garments fluttering through the fields of the valley below, which in four months more would be ready for the reapers, now gave them somewhat of the appearance of a harvest right for the sickle. The Saviour, with a glance, pointed them out to His disciples.
"Were you not just now saying: Four months more and the harvest time will be here? Are now I say to you: Lift your eyes, and look over these plains; they are already white for the harvest."
Those words, "four months more," had doubtless been pronounced by some of the disciples, looking at the fields lying around Jacob’s Well. Jesus, taking up the simple words, turned them in harmony with His thought; imaging to their minds a harvest which was ripening more rapidly than any of this earth, the harvest of souls, now coming toward Him from Sichar, who were to find a resting-place in the storehouse of Heaven. And from this, using the occasion to compare the Apostles’ duties with the toils of those who reap, Jesus proceeded to utter some instructions to His disciples, of which, it would seem, Saint John only retained the memory of a few detached sentences.
He explains how "he who harvests" in the field of the Gospel "receives a wage, and garners in fruit which is life eternal." Far different is it here upon earth, where frequently before the time of reaping, the sower is in the tomb; whereas that Festival in the heavens "shall unite in one common gladness both sower and reaper."
Again Jesus recalled the proverb: "One man soweth, and another reapeth;" showing them how perfectly applicable this was to the Evangelical ministry. "I have sent you to reap where you have not laboured: others have laboured and you have entered into their labours." By this is to be understood not only the Prophets, who had prepared Israel for the coming of the Messiah; but it also refers to the Christ and His teachings, of which the Apostles were to reap the fruits.
"However, the inhabitants of Sichar were now gathered round the Saviour; they begged Him to tarry in their town, and He abode there two days." Many believed in Him, upon the word of the woman who had given that testimony, " He has told me everything that I have done;" but a far greater number believed because of His own teachings. And these said to the woman,—
"We believe now no longer because of your story. We have heard, and we now know of ourselves, that He is verily the Christ, the Saviour of the world."
Thus the divine Master needed but two days to capture the heart and the faith of the Samaritans; and this is to be explained not merely by their docility, but rather by the idea they had formed of the Messiah. Though much less complete than those of the Jews, their notions of Christ's Kingdom were purer by far; they were not, like the latter's, all directed to the realisation of fleshly desires and carnal hopes, such as the end of all foreign rule and the restoration of the royalty of Israel. Hence, so long as He was in Judaea, fearing that they would make Him King against His will, Jesus concealed this dignity of the Messiah. But in Samaria, on the contrary, He proclaimed it without reserve, and freely revealed Himself both as Christ and the Saviour of the world.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam
Ad Jesum per Mariam
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