Now … Jesus … left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” John 4:1–12 |
The word “news” indicates unambiguously that what one is about to see, hear or read is “new”. But do you find that news often repeats itself? Sometimes ad nauseam? One of these regular repeats is stuff about religious people and their decisions about others.
These news reports sometimes detail how someone religious is judging a person’s conduct to be sinful. But the thrust of the report is intended to be a criticism of the religious person and not of the conduct.
At other times the news reports describe how a religious person has made it known that a particular person’s conduct is not sinful at all and all such conduct should be praised. Carry on with it.
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Several such reports – of one kind or the other – arise every day. Is it correct that religious people are judging others? Is it correct that the news media itself is judging religious people? Are those who listen to the news media judging religious people? Is it a fact that everybody is judging everybody else? Is that news? Is it new?
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‘Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.’ (Jesus Christ c. AD 29)
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Please read the report in bold above. It was written around AD 90 by John, a disciple of Jesus, in his old age, when looking back on Jesus and his approach towards other people.
Here are some newsworthy facts (because the whole thing is in that sense “new”) about that incident.
First, Samaria, at one time BC was part of Israel. It was de-populated by the Neo-Assyrian Empire by 720 BC. A new population was moved in and they intermarried with the few descendants of Jacob (Israel) who remained. Thus, the Samaritan woman in the extract, in referring to “our father Jacob”, was providing religious (Jewish) cover for herself because she was speaking with a Jewish man. She was defensive; she thought that she was being judged.
Second, the “sixth hour” is in fact noon. Siesta-time in Israel. She came to “draw water” at that time so as to avoid other people. They definitely wouldn’t be there to judge her.
Third, this unnamed woman assumed that this male Jew at the well would totally ignore her because “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans”.
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How would Jesus deal with Richard Syvret if he, with all that he knows about himself and with all that he knows and hopes that others don’t know about him, his parents, and his past?
Would he say to him, “Give me a drink”? And would he say, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
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‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’ (Jesus Christ c. AD 28)
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Or would he say that certain things about Richard Syvret which he thinks are wrong are not wrong? Or that certain things which Richard Syvret has done are wrong – why can’t he see it?
And Richard Syvret? What does he say about others? He fails often but he’d like to say something similar to what Paul, a first century follower of Jesus, wrote to his young co-worker Timothy around AD 65: “This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’—and I am the worst of them all. But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life.”
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