PASCHA - Day Thirty Three — 'Jesus comes now to woo a people beyond Israel'

 

 by Theophanes the Cretan, Stavronikita, Mt Athos, 16th c.

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

Christ is Risen!   Indeed He is Risen!

At the beginning of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, St. John "sets the scene," so to speak, in the following manner:

"So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was the sixth hour." (Jn. 4:5-6)

Besides the deep historical significance of Jesus sitting by Jacob's well, what other biblical and typological themes are profoundly present in this scene? A very fine biblical scholar, Brendan Byrne, in his commentary on St. John's Gospel, entitled Life Abounding, uncovers the following:

"A particularly rich source of allusion is a pattern in the patriarchal stories where "courtship meetings," leading eventually to marriage, take place at wells. In Genesis 24:1-27 the servant whom Abraham has sent to Aram-naharaim to find a wife for his son, Isaac, meets Rebekah at a well and asks her for a drink. Generously, she offers to draw water for his camel as well. (Also in common with John 4:7-30 is the fact that the woman is carrying a water-jar - hydria; Gen. 24:15, etc.; cf. John 4:28 - and that the success of the mission leads the servant to "worship" the Lord: Gen. 24:26-27; cf. John 4:19-24). In Genesis 29:1-14 Jacob is beside a well when his future wife Rachel approaches to water the sheep that she tends. Recognizing her as the daughter of his uncle Laban, Jacob removes the stone that covers the well, enabling her sheep to be watered; then he kisses her, his cousin and future wife. These biblical associations hover around the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Already present as "Bridegroom" (of Israel) at the wedding in Cana and explicitly named as such by John (3:21), Jesus comes now to "woo," in the person of this woman, a people (the Samaritans) beyond the confines of Israel, anticipating in this way the first mission of the later church (cf. Acts 8:1b-25)."

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The scriptural text is so rich even before the woman of Samaria arrives to meet her "Bridegroom!" 

From Life Abounding by Brendan Byrne, p. 80