John 4:5-42 The Samaritan Women of Dane County, Wisconsin

23 March  John 4:5-42     The Samaritan Women of Dane County, Wisconsin

The woman at the well takes me immediately back to those promises I make every time we baptize a baby.  “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”  and “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

I think about all of the Samaritan women who surround me on a daily basis- all those women we tend to look down on at our very best and to make outcast at our worst.  I watch myself shaking my head in both sorrow and irritation at the young, single teens who have gotten themselves pregnant (72/1000 young Black teens and 58/1000 young Hispanic teens in Dane County).  I find myself both cringing and rolling my eyes as I listen to women talk about trying to “get clean” so they can get their kids back (Heroin being the drug of choice in Dane Co.).    I grind my teeth when I learn that 1300 students in Dane Co, identify themselves as gang members, of whom 24% of those are young girls.  I attempt to ignore the fact that a large, well-known house of prostitution is just out my back door, one block over.   And mostly, I have a tendency to push the “denial” button in my brain – I do not want to admit that such sin exists in this city we think of as approaching Utopia.

How is it possible to seek and serve Christ in these people or to preserve their dignity when it appears that they have none to preserve.  This story provides us with one of the most powerful lessons in all of Scripture.  The Samaritan women, and all of those Samaritan women in Dane County, do not, indeed, see themselves as persons of worth and value .  Jesus’ ministering to those outcasts of Jewish society reminds us that all people are valuable to God.  We learn to seek and serve Christ in all persons as we learn to finally see, and then demonstrate love to,  the outcasts in our midst.  We strive for justice and preserve human dignity as we choose to actively work to care for our Samaritans, to constantly let them know that they are people of value to God and to us.