A Voice from the Edge
Bill Loader[1]
describes this Sundays gospel reading John 4:5-42) as a wonderful piece of drama with many levels
of meaning. “As always in John its central character is God and God’s gift of
life through the invitation to live in the holy space of love, the true worship
in the Spirit, which is also the living space of the Father and the Son. That
love, embodied, cuts across racial and cultural prejudice, affirms women,
engages and loves sinners. In a man’s world a woman is the supreme example,
exercising ministry, but doing so with the fragility and hesitancy and perhaps
inadequacy which happens when ordinary human beings engage in ministry. That is
also cutting across a prejudice of perfectionism with which we plague
ourselves. The fruit of such faithfulness is the setting free of others from
what binds them (including us). It is bringing to birth and caring with that as
the goal. The stereotype, Nicodemus, the teacher, will not see this either.”
I wonder
how this unnamed Samaritan women, pushed to the edge by everyone but Jesus
speaks to us this Lent?
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