Investigating the Bible: Overcoming Discrimination

By DAVID CARLSON PASTOR

In the late 1800s American women were fighting for the right to vote. Those opposed had bizarre reasons. Some men said that if women could vote, America would become a theocracy governed by the clergy because women would yield control to the church. Jesus encountered a woman who hated him before she knew him. His response is a primer on how to respond to discrimination.

In New Testament days, upstanding Jews considered Samaritans to be substandard citizens. Samaritans despised this better-than attitude. Jews and Samaritans both had Jacob as their father. Jacob’s sons Judah and Benjamin settled in the south of Israel and some in Galilee to the far north. His other ten sons formed Samaria. They established their own temple, intermarried with non-Jews, and worshipped idols. By the time of Jesus, Jews in the south would add more than forty miles to their journeys north to Galilee to skirt around despised Samaria.

When Jesus left Jerusalem to go north, he took the direct route through Samaria. Halfway through the region he came to the town of Sychar. He stopped at an ancient well on land given by Jacob and was thirsty from the long walk. “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.)” (John 4:7, English Standard Version used throughout.).

The woman had no intention of helping: “…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 4:9-10).

The woman claimed to have no husband. “Jesus said to her, ‘You are right…for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.’” (John 4:17-18). This woman was a Samaritan and she was living in sin. Talking with her would be perceived as having impure motives. When the disciples returned they knew this. “They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you seek’ or ‘Why are you talking with her?’” (John 4:27). In spite of their differences, Jesus treated the woman with respect.

The Samaritan woman implied that Jesus was insane, wondering how he could draw out this supposedly living water. “Jesus said to her, ‘…whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14).

Jesus overcame her discrimination. “So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people. ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:28-29). “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him…they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word.” (John 4:39-41).

Gale Sayers was the great running back of the Chicago Bears. In 1969, after coming back from a horrendous knee injury the year before, Sales was awarded the George S. Halas Award for the most courageous player in pro football. In his acceptance speech, he said, “It is mine tonight; it is Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow.”

Piccolo, a halfback also on the Bears, was in a hospital fighting an aggressive cancer, which would take his young life in 1970. Sayers was African-American. Piccolo was white. To Sayers, the racial separations still too common then, were nothing. He ended saying, “I love Brian Piccolo and I’d like all of you to love him too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love Brian Piccolo.”

David Carlson Pastor (yes, that is his last name, not his profession) is a Polk County resident and graduate of Bethel Theological Seminary in Minnesota (M.Div., M.Th.)