Who are our Samaritans?

I was reading earlier today about Jesus and the Samaritan woman (see John 4 v1-42). We're mainly familiar with Samaritans through the story of the 'Good' Samaritan, who helps the man attacked by robbers when the priest and temple-server ignore his need. What's controvertial about that story is that to Jesus' audience, Samaritans were the bad guys, the ones in the wrong. Hereditary enemies of the Jews, the Samaritans thought they were worshipping the same God, but had wandered off track into idol-worship and had mixed with the Cananite tribes and their non-Jewish practices.


Yet here Jesus is seen talking to a Samaritan woman- even worse, a woman of ill-repute! Jewish rabbis wouldn't have been keen to talk to women in public, even less someone who'd had 5 husbands, was now living with a man, unmarried, and to top it all a Samaritan! Yet Jesus asks her for water, talks to her about her life, and even reveals to her his identity as the Messiah in much more definate terms than he has spoken to the Jews so far.


Why? And why is the response to Jesus here more enthusiastic than it frequently was in Jewish areas? I don't know. Perhaps Jesus could see that here, in this woman and her town, there was a genuine thirst for spiritual "water."


The disciples, as ever, haven't got a clue what's going on. They just want lunch. Bound up in cultural prejudices they don't see what God's doing among the Samaritans. Jesus tries to show them that these 'fields' are ready to be harvested, that the people here want to hear his good news. Later, he tells them that their mission to tell people about Jesus and what he has done is not just to the Jews, but to the Samaritans and the whole world.


It led me to think: Who are our Samaritans? Who are those people close at hand who we really don't get on with, but who God might see are longing to hear what he has to say? The Samaritans weren't far away from the Jews, but right next door. Who, in our towns and cities, our culture, are those we ostracise? The homeless? The unemployed? Those who are into 'alternative' ways of living?


Jesus was willing to break down cultural barriers and transgress accepted behaviour to reach the Samaritans. Are we willing to do the same, to reach out to those in need? I know I'm not very good at it. But is the church any better? Or do we only want people who sing the same songs as we do (this applies to modern band-style worship as much as organ and choir), are comfortable sitting through a half-hour sermon and prayers? What about those for whom even entering a church is completely foreign to their experience? What are the expectations and behaviour we force on these people, and how can we, like Jesus, reach out and break down these barriers, remembering that "in Christ there is no slave or free, Jew or Gentile, man or woman"?


Sorry, that seems to have become another anti-church rant. I love the church really- or at least the idea of the church. Perhaps that's why I get so worked up about it- I love it so much I can't ignore its' failings, but want to do what I can (which doesn't seem to be very much at present) to make it more like how it should be.