Appointment in Samaria

[Jesus] left Judea and departed again for Galilee.  And he had to pass through Samaria.  So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.  Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.  – John 4:3-6

This morning, I was on the phone with a man whose name differs by one letter from that of someone I met nearly thirty years ago.  Those two men knew one another.  The man I met back in 1985 preached a sermon from John 4:4, using the KJV wording, “He must needs pass through Samaria”.  Life seems sometimes like a labyrinth built of a series of strange connections and unlikely chains of events.   In fact, as any commentary will tell you, it was only necessary to go through Samaria as the direct path from Judea to Galilee.  Travelers going south from Galilee to Jerusalem, in particular, commonly crossed over the Jordan River and passed through the territory of Perea to avoid a hostile encounter with the Samaritans based on religious prejudices. 

We’re probably all familiar with the translation Maugham made of a little story called “Appointment in Samarra”.  Samarra is an ancient city in what is now Iraq, situated on the Tigris, like the city of Baghdad which lies about 75 miles south and a little to the east.  The story tells of a servant who is panicked by an encounter with Death in the Baghdad market.  The servant runs to his master and begs the use of his horse on the grounds that Death made a “threatening gesture” toward him.  The servant reasons that by fleeing to Samarra he can avoid Death and his fate.  The good master agrees; the servant mounts the horse, digs in his spurs and flies away.  Later the master encounters Death and inquires as to why Death threatened his servant.  “It was not a threatening gesture,” Death replies.  “I was merely surprised to see him in Baghdad as I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.” 

God gives us freedom, but He also takes it into account.  A woman needed water.  She didn’t like to go to the well in the morning because she didn’t like to get up early or because she didn’t want to deal with all the other gossipy, judgmental women who would be there at the usual hour.  She waited until noon and wandered down with her jar only to find a lone, male Jew whom she sincerely hoped would ignore her.  He didn’t, and her life was transformed for eternity. 

Sometimes we feel a strange urge to go through Samaria.  Sometimes we are running late for work because we inexplicably and inadvertently turned the alarm off the day before.  How can a brand-new tire go flat?  A possibly apocryphal tale I remember hearing was about someone who was so frustrated over his performance in a bowling tournament that he threw his ball out the window of his car while driving home.  The ball, striking the pavement at high speed, bounced up, ricocheted off an overpass and smashed through the windshield of another car, killing the driver.  Instead of thinking how horrible it was that someone’s anger and irresponsibility had resulted in the death of an innocent person, my first thought was, if you are killed on the freeway by a bowling ball, it’s probably your time to go.  If that happened these days, all the digital signs on the highway would start flashing “TILT”.

Every intersection in this maze we are traveling is an opportunity to make a right decision, to give help or to receive it.  Weariness drove Jesus to sit down on the edge of that well.  Thirst caused Him to ask a rejected, disillusioned woman for a drink.  But love and compassion moved Him to offer her a chance to change her life.  She took the right turn, away from rebellion, toward God, and she found the Way out.