So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph (John 4:5)

The setting for this scripture passage is the town of Sychar in the province of Samaria. In Jesus’ day the country of Palestine was divided into three provinces—Judea to the south, Galilee to the north and Samaria in between. Jesus and His disciples had left Judea and were traveling to Galilee through Samaria.

Most Jews of the time would bypass Samaria because of an intense hatred for the Samaritan people. The division and the beginning of this animosity occurred 700 years earlier when the Northern Kingdom was captured by Assyria. Most of the Jews were deported and foreigners settled into the land of Samaria. This produced “mixed” marriages and the race became what was then termed “Samaritan.”

Jesus was not to be caught up in the cultural restriction imposed by the society of that day. In fact, he not only traveled through Samaria, but stopped to drink from the well of his ancestor, Jacob.

This backdrop provides a thought provoking situation—are the restrictions and prejudices of today’s society worth tolerating or following? Are we also bound to the cultural restrictions of today’s society, or do we, like Jesus, cast aside the restrictions and expectations, and promote love and acceptance in the same manner Jesus did?

Holy God of Justice, show us that those we might look down upon or belittle are basically the same human composition that we are.