Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Our vision is often more abstracted by what we think we know than by our lack of knowledge”.
In Jesus’ day burying a body that no one else could care for was seen as a highly ethical deed, as a selfless act of kindness that cannot be repaid. Jesus asked, “Which… proved to be a neighbor…” and he was told, “the one who showed mercy toward him”
“compassion” “mercy” or “loving-kindness” chesed towards other people transcends all other commandments. A Samaritan was an outsider, with no obligation to care for the corpse of a Jew, yet he showed compassion and thereby acted as a good neighbor.
The apprehension of inter-ethnic contact is rarely appreciated by modern people living in ethnically diverse modern societies. By that was not the world of the gospels.
Jesus was not nailing her to the cross of justice, but instead was letting her know that he knew everything about the pain she endured. This is certainly more in keeping with the Jesus we know from other instances in his life.
He let the nameless Samaritan woman know that He understood her troubles much more fully than she thought. He did this by showing her that he was aware of the pain and suffering she had endured during her life.
This phrase is probably a statement of amazement that here is an outsider, someone who does not really know me, yet he knows very private things about me. He knows my pain, my sorrow of loss (and/or divorce) of multiple husbands, the struggle of getting married again. How can this Judean know this and understand the pain and the stigma that I have to live with? Yet he offers me living water and life...
