Sunday 23rd March The Samaritan woman said to Jesus: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans. John 4:9 3rd Sunday in Lent One of the greatest gifts we received in 1994 was genuine religious freedom. Now, I must point out, religious freedom was on the statute books before, but what I think is different today is the way in which we are able to be ourselves before God (or whatever you choose to call Her) without subtle discrimination. In the past South Africa was a Christian country (though without any formal state church) that allowed other faiths. Among Christians there was a clear hierarchy of approval: conservative Calvinism was most esteemed (which just happened to be the main faith of the ruling elite), then Pentecostalism (because it tended not to ‘get involved in politics’), and then the rest. African Initiated Christianity (the largest single block of Christian churches) was at the bottom: anthropologically interesting though considered by some to be close to ‘paganism’, its main saving grace was that it was (officially) ‘apolitical’. How things have changed. Today we are an officially secular state (though acknowledging God in the Constitution) where all kinds of religious beliefs are practised – subject to the proviso they harm no-one. Muslim and Hindu marriages no longer have second class status. It’s no longer unusual for someone to openly admit they’re atheist – or that they profess Witchcraft. (My sources tell me that a few years ago there was even a practising Wiccan parliamentarian!). Many Christians, many Catholics even, may find this strange, even disturbing – all the more so that I cite these examples with obvious approval. But a close reading of today’s Gospel might help us all. In it we see Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman – a multiple outcast in the eyes of his more orthodox followers. She is a Samaritan, a person not seen as a true Jew. She is a woman – a subordinate by their definition and, more dangerously, encountering a single man alone at a well! To cap it all, she has been through many husbands. Now imagine such a woman talking openly to a young priest after Sunday Mass. My, my, how the parish tongues would wag! Yet Jesus will have none of this. He encounters her as a person with all her faults and finds in her a woman of faith. She listens to him, she responds, and by the end of the encounter she sees him better than many of his own disciples. Person encounters person. Faith encounters faith. And both come away the better for it. That’s what the new religious freedom is about in contemporary South Africa. That’s what it should be. Long may it continue! Prayer-: Lord, grant me the grace to recognise my own prejudices, the desire to be rid of them and the humility to see your image in everyone whom I meet. AMEN.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:08:44 +0000
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