The story of the woman at the well is Jesus’ longest conversation with one person in the Gospels. In this story, the woman erects barriers. She finds countless things that get between her and Jesus. Let’s look at the barriers that she erected and see if they are not ones that we also erect.
First, this woman erected a barrier of prejudice. Jews and Samaritans held deep animosity against one another. They had long standing hatreds. The woman said, “Why are you, a Jew, asking me to get you a drink?” The animosity she expressed was characteristic of the relationships between Jews and Samaritans. Expressing this animosity she created a barrier to Jesus. She couldn’t understand him. The poet Maya Angelou wrote, “Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible” (All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes [Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987], 155). That’s exactly what she was doing. She was distorting the past and making the present inaccessible. She couldn’t meet Jesus because she brought prejudice into the relationship.
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