Are you any good at human relationships?

 

This week we offer two sermons on the same subject - the reading from the Gospel of Saint John about the woman at the well. 

A sermon by Father Francis Maple - Link HERE

A LESSON IN HUMAN RELATIONS

Jn. 4:5-42

Our Gospel setting today was at a water well, nearby a Samaritan village.  It was here that Jesus and His followers stopped to replenish their supplies.  The disciples had gone into the village to buy food.  Jesus, being tired from His journey, sat down on the curb of the well and waited for their return.  In the meantime, one of the villagers, a woman, came to the well to draw water.  The encounter that followed is a lesson in human relations.

Here were two people, who were about as different as people can be.  One was a woman, and the other a man.  In that day, women had no status at all.  They were owned by their fathers until they got married.  After that, they were owned by their husbands.  Men were regarded as being far superior to women.  It was accepted protocol that men had no public dealings with women, not even to talk with them.  This was part of the reason why this woman was startled when Jesus asked her for a drink of water.  To do so puts Him in a subordinate position.  He was acknowledging His dependence upon her.  In a male-dominant culture, that was something no self-respecting man would do.  You will note that when the disciples returned, they were surprised that Jesus was speaking to a woman.  It simply wasn’t done.

Another difference that separated Jesus and the woman was race.  Jesus was a Jew.  The woman was a Samaritan.   Between those two nations an ancient antagonism ran bitter and deep.  Each side was convinced that the other side was no good.  Most Jews hated Samaritans and most Samaritans hated Jews.  There was no sensible explanation for it.  Racial prejudice never does make sense.  That is why it is called "prejudice".  The word means "to judge in advance".  Without taking the time or making an effort to know an individual, you simply decide, on the basis of race, that a person is no good.  Such behaviour is unfair and unintelligent.  The prejudiced person is merely advertising his or her own ignorance.  It is counter-productive.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, useful comes out of it.  Even if it were true, what good would it do?  What would it accomplish to hate an entire race of people, simply because they were thought to be no good?  They are not going to vanish from the earth, merely because we hate them.  They would still be here.  We would still have to find some way of relating to them.  Despite all of its stupidity, racial prejudice endures even to this day.  It may well be the greatest curse ever to beset humankind.

Another difference that separated Jews and Samaritans was religion.  They both believed in God.  That should have been, and could have been, a basis for unity.  But both sides got hung-up on the details of religion.  It became, instead, a wedge that drove them apart.  The focus of their disagreement was where God should be worshipped.  The Jews had a temple in Jerusalem.  The Samaritans had a temple on Mount Gerizim.  Both of them insisted that their place of worship was the proper place.  There was no room for compromise.  Each side knew themselves to be right.  So, they ended up hating one another in the name of God.  People who become obsessed with the details of religion will almost always fall into that same trap.

Jesus did not allow any of these differences to separate Him from the Samaritan woman, or from anyone else.  He chose, instead, to focus on the similarities that unite all people.  This entire story revolves around water.  That is an appropriate centrepiece for a lesson on human relations.  It strips away everything deep.  He had no rope or bucket with which to draw water.  The woman had both.  He needed her help, and she needed His.  Here was a woman who shared the story of her life with a total stranger.  Why would she do that?  The obvious answer is loneliness.  The warmth and kindness of Jesus were like living water to her thirsty soul.  Can people die of loneliness?  I think they can.  We all need to be loved.  Surely every human heart longs for the sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly voice, the touch of a friendly hand?  Our common social needs demonstrate that we are all alike.

This woman had not been able to make life work.  She looked back on a succession of broken relationships that were forever beyond repair.  She remembered missed opportunities that could never be reclaimed.  She lived with the pain of failed hopes and shattered dreams.  Her life had become a sad litany of things that might have been.  Anyone who has lived very long at all can understand that.  The only difference may be that our failures have not been quite as glaring as hers, but all of us are in the same boat.  We all need the kind of help that only God can give.

Human relations have two dimensions.  There are the differences that divide us, and the needs that unite us.  Jesus chose to emphasize the latter.  What about us?  When we look at other people, which do we see?  The differences that tear us apart, or the needs that bind us together? 

Lord Jesus, let us concentrate on what binds us together.  Then we shall treat all people like You did.

A sermon by Father Jonathan E Moore - Link HERE

3rd Sunday of Lent 2026

The third Sunday of Lent, 2026, The Encounter at Jacob's Well. Dear friends, I need to start with a little history lesson today. St John's account of our Lord's encounter with the woman of Samaria simply can't be understood without.

King David brought Israel in the north and Judah in the south together around about 1000 BC. He moved his capital from Hebron in the north to the city of Jerusalem in the south. A mere 70 years later, the excessive demands made by Solomon, especially his demand for the use of unpaid labour and high taxation to build his temple, so alienated the people in the north that they broke away and formed their own kingdom of Israel.

So that after the time of Rehoboam, Solomon's son, there were two kingdoms. The kingdom of Judah in the south with its capital in Jerusalem. The kingdom of Israel in the north with its capital, the city of Samaria.

Those two kingdoms coexisted rather less than peacefully for about 200 years. Archaeology has shown that during those years, Israel in the north had a much larger and more prosperous population than Judah in the south. Much of Judah was desert, while Israel enjoyed the seaports and fertile agricultural land.

Israel's wealth, however, was a mixed blessing because it was invaded and conquered by the Assyrians in 720 BC. At that point, most of their religious and political leaders, as well as skilled craftsmen, were deported and scattered throughout the vast Assyrian empire. Those who escaped came as refugees to Judah.

The people of Israel resented the fact that their fellow Jews in Judah had not come to their aid when they were fighting Assyria. Now it was the turn of Judah to enjoy prosperity until it too fell victim to Babylon in 586 BC. The Babylonians too deported or executed all of Judah's leaders.

The skilled workers and scholars were deported to Babylon where they hung up their harps by the river and wept for their homeland, as we read in Psalm 137. The Judeans were released from captivity 70 years later and returned to rebuild their shattered homes. Now while the Judeans were away, the people of Samaria had come to regard the whole area as their own.

They deeply disliked the returning Babylonian exiles who were sponsored by Persia, the new superpower. The Jerusalem temple was in ruins and the earlier shrine of Mount Gerizim in Samaria had become the national religious centre. The Samaritans were very angry when the newcomers started to rebuild the Jerusalem temple and did their best to sabotage the whole project.

And there in a nutshell we have the whole reason why, as St John told us today, the Jews and Samaritans did not associate with each other. Their enmity was hundreds of years old, born out of their different histories, religious practise and disputed land ownership. Worst of all it was a family row and they are the hardest kind to resolve.

It's against this background that the encounter at Jacob's well makes some sense. First of all, notice that Jesus goes to meet the Samaritan woman on her own turf, but at a spot sacred to Jews and Samaritans alike, both of whom were descended from the patriarch Jacob. Second, notice how Jesus wins the woman's confidence, respect and eventual acceptance.

He approaches her not as a superior but as a petitioner. He asks her for a drink. When she's recovered from her shock he promises her living water.

Now the theme of living water runs through the whole Bible from Genesis to the book of Revelation. The woman herself longed for that abundance of water as she made her daily trek to the well with her bucket. Living water in Hebrew means fresh, cool, running water, not the warm stagnant and brackish water that came up out of the well.

If Jesus could provide her with such living water he must be worth listening to. But as always happens the historical rows crop up. She reminds Jesus of the resentment she feels over the Jerusalem temple, but Jesus doesn't rise to the bait.

He doesn't go back to engage with a past which cannot be changed. Rather he asks the woman to look to the future because God no longer requires worship to be centred on any particular place. People everywhere can worship God in spirit and in truth.

He tells her to look back to what they share, not to what divides them. He tells her to look forward to a future when all God's people can be united. Any authentic relationship with God must be grounded in the present moment, not in the past.

And Jesus teaches us that our relationships with one another need to be grounded in the present moment too, not in the past. What lessons can we draw in our own encounters, especially with people who don't share our faith, people with different beliefs, people with none at all? Well first of all find common ground and remember that everyone you meet has God for their father. That the Lord Jesus died on the cross for their sake just as much as for yours and that he loves them and you with the same infinite love.

We don't just meet Jesus in Catholics. We don't just meet Jesus in the people we like. We encounter him in every single person we meet and there's some food for thought.

Amen. God bless you and please pray for me.