Connecting with the Samaritans and drinking from Jacob’s well
Day 3 Monday 29th July 2019
My third day here and I am feeling familiar with the place. It’s my birthday. Part of coming here was to mark the transition. Over this week it is my birthday and the day I got married. The divorce is now settled hence being here was about putting new wine into new skins.
In the acts of preparing to come, coming, being, doing, living something was ending and beginning all at the same time.
Today is my first booked tour. Abraham Hostels also run Abraham Tours. This tour is to Mount Gerizim, Jacob’s well, Nablus and Jenin. I booked it specifically to visit Mount Gerizim. This is the Holy Mountain for the Samaritans. I had read recently that only 830 of them continue to exist. For as long as I can remember I have held an interest in the supposed unorthodox and people groups that struggle to survive.
I hadn’t realised all of today’s tour is in the West Bank. I know when I see the Army jeep blocking the bus. No one is saying what is happening so I rise and shout to the front, “Can someone tell us what is happening?” We are informed what is obvious we are at a checkpoint between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The delay does not last long and soon we are on a motorway heading in the direction of Nablus which is about an hour’s drive.
Ashraf, our guide for the day introduces himself as a Palestinian Christian whose family were Jewish. My ears prick up. I hadn’t considered that the Palestinian people were Jewish in origin. Ashraf went on to explain that as Christianity and later Islam presented itself some Palestinians turned to the new religions. This reminded me what I had discovered about Turkey that being the Cypriots and the Turkish are of the same origins just that some remained within Christianity while others embraced Islam. Indeed my own history told the same story. We all had been Celtic people and at one time all Catholic it just so happened that some of us embraced the new discovery which became known as Protestantism.
I sat in the mini-coach content knowing that I was on the path watching the fields of Palestine which I had only read off and imagined go by.
It was as we walked up Mount Gerizim that the sense of awe came over me. As I look back on this video I can see it.
The awe was that since I can remember I knew of this people, I knew also that my master interacted with them recalling particularly the story of the Samaritan woman.
I am more of a hearer of stories than a historian, the story fascinated me. The Samaritans claim to be the descendants of the 10 tribes that formed the Northern Kingdom of Israel or Samaria. Judah and Benjamin represented the Southern Kingdom and their base was Jerusalem. I recalled the split between the 12 tribes of Jacob from Bible study of years ago now I was hearing that the Samaritans represented the Northern Kingdom. The Samaritans retain their religious practices 3500 years on.
My mind begins to reinterpret what I have known. So these people here Palestinians although varied in their religious devotion are the people of this land yet they have in parts been dispossessed?
With my mind and heart boggling we move on to Jacob’s Well.
I am recalling in my mind the story recorded in the Book of John chapter 4. Jesus has been in Judea and was on his way back to Galilee. He had to pass through Samaria. He stopped at a well for a drink whereupon he met a Samaritan woman. They chat in which they talk about Mount Gerizim and Jerusalem and which is the true place to worship God. Jesus makes a revolutionary statement when he says, “ Those who worship God will worship in neither places but in Spirit and Truth.”
He asked her for a drink. Culturally this was inappropriate as she was a woman and a Samaritan. Although the two came from the same people they had divided and hostility existed between the Jews and the Samaritans. He then makes a claim that he can provide living water which gives eternal life. Again he makes a bold claim as he is saying salvation is not about ritual and religion but living abundantly through the spirit.
Can you imagine? This conversation took place 2000 years ago and here am I standing in the area where it all happened! There is a condition known as the Jerusalem syndrome. Around 100 people a year are so overwhelmed by the Metaphysical experience that they require psychiatric treatment. I can understand why as I was feeling overwhelmed myself. Whenever in my life would I come to the place where words that changed my life were spoken? I had no idea until now and now that I was in the now I was everything affected.
I think you will have detected that from the above video. When I discovered that water still flowed into the well I just had to drink it forget the souvenirs. I was consuming the water that had supplied Laban’s livestock and Christ himself. True I miss the message if dwell on the physical water.
After all that I almost missed the significance of Tel Balata which is believed to be Shechem mentioned in the book of Genesis. Was this the Canaanite City that became the Promised Land?
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