Where is your Samaria?

As Pastor Szmara indicates, it is all too easy for questions like these to stay theoretical. It remains a mere theological discussion. Or perhaps it remains a matter of political argument and debate.

In this lesson, Pastor Szmara pushes us to look around us. Where are the places we avoid? Where is our “other side of the track” that we don’t want to go through, especially as it concerns the foreigner?

If you have read the Bible for long, you probably have heard of Samaria. If you think of Israel as three areas from top to bottom, Samaria was in the middle. Galilee was at the top, where Jesus did most of his earthly ministry. Judea was at the bottom, where Jesus was crucified and where Jerusalem was. Samaria was in the middle.

As Pastor Szmara indicated, Galileans typically went around Samaria in their journey south to Jerusalem and back. They would go down the Jordan River. It wasn’t just that it was easier to travel (flat). It was that the Samaritan area was not on the friendliest of terms with the other areas. 

There is a reason that Jesus picked a Samaritan in his parable about who our neighbor is (Luke 10:25-37). The lawyer wanted to justify himself, trying to wiggle out of who he had to demonstrate love toward. So Jesus picked someone that his natural prejudices and biases wouldn’t like, a Samaritan. Much as can happen with the topic of immigration, the lawyer no doubt had reasons he used to justify not showing love to such a xenos.

But in John 4, Jesus goes through Samaria. It says he has to go through Samaria (John 4:4). Technically, he did not have to. He only has to go through Samaria because he has a burden for the souls of Samaritans. He only has to go through Samaria because God loves Samaritans too and wants them to be included in the people of God.

Pastor Szmara makes the question of the foreigner real. Who are the people in your environment that you don’t want to engage with? Who are the people you don’t want to encounter? What are the parts of town that you go around? What are the stores and restaurants you avoid?

He encourages us to start our journey with the stranger in our own families. What foreigners are within the community of your family that you could befriend and welcome? 

Here is a video to help you understand the narratives of real immigrants:

• What’s missing from the American immigrant narrative