The First Missionary

While the Apostles of Jesus were still in training, while their spiritual minds were still being developed beyond the inclusiveness of Judaism, Jesus selected a Samaritan woman with 5 husbands to be His first missionary.  The Light of the World entered her heart, and she could not contain it.  Despite her experience of rejection by 5 husbands and by the village itself ("Something must be wrong with her to have been rejected 5 times in marriage," I can just hear them saying), this woman left behind her water jar in her haste to reach the village with "the good news:"  I have met the Messiah, and He has told me everything I have ever done! 

The very "sins" that brought her shame now unfolded to others the mystery of God's forgiveness and of making all things new again.  The sinner is now a saint--she is the one chosen to announce the Messiah to her own people.  I can imagine the villagers gathered around her to hear how she met this Man, what He said to her, etc.  Because of her, they left the village and went out to meet Jesus for themselves.  And presumably, their hearts were also set on fire--Jesus told His disciples that the harvest was ready for gathering.  Imagine that:  while the religious leaders were still in Jerusalem's Temple praying for the arrival of the Messiah, the villagers in the hills of Samaria were actually experiencing the arrival of the kingdom of God on earth---and all because of an outcast woman whose hope for a "normal" life had long ago been buried in disappointment and sorrow. 

Isaiah's vision in Chapter 41 (v. 17) is so appropriate here:

The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain;

their tongues are parched with thirst.

I, the Lord, will answer them;

I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.

I will open up rivers on the bare heights,

and fountains in the broad valleys;

I will turn the desert into a marshland,

and the dry ground into springs of water.

I will plant in the desert the cedar,

acacia, myrtle, and olive;

I will set in the wasteland the cypress,

together with the plane tree and the pine,

That all may see and know,

observe and understand,

That the hand of the Lord has done this,

the Holy One of Israel has created it.

The Samaritan woman was thirsty for love, for acceptance, for inclusion.  Her thirst made her jump at Jesus' offer of a spring of water leaping up to eternal life.  The minute she heard it, she knew that's what she had been thirsting for all her life---and the fountain He placed in her flowed out to all in the village.

As "missionaries," maybe we all need to be searching for those who are thirsty.