The author Hans-Ruedi Weber relates a story which is often told in East Africa. A simple woman always walked around with her bulky Bible. She never was parted from it. So the villagers began to tease her: "Why always the Bible?" they asked. "There are so many other books you could read." Yet the woman kept on living with her Bible, neither disturbed nor angered by all the teasing. But finally one day, she knelt down in the midst of those who laughed at her. She held up the Bible, high above her head, and said with a great smile: "Yes, of course there are many books which I could read. Yet there is only one book which reads me."

I thought of this story as I read of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. How improbable a meeting it must have seemed to Jesus' disciples. Jews were contemptuous of Samaritans. Rabbis avoided speaking to women in public. But with his customary disdain for the national and sexual chauvinism of his day, Jesus spoke to this woman, and he graced her.