What's in a name: Race Relations and the Samaritan Woman at the Well

What’s in a name? Attached to your name is your reputation, your character, your personality, your past, present, and future. Naming plays an important role throughout salvation history, especially, in the case of the patriarchs called to enter into a holy covenant with God. There is also the naming that happens at baptism, and the naming of an entire people like the Samaritans or other groups of people who are, in fact, all part of the one human race called to be one family in Christ, the God-Man. In Christ's Name an everlasting marriage covenant has been established and in this eternal covenant, all of us have become children, heirs, brothers and sisters of the same royal family. 

With racial discrimination and racial tensions breaking into occasions of violence, destruction, chaos, murder, and theft, it is high time that we all get together to start acting according to our dignity as members of a royal family in Christ Jesus. And that means everybody--black, white, rich or poor, bound or free. We are all called into the freedom of life regulated by the 10 Commandments, a life that is like a wellspring of hope springing up inside each one of us who prays.