331 Carrall Street, Samaria

A group from my home church, Westpointe Christian Centre, just returned from a missions trip to Costa Rica, and amid the testimonies of people accepting Jesus as their personal Saviour, a great "AHA!" came through for the Downtown East Side.

The one Latina the group, Amada, said that the shantytown called El Carpio (pop. 45,000) was like Samaria, and referred to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well.

Samaria was, for a time, the capital of Israel -- back when Israel and Judea were separate countries. But over a relatively short historical period, it was besieged, conquered, sacked and eventually populated with a macedoine of nationalities: a sort of ethnic dumping ground. A lot of religions were practiced there, and the Bible tells us of plagues that befell the people, which were reversed when they got right with God again. Even though Samaritans claimed to be descendants of Abraham, recalled the captivity in Egypt and recognized Moses as the mediator of the commandments from God, Jews rejected them because of the intermarriage and their differences on whether to worship on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem.

Samaritans were outcasts.

In John 6, we read that Jesus had to go back to Galilee, and to get there, He had to go via Samaria. And not only did He travel through Samaria, He stopped to rest there -- at a spot where He'd be most likely to meet a Samaritan. When one showed up, He engaged her in conversation, "read her mail" -- as we say about prophets -- and revealed Himself to her.

In Vancouver, you'll find Samaria on Hastings Street between Cambie and Gore.

If someone from outside the area has to drive through, they usually do so with the windows up, doors locked, avoiding eye contact and praying for green lights all the way. The idea of actually sitting down to rest, say, in Pigeon Park, would be out of the question.

Like the Samaritans, the people on the DTES are outcasts, dumped by society in the neighbourhood because they're not wanted anywhere else. Witness the Heart As Big As All Outdoors interviewed a month ago on CBC's morning show, who lives in the Dunbar area and is alarmed that binners -- whom she reviled as "those people" -- are now coming into her neighbourhood. The interview was a wonderful study in bigotry. Indeed, over the weekend we heard about people who actually live in condos on the DTES, who are up in arms over the prospect that United We Can might re-locate close to their complex. Come ON, gang! This is like moving next door to an airport and complaining about the aircraft noise.

But I digress ... Among the many aspects of the DTES -- along with drug addiction, homelessness and mental illness -- is the fact that they come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and are influenced by a variety of social forces that tend to come between them and God.

The DTES is our "Samaria" for another reason. Jacob's Well is/was the lasting connection to the very beginning of Jewish history. The DTES is the historic epicentre of Vancouver: it's within the original boundaries of Granville -- later Vancouver; it's where the first Chinese immigrants settled; it's also the site of native settlement.

If being a Christian truly means to emulate the life of Jesus, isn't it our duty to wade into Samaria and sit down for a while? Instead of water -- and living water -- drugs can be the conversation-starter. A couple of weeks ago, John Sharp and I arrived early at The Lord's Rain, and before we opened up, we went for a walk, praying, watching and listening. Barely had we reached the first street corner, than a guy came up and asked if we were looking for some drugs. Had we been truly on the ball -- and emulating Jesus -- we would have come back with, "the kind of drugs we have are better than anything you've got".

Truly, DTES people want to know that they're still OK with God -- or that God's still OK with them. They are impressed when someone cares enough to bring them that message -- and back it up with something permanent like -- for example -- a facility where they can get a shower, a cup of coffee and some friendly faces and conversation to match.

The Word of God promises that this will bear fruit. Look at what happened after the Samaritan woman discoved Whom she was talking to. She dropped her water-pot, ran back into town and told everyone she could find that she had met the Messiah. They came to see what she was talking about; and they believed, not because of her witness, but because they'd seen Him for themselves.

It's during this incident, by the way, that Jesus notes that the fields are white for the harvest. So it is, too, in the DTES. Why do you think the enemy is trying to distract the people with drugs and paranoia about the Establishment?

Once again, our duty as Christians is to take the message of Christ to people who need to hear it, and also to bring people to a direct encounter of their own. That duty applies just as much to the outcasts in our own country as it does to the outcasts overseas -- moreso, in fact, because these Samaritans are in our own back yard.