Sunday, August 23, 2009

John 4:1-30

I want to preface the following post with a little bit of context for me as the author - where I am, what I'm doing, how I feel.

I am sitting in an office, a call center if you will. I am the only one here because it's 6 am on a Sunday morning. I've been here since 5.

I hate it. I don't know another word that quite describes how I feel about the job I currently work. I could go into all the reasons why I hate it, but it doesn't much matter.

On the other hand, I am grateful to have a job that pays money and I prayed pretty hard for a job to get us through. I am waiting for a clear sign from God that I can quit.
Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), He left Judea and went away again into Galilee.

And He had to pass through Samaria. So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink." For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

I think it might be hard for many of us to understand why the woman reacts the way she does in the following passage. I don't really understand it, but I have been in situations where it would have been impolite or even rude to speak directly to a woman (in conservative Muslim-Kurdish homes), but never in a situation where the rules were based on race or ethnicity.

The woman is fairly brazen here, I think. She's not the one in the power position - she's Samaritan and a woman - yet, she doesn't simply do as she's asked. She calls Jesus on his people's ethnocentrism.

Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."

She said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?"

Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."

The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw."

The woman is interested in what Jesus is offering, but I'm not sure she's convinced that he can deliver what he's offering.

He said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here."

The woman answered and said, "I have no husband."

Jesus said to her, "You have correctly said, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly."

The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."

This is the second time that Jesus has spoken a simple truth that led to belief. The first was when he told Nathanael that he'd been sitting under a tree.

Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.

The promise of being accepted into God's Kingdom for all, not just the Jews, spoken to the woman becasue she was brave enough to ask the question "Why are you even talking to me?"

"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us."

Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am He."

At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, "What do You seek?" or, "Why do You speak with her?"

So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men,

"Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?"

They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.

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