Spiritual Autopsy Series finale: A tall drink of water
Before we begin, or as your read, click on the following link, and get a sense of the story you are about to read, brought into our contemporary times. Perhaps, listen now, then read, and then listen and view it again. God bless you and speak to you, and transform you as you dive in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q49BbfgJbto&feature=related
John 4
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])
10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”
13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
25The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ[b]?” 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans Believe
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers.
42They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
I took the time to give you the entire passage because it is rich and much more powerful than my own verbose insufficiency; that goes without saying. So, why did I say that? I don’t know. We move on.
This series has been about death, spiritual death. More, it has been about the passages in life which we take and that lead us headlong to a death of the soul. We have looked in many a place as we have traveled this broken road together, and we have found ourselves, myself included, all too often, stranded there on the roadside, battered, beaten, and bruised. Here in this final installment we see the culmination of our journey and we find the source of our healing. Our journey, leaving us weary, thirsty, and parched of soul, has us searching for a drink. Lost in the desert, all the mirages have proved insufficient, and we need a tall drink of water or we will die.
For all who have attempted to find life in relationships, sex, pleasure, success, money, notoriety, vengeance, self-help, self-denial, and anything else, and have, yet, found themselves utterly dry and weary, empty and calloused, Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well stands as the beacon upon a hillside, the lighthouse upon the shoreline. For those lost in a dry and weary land of the soul, Jesus is that tall glass of water you desperately need.
Note first that Jesus places Himself within the scene of this woman’s life. The scene does not unfold in some air-conditioned, comfortable, and otherwise “safe” tabernacle. He meets her on the road of real life. He is there in our lives today, wherever we may be. He is not scared to venture into the darkest of places we may find ourselves in. He is looking, and calling us out, and He longs to sit down and chat with us amidst the fray.
Also, note that He meets her at her point of need. She has need of water, she is working her butt off to provide for daily life, and it is clear she has deep relational, emotional, and spiritual needs. Jesus uses the tangible need for water, for provision, to address the deeper needs in her life. Previously, it is clear, she has only paid attention to urgent felt needs and desires. Jesus is heaven bent on waking her up to more. He is dead set, life set, on removing the scales from her eyes.
We cannot help but notice, third, that this woman is not one a Jew would typically address or interact with in public. Jews did not associate with Samaritans, let alone men with women. But even as Jesus was breaking custom, which would have offended many, those closest to Him realized ( and remained silent as they watched ) that something significant was taking place here. They realized God was working in this exchange. This was holy ground. It was not longer about food, drink, daily life. A holy intervention was underway.
Notice also the critical nature of Jesus’ profound interaction with this worldly woman. Jesus, who represents in Himself, complete and utter goodness, has thrown Himself into the life of a woman who lived with little regard for goodness and purity. He does not beat around the bush, and He goes straight to her heart, her emotional, relational, and spiritual heart. A broken and misguided heart to say the least.
First off, He gets her to realize that standing before her is one who loved her like no one ever had. She had not taken time to notice this apparently. It seems as though her typical lenses were still on and she was probably wondering where this interaction was going. “Here’s another jerk.” “I wonder if he’s single?” …or something like that was probably underway in her mind. It could not have been any more different. He was noticing her for sure. But this time, someone, some One was really seeing her.
Second, He calls her to realize that He sees and knows her in the most intimate of ways, spiritually. He knows her more intimately than all the men she had given herself to, and more than the one she was presently living with. And despite knowing her, and her rejection of His ways, He loved her. He loved her purely. Though she had given herself away to be ravished by many, Jesus was intent on ravishing her soul and bringing her life and healing. This used up and given out gal, undetected by her, was about to be made new! This guy only had one agenda! A perfect agenda.
What must this woman have seen to have awoken her so unexpectedly and marvelously to the reality of truth? My guess is the heart of Christ came through in the eyes, words, and touch of the living God, right there, sitting next to the well. Unlike any man she had ever encountered, this man was different. He was discerning, loving, leading, and calling her to a much bigger way of life. He was really engaging her. He was loving her. She was being truly loved for the first time. And this love captured her. She wanted more. She was captivated and longing to give her heart away, in all the right ways, for the first time in her life. I cannot help but think how different her life must have looked in the days, weeks, months, years following this interaction.
Lastly, we must notice that this woman, who no doubt hid her life from most people in the past, even her “closest friends”, went away from the well telling all who would listen that this Man told her everything about herself, and in doing so, loved and healed her at the same time. In the past I am sure, the truth about her caused shame, produced anger, hindered her from relational and spiritual vitality, and forced her into a kind of living slavery, soul death. But now, the truth telling of God about who she was, enabled her to see it clearly, name it, tell it, own it, and yet, run headlong toward goodness for the very first time. Now, all the waters she had drunk before, the stolen and filthy waters of the world, were seen for what they were, and she longed for a true, living, life-giving, tall glass of water, the healing waters of a living God which spring up into eternal life and healing.
As the account unfolds, we see a woman, clearly known by the community for her past, calling others to taste and see that the Lord is good. This has to be so, for the account tells us that in seeing, literally seeing it in her countenance and life, it registered with onlookers, and they went in pursuit of the One who could bring about such a transformation. Immediately upon knowing Christ, apparently, this woman’s entire presence and way of interacting was transformed. She was living the reality of scripture which reads, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds”. The Man at the well, the One who offers living water, is the only One who can accomplish that kind of transformation.
If we are to escape soul death, we must long for that tall glass of water offered us even today. Drink it in. Ask God to dunk you in that pool of life. Ask Him to raise you up into newness of life. Allow Him to speak the truth about yourself to you, and drink in His love which heals and restores your heart, mind, emotions, personality, and soul. The tangible reality of His love is powerful and real enough to literally change you, even the deepest and darkest and most broken parts of you. You must be willing to throw yourself into that well.
Bruce Smith
optimuslife.org
soulstormsite.com