08.02.14
John 4.17-18 17 “I
have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say
you have no husband. 18 The 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.”
NIV
It is important to know that Jesus – the Author and
Perfector of our faith – was just another Guy during His days on earth – with one marked and remarkable difference:
His association with, and submission to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit.
I know people can’t handle the God/man thing (I mean,
really, who can?) but it is important for us to know that Jesus – fully God and
fully man – had His God-ness held in escrow while He was walking along as you
and I are. The difference, as I said, was His association with and submission
to the Spirit (capital S).
When did Jesus ever
quit being God? Never. When did Jesus put His God-ness in a trust account?
During His 33 (or so) years upon Terra Firma, that’s when. He never ceased
being God – you can’t unbecome who you are. He did set His divine power and glory
aside for a while and let the Father, through His Spirit lead Him where He was
supposed to go and talk to whom He was supposed to talk: like a woman in
Samaria who’d had five husbands and the man she had presently (in the
narrative) was not her husband.
So let’s ask some questions, shall we? Why does she have
to be a woman of ill-repute? The
story doesn’t say that but I’ve been taught (all my life) that’s what she was. Why? Because she had five husbands? Hmmm. I
know people who’ve been married multiple times, and currently live with their ‘other’,
and though I might question their morals, beliefs, and their motives, I wouldn’t
necessarily call them folk of ill-repute.
(I think we’ve been sold a bill-of-goods about the woman…)
Now, let’s factor in the fact that Jesus knew about her
beyond what she thought He knew about her. (She was NOT a Jew.) She was a
cursed half-breed and not held to the standards of the Jewish orthodoxy. They
didn’t want nuthin’ to do with her. So why does this woman have to be held to
standards that weren’t her own? Why do we
do that to people: hold them to our
standards that are not theirs?
Why did Jesus tell this woman (of all women) about Himself and about His role as Messiah? And why do
we hang that sad stigma on her? I don’t think Jesus did, after all, she was the
one He used to share the gospel with the other accursed half-breeds (north of
the border, so to speak). And Jesus, true to His mission of listening to and
obeying in complete submission what the Spirit instructed Him to do, spoke to
her and shared with her – HER – the love of God and the truth about all things.
And then there’s us. We tell the story of ‘Jesus and this
pathetic piece of Palestinian trash’, and we try to get others to believe what
we’ve been told about her; we believe it and want them to, too! Why does she have to be Palestinian trash?
Why can’t she be just like the rest of us: broken and fallen and in desperate
need of salvation? Why does she have to be trash – does that make the story
more believable? Oh, please! Lord, have mercy we are so gullible!
What is more important: that she was a piece of trash or that she is the
one the Holy One said to go and talk to, so that she’ll go and talk to
others? Makes me wonder. Makes me wonder about the people I size up to be less
than my standards; and it makes me wonder about the cruelty of my insisting
(verbally or otherwise) that they live up to how I see things. I think I’m the
one who needs a Savior if I treat people like that!
I think we need to rethink about what we think about the
Samaritan woman. I think we need to think about what it would look like if
Jesus came into our lives today like He did to hers that day and He told us all
about living water, and Who it is who offers it, and messed up spirituality,
and, oh yes, our own personal little deeds of ill-repute that we don’t want
anyone else to see.
Friends, join with me in asking questions about our faith
– not that its real, but how we’ve allowed others to shade our thinking and
miss the point of our encounters with Jesus (Who, by the way, took back all of
His God-ness out of the trust fund with interest) and sits at the right hand of
Him who is enthroned above all.
Father, I pray: open the eyes of our hearts Lord, we want
to see You, hear You, and by all means, obey You, as we journey through
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to our own little uttermost parts of the globe.
In His name Who offers good water, amen!
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