John Chapter 4: This chapter has taken me a while to digest. I have read it before and heard sermons on the woman at the well. Those experiences left me with a sense that the topic felt both familiar and unfamiliar to me. Familiar in that the main focus of this chapter always seems to be on the woman, her five husbands, and the separation from her community that her lifestyle has created for her. Unfamiliar in that it seemed there was something bigger than her sin , and Jesus' acknowledgment of it, to focus on bubbling under the surface of the text. As I read and reread day after day, something was saying look deeper, see it with new eyes, see it from the heart, ask "why is this moment in Jesus' ministry important enough for John to write about?" I read, I thought, and I have sat on it for well over a month. I don't know if I will do my thoughts, feelings, and insights justice but I have to start somewhere.
Part one: To know
What jumps out to me is this idea of knowing and being known. Here we see Jesus at the well, resting from travel. A woman comes up to draw water from the well for her own water jug. Jesus says to her "Give me a drink." Immediately, she rebukes him for asking her, a Samaritan woman, for water when he is a Jew. She seems suspicious of his willingness to see and engage her. He responds to her by rebuking her, he says that if she had KNOWN who was asking her for water, she would be asking him for a drink. At the onset of the meeting,it is clear that this woman is well aware of her place. She is aware of what makes her undesirable, what flaws her in the eyes of others. Instead of accepting that Jesus sees her without judgement, she is up front immediately about what makes her less than. She is pushing him away before he can insult her, she has her guard up. She KNOWS who she is and how she is viewed and she wants him to KNOW the same. In response, Jesus wants her to KNOW him and to KNOW what it is that he offers.
Isn't this a perfect reflection of what we do when we meet Jesus? Whether it be the first time we meet him or after years of sitting in a church pew as a devoted follower, when he shows up to engage with us isn't her reaction exactly how we react? I know it's been mine. When Jesus shows up with his grace and love, my first reaction sometimes is a bit of a "talk to the hand" one. I try and shut him down. If he persists, I go into telling him exactly why he shouldn't love me. I explain why he needs to just move on to someone else better. I tell him my long list of flaws and mistakes, all the things I think he should KNOW about me that make me unworthy of what he is offering. I am completely honest with him, fully expecting him to agree with me about how bad I am, judge me, and then reject me. But just as he did not reject this Samaritan woman, he does not reject me.
Part two: To be known
Jesus tells the woman to go and get her husband. She replies that she has no husband. He looks right at her and says "You are right in saying 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband." Can you imagine that moment? Can you see the two of them, together at the well, she just having tried her best to slight herself in his eyes and then he straight forward looks right at her and tells her the truth about herself. I imagine that he held her gaze with loving intensity. I imagine that she saw in those eyes all that she had ever wanted to see in the eyes of each of her five husbands but probably never did. I imagine that she held her breath from the shock of the pureness of being truly known. You see I think Jesus revealing and John writing about her five husbands was not to shame the woman. I believe it was to show the rest that comes from the realization that in Jesus we are truly known. Going through five husbands had surely taken its toll on the woman. For whatever reasons that those marriages had failed, the very fact that this woman kept marrying shows that she desperately wanted to be known and loved by someone, anyone, maybe even the wrong one. She needed someone to see her, live with her, walk along side her to give her life validation, meaning and purpose. Five husbands and currently living with a man tells me this woman was desperate for another person to look into her eyes and SEE her. For someone to look into that place inside her where all of who she is bundles together and actually KNOW her and value her. That day, she looked into the eyes of Jesus and there it was, the truth and rest of being deeply known and on top of that being accepted as valuable, as worthy.
She replies that she perceives he is a prophet. She is making an admission that he is someone more than just a man. As the conversation continues, she tells him that she knows that the Messiah will come and tell all things. Jesus replies to her knowledge "I who speak to you am he." Now imagine with me the joy she must have felt in that bundled up place inside of her. This man whose gaze and words were holding her heart, making her feel like something bigger was happening, just revealed who he was. He made himself KNOWN to her. Her response?.... she left her water jug. She was at the well for water but the truth of being truly KNOWN left her so satisfied and excited that she left the very vessel that was supposed to hold the thing she had come for. She had been filled instead with a spiritual water that was seeping into the driest and deepest parts of her, in fact seeping in so deep and quick that it felt like it was overflowing and she just had to let others know. She went into town to tell others of Jesus and how he KNEW all that she had ever done. Because of what she said, what they say on her face, and heard in her voice others came to see Jesus for themselves. They asked him to stay just based on what the woman had said. I imagine it was because they too deeply wanted to be seen, known, and valued. Jesus stayed with them two days and at the end of his time with them the people said they no longer just believed based on the what the woman at the well said but because they had heard themselves and now believed that this was indeed the Savior of the world. They had become KNOWN by Jesus and his identity and truth had become KNOWN to them. What absolute joy!
Jesus wants to be KNOWN to us in the deepest part of ourselves. He wants to be known for being the Savior of the world, the creator of our hearts, the lover of who we are in the quiet parts of our soul. He wants to be KNOWN and accepted as the sacrifice for our sinful self and that when we look at him, we see that sacrifice as a worthy one. He wants us to follow him and develop relationship with him from this knowledge. Of course he KNOWS the list of things that make us unacceptable but when we look into his eyes I believe we will find ourselves KNOWN for not just the unacceptable but all the things that are lovely and acceptable. We will be KNOWN for our whole selves and loved for all the parts of it. There is a rest in that.
This chapter made me think that perhaps I still reside most often in the place where I am pushing him away rather than letting the truth of his love seep in. It revealed my need to live more in the realization that I am fully KNOWN and accepted in his presence. When I can learn to live more often in that space, it is there that Jesus becomes fully KNOWN to me. Then that bundled up place where the threads of who I am were knit together become flooded with the spiritual waters and I feel free satiated and free, just like the woman at the well.
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