Go, Call, Come

The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw." He said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here." (John 4:15-16)

Jesus offered her living water. Even though she did not fully appreciate or comprehend just what this new kind of water was all about, she was interested enough to go ahead and ask for it. It sounded good. She could not see any negatives about it but only positives. If it had to do with physical thirst she could certainly see great advantages for her life to take Him up on His offer. If it had to do with something much more as she was beginning to suspect, it still sounded like an offer too good to pass up. Either way she was aware that she was thirsty. Even if this guy didn't know all the details of her life – which up to that point she felt safe enough in believing – she certainly felt a deep emotional emptiness similar to the intense thirst that a person felt after being out in the hot sun on a dry day without any water for some time.

So she framed her answer to make the most sense logically. Since she was not ready in the least to divulge to a total stranger the morbid details of her messed up life causing her emotional thirst, she decided to simply talk about the obvious physical advantages that some new kind of water might do for her and hope that the emotional benefits would be included without having to face her inward pain. So the two things that she listed as advantages as far as she could see immediately were not having to feel thirsty anymore while still staying hydrated and not having to expend all her energy repeatedly on an exhausting trip far out to this well at a most inconvenient time of the day.

Now here is where I find yet another curious turn in the way Jesus relates to her (and equally important to us) in His response. He again does not seem to address her words directly but takes yet another seeming detour causing yet more intensity in her thinking. He could have simply taken the straight-forward approach of explaining to her what this living water really was and how He was going to impart it to her, whatever that might have looked like. But instead He brings up the subject of a spouse and insists that she first go back home and invite her husband to get involved and then bring him all the way back out here to continue the discussion with Jesus while He waits for her out at the well.

Right here I want to take a little different tack from that which most teachers usually take when unpacking this story. I am fully aware that Jesus was using this as a means of opening her up to the very center of the deepest pain inside of her heart, the focal point that would highlight the reality of her much greater thirst. I am not trying to take away from the significance of the typical lessons associated with that line of thinking. But I also believe that much might be gained from considering that Jesus might have said something very similar to this if she actually had been married to the guy she was living with.

First of all I notice three distinct actions that Jesus required of her before He was ready to open up the spigot to give her a drink of this living water in full measure. He said to go, then to call and finally to come back to Him.

Secondly, I notice that He did not instruct her to go and call just anyone to come back with her. Jesus told her specifically to go to her own home (implied) and call her own husband before returning to receive this wonderful gift of living water from God.

Jesus is here laying out some very important principles that cannot be ignored by us today. It is not enough to just respond affirmatively to the offer of grace and forgiveness by God in order to live the abundant life that is called eternal life. Jesus is explaining some prerequisites that need to be complied with if we are really serious about being satisfied and filled with this new kind of living, joy-producing water of life. He seems to be saying here rather strongly that we cannot engage in enjoying this kind of water to satisfy our soul thirst alone. And even beyond that, the people that we need to get involved in participating with us, or at least that need to receive our genuine and honest invitation to do so, need to be the ones who are the closest to us, our spouses, our family and often those who may be the very ones who are the biggest source of emotional pain in our lives.

In this case, the woman immediately advises Jesus somewhat evasively that she does not have a husband – which was technically correct. I can really relate to this woman in this respect. I grew up cultivating great skill in giving technically correct answers to people for questions that I really didn't want to reveal the full truth about. At the same time my conscience would mercilessly torture me if I told an outright lie so I learned to become very adept at saying things in such a way that would satisfy people's probing questions while in fact misleading them to assume something different than what was actually the facts. In that way I could feel that it was not my fault what they concluded because it was their assumptions and their own failure to find out all the facts, while at the same time I felt justified that I had not told an outright lie. Such is the amazing dexterity of legalism in the human heart.

But again, that is farther on in this story, though not much. I still want to more carefully consider this important aspect of Jesus requiring her to go get somebody else involved before He was willing to reveal to her what this living water was all about.

This really resonates with many things that God has been teaching me over the past few years. There seems to be a lot of importance and emphasis on community that God places within the gospel and in His Word. While we certainly need a lot of healing and reconciliation for our individual relationships with God, He never allows us to remain in isolated intimacy with Him for very long before He requires us to get someone else involved. And most often that someone else is going to be the very ones who are the source of some of our deepest hurts.

This is the point where we instantly and reactively begin to feel a great deal of resistance. This woman could very easily at this point have ended the discussion with Jesus, considering Him to be out of place in His probing questions into her personal affairs. She very easily could have told Him to mind His own business at this point, filled up her water containers and gone back home. Many people would have done that very thing and many of us in essence do that to God quite often. We tend to view God's requirement to get someone else involved in our healing process who has hurt us deeply, as too offensive for us to obey His voice implicitly. But if we resist too long, we open ourselves up to the deceptive power of the enemy and we will become blinded once again to the true nature of the Man who is offering us freedom, hope and water that will really satisfy our hearts.

How often we take the easy route when this most painful issue is raised in our own lives. We begin to reason that we know better than God, that He doesn't really understand the depth of our pain or the impossibility of that other person ever changing. We begin to rationalize and come up with alternatives that sound much less threatening to us and Satan is eagerly supplying our minds with all sorts of plausible ways that might would work much better than the straight road Jesus is pointing out.

At this point I have to ask myself these questions:

Am I willing to accept the painful truth that if I want freedom from the painful thirst that racks my soul that I am going to have to face those who have hurt me the most?

Am I willing to trust the heart of this Stranger enough to believe that His approach to experiencing the satisfaction of living water springing up to eternal life will work, even though it requires me to get my spouse involved when that spouse may not even be interested in my getting healed?

Maybe God is asking me to go and call an abusive father before I come back to Jesus to continue this process.

Maybe He is asking me to call some other person who has wounded me deeply – it matters not how impossible it may seem to us.

The real question here is not whether I can figure out if His plan is realistic or not, the real issue is whether I am ready to trust His methods and words to me even though they sound intimidating or even impossible. Am I willing to really trust His heart when the fear of reliving some pain suddenly threatens me.

What if the person God is asking me to face is already dead? At first that might sound less threatening until you realize that many people feel very trapped after an abusive parent has died without their finding resolution to that enormous tension in their heart. I know of people who are very tempted to feel despair and hopelessness when the idea of emotional healing comes up in relation to a deceased abuser. But God is not stymied by the obstacle of even death. He simply says to us – go, call and come back to Me. He can handle it if we are willing to let Him.

If I am willing to trust His heart more than my own rationalizations, then I will begin to see a small path open up before me just enough to know what step to take next. I seldom if ever, will be able to see how it is all going to work out in the end – but that is never our responsibility. Ours is to trust and obey and that is not very popular in religion today. We want to experience healing but we want to do it alone without the messiness of getting other offensive people involved. We want to have an exciting love affair with Jesus and feel good feelings during worship services, but we pull back in protest when God asks us to go invite our abusers to come out into the light and participate in receiving healing with us.

Yes, many of us would like for our abusers or those who have hurt us deeply to be exposed in the light. But from what motive? We think they should experience the pain and shame that we have endured for so long. But that is not what God is asking of us here. He simply says to go and invite them and leave the rest up to Him.

Jesus did not say that she could not come back if her husband refused to come with her. But He did imply that if she was serious about getting this living water that could give her everything she longed for in life that she first needed to face the man (or men) who likely may have caused her the most pain. If she was willing to travel that path then Jesus could be trusted to keep His word and deliver on His promises.

Did she take Jesus seriously and do what He asked of her? Obviously not instantly. She became very nervous when Jesus brought up her personal situation and tried to change the subject. But when she finally came to believe in Him and chose to trust His heart, the Word says that she went back home so enthusiastically that she ended up telling all the men of the town about this living water project, not just the guy she was shacked up with. Jesus' words were not wasted with her. Even though she had to have some more discussion before she was ready to respond to His request, she did end up doing what He asked of her after all.

Who in my life is Jesus asking me to invite to be involved as part of my own healing? I realize that community in God's eyes is essential for growth, maturing and transformation as well as healing. This is becoming more and more clear to those who are studying God's ways and His Word. I know that I need much more genuine community interaction in my own life so that I can grow more effectively and heal more deeply. It can be frightening at first to realize that many who end up in the family of God were once abusers and wicked people themselves. But God brought healing to them just as He does for the victims of their abuse. I pray for willingness to obey when Jesus asks me to face those who have hurt me most deeply and see them through the eyes of Jesus instead of the eyes of fear. And I want to quite resisting trusting His heart and instead rest in the reality that He really does care about me.