Pride and Prejudice 2

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?" (John 4:27)

Marveled, astonished, surprised – these are other descriptions used by various versions of the Bible to describe the reaction of the disciples. But what underlies this amazement, this astonishment?

It seems to me that nearly everyone in this story is by this time in a state of amazement except possibly Jesus. But I don't think Jesus was devoid of intense emotion Himself either. I suspect that His emotions at this point were at a very elevated state of joy as revealed by His response to the disciple's words inviting Him to eat. He was by this time so overwhelmed with God's passion, the feelings that one experiences each time a sinner responds to the transforming grace of heaven, that His need for food and water were pretty much totally eclipsed.

By this time the woman He was speaking with was also in a very excited state of amazement of her own. She had just had one of the most life-changing rendezvous a person can ever have with God Himself in the person of Jesus and was so overcome with emotion that she absolutely had to drop everything quite literally and race away to share the incredibly good news with everyone she knew.

But the astonishment being felt by the disciples was unfortunately not based on an encounter with the presence of God or a reaction to seeing His character more fully but was almost totally rooted in the violations of their ethnic and gender prejudices that still controlled much of their thinking and perceptions about what was important in life. This kind of surprise was not reflective of what God was doing in a woman's life to save her but was rooted in ethnic prejudice and just plain male chauvinism. This mindset was so deeply entrenched into the culture they had grown up in that anything like what Jesus was doing that violated these norms was a source of great suspicion and surprise.

What arouses my curiosity as I look at these verses is why the writer notes that they did not ask the listed “why” questions. He takes pains to point out the fact that no one asked either Jesus or the woman about why they were having such an inappropriate conversation alone with each other. About the only main reason that comes to my mind right away is because of their respect for Jesus as a person with more authority or social status than themselves. They may have been afraid to question His motives for fear of insulting Him or disgracing Him publicly. But at the same time the very fact that John wrote this sentiments down indicates clearly that they were certainly thinking these questions.

Which then leads to the next point of interest. Maybe John wrote this down as a record of the regret that the disciples later felt for not asking those questions. Maybe if they had been bold enough to ask Jesus to explain what was going on here their own prejudiced thinking could have been exposed and diminished much sooner than it was. Instead of allowing doubts and suspicions about Jesus to go unaddressed in their own hearts they could have glimpsed a much clearer picture of how God feels about all people and could have advanced far more quickly in their personal journey toward freedom from the darkness of pride and prejudice that so deeply enshrouded them.

But they missed their chance to see the real truth about God that was being demonstrated so plainly right in front of them and that this woman herself had just experienced and accepted. Because of their failure to take hold of these lessons and appreciate them, they remained handicapped in their service much longer while this woman was immediately available to be used by God to bring light and truth and joy to a whole city full of people ripe for conversion.

This story if allowed to be seen in its true perspective should be a strong rebuke to many of us who assume that we know the truth about God better than most others around us. We assume that we are the ones that have most of “the truth” and believe that we are the chosen people of God to convey what we believe is God's messages to the world just as the Jews believed. But far too often we are blinded severely by deep prejudices that we cannot even discern ourselves which prevent us from even asking the tough questions of God that could unmask the fact that the biggest problems lie with our own condition instead of with Him.

Somehow deep in our thinking we tend to assume that we have to pray and work hard to try to get God to bless our plans for evangelism so that we can bring others into our chosen group and become pretty Christians much like us. We assume that this is what God expects us to do and when we see other people using methods or relating to people with too much familiarity that we look down on, we become very suspicious and begin to question their religious validity. We often talk about them behind their back, criticize their music, their worship style, their dress, their diet or any other number of things that don't fit what is comfortable in our circle of friends. But the one thing we often fail to do is to approach that person directly and try to find out what their real motives are without imposing the filter of our prejudices onto what we perceive they are doing.

I know that I am too often guilty of doing this very thing. But I can also remember many times when I felt the Spirit of God convicting me to withhold my opinions and restrain my assumptions about others and allow time for them to reveal what is deeper in their heart as they do things that seem at first to be violations of social norms while they attempt to reach out to others for God. And many times I have discovered that often their spirit is more in harmony with the true spirit of Jesus and how He related to people on a personal level than my own spirit has been. I am then exposed as the one who has the greater problem and the one who is in greater need of repentance.

If only they had asked... I would love to know what Jesus might have said to them.

Declare All Things

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.) (John 4:9)

"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?" (v. 12)

The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. (v. 19)

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." (v. 25-26)

As I put these verses together it becomes very obvious the quick progression of awareness this woman has of the true identity of the person she is talking to. First she sees him only as a man and a Jew who is acting quite out of character for a Jew or a man in their culture. Then almost immediately she begins to suspect that this man might be greater and more important that she first thought. Next she declares that she believes that He is a prophet which is quite a bold statement for someone to make. But to her astonishment she is not left to stop there even with that wild of a guess. She is challenged to go yet another step and be confronted with the most ultimate claim a person could ever believe – that this man before her is nothing less that the great God of the universe Himself, the Messiah sent to earth to save people from sin and evil and destruction.

I wonder what she might have said if the disciples had not shown up just at that moment. It seems rather clear to me that she immediately felt rather intimidated again once these men of seemingly dull understanding and still bearing an obvious amount of prejudice suddenly intruded on their intimate conversation. She no longer felt free to continue her compelling dialogue with Jesus, but by that time she had enough information and inspiration to send her racing back to her own town to unleash a surprise attack of compelling news that she felt sure would induce others to want to meet this man for themselves.

But if she had just had a little more time alone with Jesus I still wonder what she might have expressed. Maybe she would have repeated her previous statement with more revision. “I perceive now that you are indeed more than a prophet – you are the Messiah that we have been waiting for for so long.” And what more she might have said could have been quite interesting if she had just been given the chance. But of course, that was not to be given the sudden shift in mood and atmosphere caused by the appearance of the other men who were clueless about what was going on.

But there is another interesting thing I notice here. When Jesus shared with her His awareness of her marital situation much to her astonishment and embarrassment, later on this very issue became the central theme of her own evangelistic effort back in town with those who knew her all too well. It had also been the turning point that caused her to advance her own perception of Jesus' identity from just a prejudiced male Jew to that of a prophet.

But Jesus wanted to take her much further. He had offered her living water and she was already beginning to drink of it. Then as she responded positively in that experience she was thrilled to hear His amazing words about real religion, how God was not prejudiced like all the religious people she knew and that God might actually care about her just as passionately as He cared about anyone else on earth. This was indeed very thrilling to her soul and she was already beginning to feel the healing and life and refreshment as she absorbed more living water from this amazing man.

But Jesus still wants to take her to the ultimate destination in her faith. He sees that she is possibly the most open-minded and receptive person He has ever met yet up to this point which allows Him to share with her things that He cannot yet share with anyone else because of their unbelief and narrow-mindedness. He is permitted to introduce Himself to her as the very Messiah that she has just described to Him in her own words and from her own perception.

I find it interesting that she describes the Messiah as a person whom she expects to declare all things to people when He shows up. What did she mean by this statement? What does it mean to declare all things? And what was it about Jesus that suddenly struck her as fitting that description exactly much to her overwhelmed amazement and excitement?

Evidently the words of Jesus that showed that He knew her background and her life had not only caught her off guard at first but also served to confirm for her the truth of His identity at the end of this conversation. It suddenly struck her that her own predictions about what the Messiah would do had just happened to her personally and she had overlooked it up to this point. What had initially been her cause of fear, shame and embarrassment was transformed to become the very evidence that could confirm in her own heart the truth about the claim of this man sitting before her. She had just said that the Messiah would declare all things when He came and she suddenly realized with a jolt that Jesus had done just that already. It was her moment of truth, her epiphany that transformed her life from a marginalized woman afraid to be around other people in her community to a compelling evangelist that couldn't keep quiet if she tried.

This story has far more truth and insights into the nature of God and His relationships with us than is seen on the surface description. So much more was going on in this conversation than just the words being spoken. Hearts were communicating with each other, spirits were being informed and were interacting and changing, thoughts and emotions were racing in a whirl and everything from this woman's whole life experience suddenly coalesced together to make perfect sense and bring her intense joy. The immediate reaction of this woman and the subsequent effects of her testimony is not seen very often and is evidence of a far deeper encounter with God than the simple words recorded here in Scripture might convey.

As I sat down here this morning to meet with God again I told Him that I want much more than to just learn fascinating information about this story. I am hungry to experience myself what this woman experienced; I want to have my own dramatic conversion encounter with a personal Messiah; I want to have my own heart supercharged with an infusion of the very passion of the God who loves me and gave His life for me to love Him in return. I want much, much more than a correct intellectual understanding of the Bible as important as that is; I want the healing and transformation that will take over my whole life and turn me into what others might view as a raving fanatic sharing the kind of love that makes little to no sense to those who have never tasted it. I want to become drunk with this living water and the wine of the Holy Ghost. God, hear my heart's desire and come to meet me where I am just as You found this woman where she was.

I Am He

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." (John 4:25-26)

Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." (John 4:26 NRSV)

There is something in here that can be easy to miss but that is profoundly important. The whole conversation at this point is coming to a climax, to the focal point of the very reason that Jesus began talking with this woman to start with. Jesus loved this woman and had been led into this very circumstance by the Holy Spirit so that she could personally encounter the very Messiah that she had put her hopes in for so long.

I find it rather fascinating that this Samaritan woman expressed such faith in the coming Messiah that usually is thought of as primarily a hope of the Jewish people. But even though her ethnic background was scorned by nearly every Jew she may have come in contact with, she still had chosen to cherish a personal hope that the Messiah would come to benefit her irregardless of her heritage, background or condition. And because of this faith deep inside her heart, God granted her the wonderful privilege of being able to have an intimate conversation with the Son of God alone. That is simply astounding in my mind.

The part that is easy to miss in this story is found in the two words, I am. Of course it does not come out quite so clearly in some English translations which is why I included an alternative reading above. But the statement that Jesus was making to this woman went far beyond a simple acknowledgement that He should be viewed as the person she was putting her life trust in. It was really making a powerful statement that could increase her appreciation of who the Messiah really was to a whole new level.

These words, I AM, were originated as the highest declaration of the power and identity of the Almighty God to Moses. God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" (Exodus 3:14) Through all succeeding generations the Jewish people viewed this statement as one of the most sacred things ever spoken, one of the purest forms of identity when it came to defining who was the true God as opposed to all other claims.

So when Jesus was speaking with the Jewish leaders and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." (John 8:58 NKJV), it is no surprise that the Jews immediately took up stones to kill Him. In their minds darkened with unbelief, for Jesus to claim that He was truly God Himself was the ultimate blasphemy. It shocked them beyond all comprehension to think that a mere man would apply to himself the title of the great YAHWEH of heaven. Jesus' life was so out of harmony with their picture of what God was like that many of them never were able to enter into belief. The God they wanted to believe in was far more forceful, not nearly so humble and certainly would not demean Himself to live the kind of life and hang around with the kind of people that Jesus did.

And yet Jesus never changed His life in the slightest to accommodate the mistaken notions about God that humanity believed. He came to reveal the heart of the Father and He did that faithfully all the way to the end. But on rare occasions like this one with the woman at the well, Jesus was able to share His true identity with a far less hostile audience, and in this case the results were nothing less than thrilling.

This woman was already so compliant to following the promptings of the Spirit that she was actually much farther along in her faith journey than were any of the disciples that spent most of their time following Jesus. Imagine what could have happened and how different the gospels might have been written if even one disciple of Jesus had entered into the level of deep trust and belief in the divinity of Jesus to the extent that this woman did in such a short period of time. The effects of such belief would have been electrifying to say the least. This kind of belief is highly contagious and extremely effective in arousing similar faith within the hearts of others. If the disciples had been willing to believe in Jesus early on like this woman was willing to do, the truth about Him and His affect on the people would have been greatly multiplied from how the story now reads.

The very next verse highlights this contrast rather sadly. The priorities of the Jewish disciples seemed to be focused more on conforming to social expectations rather than on sharing the truth about Jesus and who He was to anyone who would listen. The differences between how the disciples viewed this situation and how this woman related to it are like night and day. The reasons for the disciple's amazement in the next verse was that Jesus was violating so many social restrictions in talking with a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that. But what becomes obvious in this story is that the woman herself is also filled with amazement – first that Jesus would speak with her at all given the many reasons why He should not, but then amazement from a heart that simply couldn't contain the excitement and joy of meeting the most important Man in the whole universe in person.

Unfortunately I presently fit too much into the class of the disciples rather than with this woman. My confused ideas about God prevent me from enjoying the kind of abandon and freedom to enter easily into a deeper level of belief and trust in a personal Messiah and Savior. I have so many religious barriers to deal with, so many questions that demand to be answered, so many fears to be delivered from before my heart feels safe to jump for joy and race into town to tell everyone about this most amazing Man.

I don't like my condition, but I have to be honest and confess my true condition at this point. I long for the day when my heart can teach me to dance, to sing for joy, to witness without any inhibition to the amazing power of love sent to earth to save me in the person of Jesus the Messiah. I crave to have the abandon of this woman to race back to all those who have despised and shamed me all of my life and invite them to join in a spirit of belief in the only One who can save any of us from our sins. I seek and I pray for God to give me a heart and mind similar to that demonstrated by this woman.

Confession of Faith

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." (John 4:25)

I just noticed this statement in a new light. This woman was actually confessing her faith in the coming of the Messiah just like we talk about belief in the coming of Jesus. We today often talk about looking forward to the coming of Jesus to this earth as our greatest hope. We view this belief as core to all our other beliefs, sometimes even to our own confusion. What I am now starting to see is that this woman also was clinging to a similar hope in the coming of Jesus as her way of helping her life have more sense. She was trusting that the coming Messiah might right many of the wrongs that tormented her life.

Yes, it is true that she didn't think of the Messiah using the name Jesus like we do. But the meaning is identical. In our case we don't often use the term Messiah because we have different notions about what that word means to us. But in the mind of people in that day, Messiah mostly meant a coming deliverer sent by God to fix all their problems and bring them hope and truth and life.

It is interesting to me that this hope was actually shared and embraced by a woman who wasn't even a Jew. We understand why Jews were looking forward to a Messiah even though their ideas about what that Messiah was supposed to do were very confused and self-centered. But to see a confession of faith in the coming Messiah by a Samaritan I believe is quite significant.