Appealing to Authority

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 wonder why this woman suddenly made this statement at this point in the conversation. Jesus was sharing with her heart and mind some of the most profound truths and insights ever given to humanity and she was feeling the impact of these deep in her soul as He was speaking. Yet it did not seem to be enough that the things He was sharing with her had the clarion ring of truth and that His presence clearly exuded the love and healing that her heart craved and was already beginning to experience.

For some reason she felt compelled to almost discount what He was saying to her on the basis of a lack of proper title or authority. It was almost as if she were saying that until the right One came who would be duly authorized to speak on God's behalf, until it was clear that the one declaring new truths was clearly the Messiah promised in the Scriptures, that no matter how profound someone's teachings might be they simply could not be trusted completely. Only the recognized, authorized Messiah would have the credibility to teach new truths, to speak on behalf of God, to make such radical claims that would challenge the status quo before people could feel safe to believe Him.

In a way it almost seems like an excuse for unbelief in some respects. I am not trying to imply that she was mired in unbelief like nearly everyone else that Jesus dealt with, but there does seem to be some indications that she was struggling with the tension between hope and fear, between trust and unbelief. Clearly all throughout this conversation she tended to jump off the line of thought as soon as it became too uncomfortable. At times she would engage and take some bait offered to her by Jesus but then when it started to become obvious that there might be accountability involved she would change direction.

Yet through all of this Jesus did not chide her or fault her for her discomfort with what He was revealing to her. Though He made it clear that He knew much more about what was inside of her than she wanted Him to know, He did not force her to face her fears or expose her; He simply moved with the changes of direction and kept offering her more. Jesus was focused on revealing the goodness of God rather than on getting people to get their act together first as we tend to do. And though she, like so many others, tended to feel resistant and cautious about believing such wonderful things that sounded too good to be true, Jesus knew that deep in her heart was a longing for God that would supersede all her fears and would respond to love when she encountered the real thing.

But I still find it helpful to flush out some of the fears and hesitations that she had in order to better identify with her in my own experience and in understanding other people better. Jesus' way of dealing with this woman is a very important example for me to study to understand how Jesus through me can reach similar people who are hurting, full of fear and making excuse after excuse for not moving forward. Jesus dealt so tactfully with each resistant step this woman needed to take to discover the joy of the gospel. I too find many places of resistance inside of myself and I see similar symptoms of resistance in others I talk to. I want to better understand how God relates to our resistance and the best ways to move past them so we can enjoy the wonder and joy of experiencing the real gospel in our own lives.

First this woman started out with the assumptions of prejudice between men and women and also between Samaritans and Jews. Jesus brushed right past that one by simply demonstrating with His demeanor and kindness that He had no part in such silly, futile thinking. She seemed to accept His unspoken answer on that issue and immediately became fascinated with His offer of living water.

Jesus also seemed to engage this woman with enough interesting details to keep her guessing so that He could continue to hold her in conversation long enough to begin forming a useful bond with her. He did not jump right to the profound but only shared small details or requests to get her feedback and interaction. I could certainly learn a great deal from just that one thing in this story. Jesus kept saying things, throwing things out that were very tantalizing, that aroused intense curiosity, that invited questions, that made the woman begin to think for herself and would then prod her to think much deeper than she might typically do.

Very quickly He tapped into the issue of identity. He did not start out by making claims of who He really was and why He was here in this world. He carefully followed a path of thought that allowed this woman to decide how far she would be willing to go to discover His real identity. She might have become too uncomfortable at any point and turned away from finishing the conversation. In fact, at the end she sort of did that very thing in her possible discomfort at the approach of the disciples. But also by that time she was experiencing so much excitement that she couldn't take much more until she unloaded some of it on others.

But as I look at it I see that this whole conversation really revolved around the issue of identity in two parallel ways. Jesus was slowly giving this woman compelling clues about who He might be and at the same time she was being challenged from the very start to reevaluate her own identity and abilities and her own relationship to her community. Previous to this conversation I don't think she would have felt motivated at all to run around her town talking to all the men excitedly about the coming Messiah. Before this she had no compelling things to say about Messiah or anything else in religion more than what most other people already knew. Her current sense of identity had been largely shaped by what others had said about her, by the condemnation she felt from most of the people who knew her and her own feelings from her previous marriages.

Jesus was challenging her assumptions both about His identity and her evaluation of who she was at the same time. She was familiar with many of the ways in which we assume identities for ourselves and others and typical beliefs about the issue of who has the authority to make such determinations. Society on this earth has very powerful and oppressive ways of imposing false ideas about value and identity that are highly effective in perpetuating lies about both ourselves and about God. Jesus came to challenge this whole setup and to reveal that God is strikingly different than we usually think He is and that we are far more valuable than we ever thought possible.

In her mind the issue of authority was deeply ingrained as the dominant issue that had to faced before one could believe much of anything. No matter how compelling or exciting something might be, if that person was not a recognized authority in their field, then anything they might say would carry very little weight no matter how profound it might seem. She brought this issue up in her question about Jesus compared to her ancestor Jacob and the recognition of his authority in the minds of her religious leaders. But interestingly Jesus did not even offer an answer that question at all but simply kept bringing her more intriguing statements to keep her thinking and wondering and interacting with Him.

After Jesus' revealing comment about her marital situation she was ready to cede that He might possibly have the credibility of a prophet. She was beginning to acknowledge that He might be worthy of being recognized as possibly having that much authority based on His ability to perceive things not normally known by strangers. But as far as her own identity was concerned she was still not prepared to allow the conversation to get that uncomfortable so she pushed in a different direction to avoid dealing with her painful misconceptions about her own value based on her past.

This issue of value and identity in relation to her marital status was far more significant in her society than we can usually comprehend. Women were almost always viewed almost exclusively in relationship to the identity of the men they were married to with very little regard for who they were themselves. Their worth was measured primarily on how well they kept their husband happy and satisfied and what he thought about them, not on their own value apart from him. All women were expected to find a husband and to serve him without question or resistance. Failure to do this was to bring on the woman enormous and life-long shame which would cause her to feel very worthless.

So when Jesus pointed out the fact that she had been married five times and was now living with a sixth man unmarried, He was touching the most sensitive area of her life directly connected to her sense of identity and value both in her own mind and in the culture of those around her. Everyone in any position of authority at all had likely already denounced her as a loose woman, a failure, a menace to society even and a person who had no hope of ever becoming a respected member of the community again. She was considered hopeless and dangerous and was marginalized by nearly everyone she knew. This was why she was drawing water at a most inconvenient time of the day in order to avoid the harsh treatment of other women who would come at more normal times to get water for their families.

But she was still wired to think along the same lines of religion as most others around her. She, like everyone else, was conditioned to accept the opinions of those in authority and to embrace their words as the truth. People not in authority were not supposed to try to figure things out for themselves, they were simply supposed to listen and go along with whatever those above them decided was truth. It was a very hierarchal society but not unlike what is still very much in place today in many respects. Only those with the proper training and credentials were considered to be capable of determining what was true and what was right or wrong. Their decisions and expostulations were considered to be more accurate than the thoughts of the common person or especially the ideas of someone at the bottom of society like this woman represented. If anyone had any authority at all this woman was the furtherest from having any.

Living in a strictly rigid society that put so much emphasis on authority, this woman was feeling a lot of discomfort listening to such amazing and compelling ideas from a complete stranger. She may have even felt guilty to some extent for allowing herself to get so involved in such a conversation that would have been soundly condemned by her religious leaders for many reasons. Yet something about this man was so magnetic, so affirming, so touching in the deepest places of her soul that no one had ever affected before that she couldn't pull herself away. But at this point in the conversation when she was beginning to realize that this person was taking her where no one had dared go before in areas of life and religion, she may have felt compelled by her cultural upbringing to raise the issue of only getting information from the right authority.

Since there was no history of what a Messiah would be like or what He would do in particular, there was no clear definition of how people should recognize Him when He should come. There was certainly a great deal speculation and grand expostulations about what the Messiah was presumed to be coming to do, but even in this there was not much agreement, especially between the Jews and the Samaritans. So to appeal to the authority of the Messiah was like a wild shot in the dark in a way. It might have been her way of going over the heads of everyone presently asserting authority in religious and even civil affairs and appealing to God Himself to sort out all the confusing issues that kept people from experiencing life harmoniously. Many people were putting their hopes in the authority of the coming Messiah for very many different reasons. This woman was one of those who was hoping that the Messiah might help bring healing where the real problems existed, both internally and also for cleaning up the mess that culture and generations of mistakes had created.

So, why did this woman appeal to the authority of the coming Messiah before she was willing to embrace the wonderful things Jesus was saying to her? All of the above reasons may have played into this choice. When something sounds too good to be true and yet it is so compelling that we just can't pull our minds and hearts away from it, the issue of proper authority and accountability is usually the issue that always comes up first. What do those with more experience have to say about this? What do our leaders, teachers, politicians, elders have to counsel us in this regard? We are supposed to submit to those in authority over us so we have to get their opinion before we can make any decision ourself.

Wow! That line of reasoning is scary even as I read it myself. How many times have we missed out on incredible things God is eager to share with us because we insist on giving more credence to the “experts” and those in authority than in listening to God Himself. I am not saying there is no place for authority, but I am saying that this issue is so abused and misunderstood that it sometimes becomes an excuse to avoid embracing truth as much as it is a check to keep us from becoming deluded. I believe that we need to have a much better understanding of how to properly relate to authority and still be ready to defer to the authority of the Messiah and obey God above the demands of all other earthly authorities. Of course the critical issue in this is when to know when the two are in conflict.

Fortunately this appeal to authority by this woman actually turned out to be beneficial to her by the direct revelation of Jesus that He was the very one that she was appealing to. To her shock and amazed joy she discovered that the very coming Messiah in whom she had placed all her hopes for many years when everyone else had failed her had come to meet with her personally. Of course it still remained an issue of faith whether she would believe His assertion that He was indeed the Messiah without any corroborating support from other religious authorities. But she accepted His claim, not based on credentials or endorsements from anyone else but by the reality and confirmation of what His presence and words were already doing deep in her heart and soul.

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.