Passion with Humility

"Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" (John 4:29)

I sense something important here in the way this woman chooses her words when excitedly sharing her wonder and awe at just meeting the Messiah of the world. I suppose that this impresses me because of the great tact that she displays in contrast with the lack of tact that I too often indulge in at times. Even though she is apparently completely convinced herself that the man she has just encountered is indeed the real Messiah, she does not allow her strong convictions to become a potential stumblingblock for others who have not yet had the same experience as she has had.

It is true also that this way of phrasing her thoughts seems to be something of a trait or even virtue in her, a pattern that already had a precedent for how she dealt with questions. When she previously was speaking with Jesus and wrestling with her growing perception that this man was maybe more important than she initially may have thought, she used the same sort of phrase when she asked Jesus if He was greater than her father Jacob. You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You?

Now she uses the same pattern of posing a question instead of making a strong assertion. This is not the Christ, is it? I find this way of communicating quite intriguing and given the way this story unfolds it also seems extremely compelling. It allows the recipients of the question the latitude and freedom to ponder something they had not thought about before without pressuring them or unduly inducing an argumentative reaction.

Having grown up in a culture that too often thrived on arguments and strong positions as a mark of being “in the truth”, I find this part of the story to be particularly instructive for me. Interestingly it seems that God wanted to reinforce this very point with me this morning for some reason because only minutes ago I just read a morning devotional that highlighted this very principle. It gave strong warnings against taking positions argumentatively against others within the body of Christ even if it is quite clear that my positions may be the right ones. Evidently the spirit gendered by this kind of confrontational way of relating to others is far more harmful and destructive to the work that God is doing in hearts than any good that I might suppose could come from proving that I am “right”.

But at the same time I also noticed that there was no suggestion that if I am secure or confident that what I have discovered is more accurate or in line with what is true than those who do not yet agree with me, that I am supposed to adopt their opinions or beliefs and discard my own just to achieve unity. That can at times appear to be the only two options when there are differences of opinions about what we might consider to be important points of doctrine or views on various topics. It often seems that either one side or the other has to concede that they are wrong and admit the other side is correct. But as I mature I realize that this simplistic, confrontational way of viewing truth is not God's desire for His people.

More and more it has been coming clear to me that God is much more concerned about the condition of my spirit and the effect my disposition has on the spirit of others around me than He is concerned that I always have the most accurate information. This sounds like heresy to many who are still entrenched in a confrontational mindset when it comes to religion, but it is the important truth about Jesus that God has been impressing me with more and more over time. As important as information and “truth” is to helping us come closer to knowing God rightly, if I allow my spirit to become infected with the spirit of the accuser then no matter how technically correct my information may be I am assisting and advancing the goals of the enemy instead of cooperating with God in the spread of His kingdom.

What I see in this story more clearly now is that this woman had a spirit that was more in line with what God has in relating to others than most religious people do, then or now. She not only had an open heart to take seriously new and challenging information that was very different than what she already believed, but she was also willing to not impose her new views on others in a spirit of superiority. She did not feel compelled to go to others who did not yet know Jesus and demand that they believe in Him without first checking Him out for themselves. She did not even express to them the full depth of her own beliefs like she might have done but left her new convictions hanging simply as a question to tantalize others to want to know more and seek out Jesus for themselves.

What a lesson for me personally! I see the amazing effectiveness of this way of relating to others as demonstrated in this story, but at the same time I realize that a lifetime of conditioning has not prepared me to do this naturally. My conditioned response to differences of opinion is to either avoid discussion at all or a tendency to take a strong stance and dig in my heels and insist that my way is the right way to view things and others just need to see it my way. Of course I don't like to be treated that way myself, but when I “know I am right” then I feel almost guilty if I don't “stand for the truth” as I can hear my father saying from many such encounters of his own in the past.

But again, the words of Jesus from just a few verses back resonate with both warning and enlightenment. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." It is not enough to just be right, I must more importantly reflect the Spirit of the One that I claim to belong to and to represent. For it is the spirit of a person that has the most influence for good or for evil, not the information that they may possess or be able to prove to others. As good as correct information may be, if the spirit is not right then the information can become poisoned and even prove to counteract what God is trying to do to save souls.

Father, train my own heart with this most important lesson of humility even while making me willing to be filled with the passion and excitement of new discoveries about You and Your character. Please heal me of my penchant for controversy and remove my stubbornness. Remind me that I don't have to surrender my convictions and newfound beliefs about You to keep peace among Your people but that my spirit needs to be under the complete control of Your Spirit so that others will be more attracted to You by the unspoken attitudes they see in me more than by the compelling logic I may be able to present. Continue to transform me into Your likeness and show me Your ways, for Your reputation's sake.

Come See a Man

So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" (John 4:28-29)

All sorts of miscellaneous questions come to my mind as I read these verses that I would like to explore. There are a number of words that give fascinating clues that are like doorways that can be opened to other passageways full of amazing surprises and insights. Sometimes I just don't know which one to open first to see what God wants to show me, but I don't want to leave any of them untouched either.

Sometimes it helps bring clarity to just focus in on the verbs or the nouns or some other such slice of a passage. In this verse I see that this woman left, then she went and then she said. I explored last time some of the thoughts surrounding why she left her waterpot which seems to be characteristic of everyone who encounters the real Jesus. This time I would like to explore more passageways leading out of these phrases. For instance, I notice that the first thing she said as a result of what had just happened to her was “Come!”

I can't help but think that this is what always happens when a person truly encounters the real Christ in person. It is a natural reflection or reiteration of what Jesus said Himself. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28 NRSV) Whenever a person has experienced this kind of “come” and the results of it in their own soul like this woman did, then it is simply impossible for them to refrain from wanting others to experience the same kind of rest. It is simply the nature of human beings designed in the image of God to want others to join them in experiencing the rest and joy that comes from reconnecting with the Creator and Redeemer of us all.

When I looked up this phrase that Jesus spoke in that last verse I found the other references that came up rather compelling and that shed more light on this story.

But Jesus said, "Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:14)

He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him." (John 6:65 NIV)

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. (John 7:37 NIV)

This last text written in the same book of John that I am studying here has obvious strong links to the story of this woman and Jesus' words to her just before she flew off to invite everyone else to come discover what she had just encountered. Jesus had offered her living water that would result in eternal life; she had started to taste a little bit of that water but couldn't wait to invite others to join her in the ravishing refreshment that she was already beginning to experience from it.

There are so many underlying powerful implications here that this story doesn't have time to flush out but can be glimpsed by the clues. It is clear from the first part of this story that this woman up to this point seems to be careful not to mingle with others from her city. She is drawing water at the most inconvenient time of the day quite likely because she doesn't want to experience more pain from the looks and comments of other people who judge her and look down on her as an embarrassment to their community. I can't help but believe that the men of her city in particular would have viewed her with condemnation and disgust. If she had been living as a Jew in another town she might even have been running a higher risk of possibly being stoned to death for the things she had done than where she was now. This was in a time and place where it was considered an honor to stone to death women who were considered loose morally, and given the history of her past she may well have been in line for such treatment.

Yet it seems to be almost emphasized in this verse that she went in particular to the men of her city to announce what seems to many of us to be a very strange message. It is certainly not anything I have ever heard a person say as an invitation to join them in their discovery of God. It is not something I have ever heard a person say in an evangelistic sermon based on their own experience. I have heard people talk about this woman's experience as a means of getting other people's attention but I cannot recall ever hearing someone actually say something like this from their own personal encounter with God based on their own experience.

Yet what this woman impulsively exclaims to the very people who may have been the leaders of her community who looked down on her the most, the men who were at the extreme opposite of the social strata from where she found herself, was an invitation to discover for themselves a Man who just might know not only everything about her without her saying a word about it, but a Man who very likely would be able to do the same for them as well.

Now think about this carefully for a second. Think about the logic behind what she was saying to these men who themselves may have had a considerable amount of things in their own past they didn't necessarily want everyone to know about. What kind of sense does this make anyway? How excited would you or I be if someone came along with great enthusiasm and declared they had just met someone who could read your mind and reveal your past whether you wanted them to or not? Would you be ready to join the rush for the door to go meet him yourself or would you be ready to rush for the back door and wait around to see what happens to everyone else first before you expose yourself to the presence of such a potentially insightful person?

I find it compellingly curious that inviting people to meet a Man who might be able to expose your deepest secrets would seem to be such an effective evangelistic tool. Like I said before, I don't recall ever hearing this tactic used before or since, and yet the overwhelming positive response that obviously resulted from this extremely unique sermon defy the accomplishments of nearly every other evangelist since that time. Maybe we are seriously missing something very important in our earthly-wise ways of trying to attract people to know Jesus better.

What I suspect is missing is that we first have not encountered for ourselves personally the depth of resonance and joy in the presence of Jesus that this woman experienced in the few minutes she spent with Him. Most people who make a career of inviting others to know God better may not yet have the same level of passion and motivation and clarity about the true nature of what God is like that this woman had experienced. It may be taking us a lifetime to come to the place that this woman came to in only seconds. We view her squirming and discomfort in her discussion with Jesus as resistance to His holy presence – and it was. Yet in the end she must have released her resistance far more completely than most of us have done and she allowed His Spirit to so flood her heart and mind and soul that He was able to use her as a transparent medium of joy to infect a whole city of spiritually hungry people who were ripe to embrace salvation. Something about her words, and much more her expressiveness compelled them that she might be worth taking seriously this time.

I would like to open the next door in these verses and explore the implications of what might have been going on in their minds about her mention of “the Christ”. But I can already see that this will take me on a very extended foray and I will hold that venture for next time.

Left Behind

So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" (John 4:28-29)

A couple of days ago I had the privilege of enjoying a concert by Michael Card, a popular and very inspiring Christian musical artist. To introduce one of his songs he shared something he had read by a Christian thought leader. They noticed that it seemed that almost everyone ended up leaving something behind whenever they decided to follow Jesus. Matthew left his tax table and money collection behind, James left his father and boats behind, this woman left her waterpot behind and Peter left his nets behind which he was eager to remind Jesus of every once in awhile. Michael has written a very good song about this idea that brings out this principle in its lyrics.

As I ponder this interesting action noted in this story I wonder about the real reasons that caused her to leave her waterpot behind. I tend to think that it may not have just been one reason only, though there likely was one dominant motive. I suspect that by this time she was so totally distracted by her overwhelming excitement in realizing that she had just encountered the greatest person to ever walk the face of this earth that she didn't even know she had left her pot sitting there.

I can relate to that quite easily – at least the distraction and forgetting part of it. If I don't follow through on something I am doing without getting distracted by something else or what someone says to me I can lose track of what I just had in my hand a few seconds ago – and then spend a considerable time trying to figure out where I might have laid it down in my absence of focus.

Our minds simply cannot process and keep track of but so many things at once. And while some people have far greater capacity to hang onto many more things in their attention and keep track of them all at once more than others of us, there still comes a point where one can be pushed past their capacity and something is going to be lost to their attention and have to be dealt with later.

But there are more reasons for losing track of something than just simple forgetfulness or distractions due to limited mental capacity. Our emotions can have a far greater effect in suddenly eliminating many things that we were keeping in focus before. This also involves the area of what it is we consider important to us, what is valuable and what takes priority in our life. When we suddenly have a radical shift in what is important to absorb our attention then things that had been high on our list of priorities quickly sink completely out of sight and all of our mental energies are instantly riveted on what has now become more important to us.

Fear has incredible power to do this very thing. We can be living a normal everyday kind of life with its average views of what is important or valuable to us when suddenly a crisis or disaster may strike. Then our whole perspective of what actually should be important is seriously challenged and we are often surprised at how skewed our priorities have become from lack of careful attention or proper choices. We may come to suddenly realize that we have spent far too long dithering about things that simply have little to no importance in the bigger picture of life and far too little time investing attention and time with the things in life that really make a difference and prepare us for just such events.

Because of this ability of fear to get our attention and prompt us to reevaluate what is most important, unfortunately too many people have decided to exploit this technique and try to make people afraid more and more to gain control over their minds. I firmly believe that fear is actually a counterfeit of the way God desires us to focus our attention on the most important things in life. And though He may often allow fear to accomplish this work in us to jolt us away from our silly distractions and upside down value systems, it is not His desire for us to live in fear as a way of life. Someone has said that though the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it is only the beginning. Fear as it is most often used in our world is opposite to the way God desires to have a relationship with us; so when fear is utilized in attempts to force people into salvation those doing this are demonstrating that they do not really know or understand the real truth about God and His desires for His children. They are following the counterfeit methods of God's enemy who has insinuated that God wants us to live in perpetual fear of Him.

The Bible is filled with language that seems to reinforce this confusion about how we are to relate to God. But remember that the Bible translators chose words based on their own biased perceptions of what God is like and affected the picture of God seen in various translations of the Bible by their own ignorance about His ways. But this does not have to be an insurmountable block to a person who really wants to know the truth about how God wants us to relate to Him. There are enough clues and passages that make it clear what God is really like that the honest in heart, the true seeker for God will begin to see more and more clearly the real nature of His love and His true exercise of power completely free of manipulation and force.

God's love is actually far more powerful and effective to transform lives than fear can ever be. Fear can often bring much quicker results to change outward behavior or produce symptoms that appear righteous, but fear is a terrible adhesive to hold together relationships longterm and it is not God's principle or will that we live in constant fear of Him. The fear of God when properly understood from the Bible is not at all the kind of fear that we commonly think about from our perspective. It is unfortunate that the two concepts have the same English word because they really mean very different things at the heart level.

If God had desired a relationship of fear then Jesus would have related to nearly everyone quite differently when He was here on this earth. Jesus could very easily have said different things to this woman if He had believed that fear was the way to get her attention and connect her with God. But God's ways are not the same as man's ways and He is not interested at all in a service to Him based on fear. That is the counterfeit way of false religions that keeps billions of people either in terror of an angry God induced by all the lies they have been taught or in rejection of the very idea of God because their minds and hearts refuse to believe such stupidity about Him.

I have come to realize and appreciate much more over the past few years that many people who profess to hate God or reject any notion that God even exists are actually far more honest and even godly than most Christians are in the way they present God to the world. These people are actually rejecting the false pictures of God presented by popular religions. I am coming to realize that many of this first class of people are easier to relate to than Christians who have such dark superstitious pictures of God that they make Him out to be a monster more like the devil than like the true God of glory. I have found that when a professed atheist who has never encountered the true picture of God once catches a glimpse of God as He really is in opposition to the way He is caricatured by most religion, that they are eager to embrace Him and want to know Him much better. This transformation is much more difficult for a religious person to experience who has been brought up to believe so many lies about God that their hearts are kept in constant fear and confusion about His true character.

This woman lived among people with confused ideas about God herself. I am not so sure how many of these popular lies she actually believed, but I am sure that as a human being she certainly had a number of them at least. But given the glimpse into her past that we have I also suspect that she had already been challenging many of these social and religious assumptions about God because they were so out of harmony with the way God had designed her heart to thrive. The dissonance created between popular views of God and the God-given desires that longed for fulfillment deep inside of her simply could never be reconciled and she well may have chosen to follow her heart more than the religious expectations of those around her which would quickly get her into a lot of difficulties.

Also, because of the fact that she was attempting to follow her heart more than the mainstream of most of those around her, she found herself getting involved in one relationship after another that failed to bring the satisfaction that her heart so yearned for. She didn't realize that there is no human that can ever meet the deepest longings of the heart that were created for fulfillment in God's heart alone. And along this line I believe that like many atheists, many of the kinds of people that Christians despise and condemn who live immorally and reject popular Christianity in favor of searching for love in all the wrong places may actually be closer to discovering God than most Christians are at this point. Again, they may be people who are actually more honest about what is going on at their heart level than the professors of religion who profess to know and follow God but have hardened their hearts against being exposed and shaped and softened and transformed by the presence of God.

This is exactly why Jesus found it much easier to hang out with people that were viewed as despicable sinners by others who considered themselves to be closer to God's will. It is actually much easier for God to find entrance into a person's life who is honest about what is going on inside their heart than it is for Him to connect with one who claims to be religious but who resists admitting much at all about what is going on deep inside. Religious people all too often believe that appearances and outward behavior is more important to God than being transparent and honest and vulnerable about what is really going on inside. That is why it is so much harder for the so-called righteous to come to repentance than it is for the people openly seen as sinners to enter into salvation.

This woman was very likely closer to the sinner category based on society's measurements than most of the religious people or even Jesus' disciples at this point in their lives. For her, about the only distraction that she had to drop and leave behind was a mundane activity of everyday life – coming to get water while avoiding being seen by others; trying to survive and meet her basic physical needs with as little pain as possible. For her up to this point her waterpot symbolized what was important to her and it did not take a lot of agonizing or discussion or therapy for her to be willing to leave it behind for something far more satisfying.

Yes, she likely also left behind her feelings of no worth, or feeling shamed and despised by God and many other lies that distorted her feelings about God. But it seems to me that these false views of God may not have had quite the deep stranglehold on her life that they often do for people more entrenched in religious practices and profession.

But for others that are filled with far more confusion about God from years of religious training and social expectations it is sometimes far more difficult to drop what is important to them and leave their prejudices and mistaken ideas about God behind to embrace the real truth about His character as revealed in the life and example of Jesus. I have observed that my own life has been marked with far more struggles to let go of lies about God and to get my heart to really believe and trust in what I am learning about His true character than those who's lives are much messier outwardly than mine but who seem to easily grasp the reality of His goodness, grace and compassion for them. I have come to the conclusion that it is far more difficult for a religious person to be born again than it is for an open sinner living it up in the world but filled with pain inside and ready for something much more fulfilling.

I want to leave all of my lies about God behind to never be recovered again. I suspect that this woman might have come back later and retrieved her waterpot to use it again. But that waterpot did not hold near the danger for her like other things that keep me distracted have to obscure my picture of what God is really like. Yes, this woman like all of us had confused ideas about God that needed to be abandoned forever. And I believe that she was eager to throw them away and likely became free of many of those notions over the next few days as she, with all of her community were blessed with heaven's gift of God's Son sharing with them personally the real truth about how God loved them passionately. But I don't read anywhere that such a thing ever took place in a Jewish town. I suspect that the effect of the many lies about God that had become entangled in the religious thinking of the more pious Jewish people had far more effect to prevent them from as freely embracing the revelation of God that these Samaritan's enjoyed with Jesus in their midst.

Father, please show me more clearly the things and ideas and priorities that need to be left behind in my heart so I can enter into Your joy and Your peace. I want to experience Your presence like this whole town full of Samaritans did so long ago. I want my family, my friends, my church along with me to fall in love with You and see You the way You really are like these people did. That all started with the simple testimony of one very discredited woman who was marginalized by society but experienced a life-transforming encounter with the real truth about God in encounter with Jesus. I want that kind of encounter myself; I need it, I want it, I plead for it. Father, show me Your face, Your glory, Your goodness, the real truth about You that my heart was created for. Make me a witness to attract others to You just as this woman became an irresistible magnet to draw others to discover You for themselves.

What Do You Think You Are Doing?

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" (John 4:27 NRSV)

I want to explore a little more that may possibly have been going on in the minds of the disciples when they came walking up the trail from town with some food and observed from a distance the intense interaction going on between Jesus and this foreign lady who seemed to not be a most reliable person due to her unusual timing for drawing water. I want to view some of the facts that would have been likely obvious in the minds of these men and that would have contributed to the necessity of recording the things found in this verse.

First of all, Jesus was a rather young man unmarried and in His early thirties, and they had left Him alone at a well while they went shopping. They were in an area where all the people living around there were considered lest than honorable, even suspicious by most Jews. These men may have been even rather hesitant to leave Jesus alone there but decided that since He was their teacher and leader that they should be able to trust Him to not get into trouble. All of these men were quite young in age and so all of the natural emotions and urges of young men in general would have been likely present in their feelings when faced with attractive women. I know this is not usually talked about in connection with this story, but it may be difficult to really understand this verse if this part of the scene is not taken into consideration.

While it may not be provable, I rather imagine that since this woman had been married five times that she was no unattractive woman. There are some women that just have a certain charisma about them both physically and emotionally that can really grab the attention of the average male. These are often the ones that have difficulty staying in an intimate relationship long-term and often feel unsatisfied, looking for love and fulfillment in one relationship after another with great intensity but after awhile realizing that they cannot find a man that can really satisfy their deepest cravings. It is likely, at least in my mind, that this woman may well have been something like one of those. She had an atmosphere about her that would cause many men to instantly label her as dangerous because of the ability that she had to attract men's attention to herself so easily.

By this time in her life this woman had likely been through so many painful broken relationships for various reasons that she may have come to believe that no man could ever be trusted with her heart again. She would have developed a thick shell of cynicism about men in general to protect her deeply wounded heart from as much further attack as possible by those around her who often seemed ready to remind her of her failed past. It may have been evident to nearly everyone that this woman simply could not settle down, could not properly fill the role of a dutiful wife who was willing to stay in her place and not keep looking for something that was not meant to be for her.

She may have been considered a loose cannon of sorts that her community by this time had chosen to marginalize from mainstream society. At this point in her life she had settled for living in a loose relationship with a man without bothering with the formality of getting married. Why should she after all? Every other marriage had fallen apart for one reason or another and maybe it was just safer for her heart to remain detached in that respect. But still she could not stand living alone and so she found someone willing to live in a relationship of convenience or maybe as an adjun ct to a current wife and just put up with all the gossip and disdain that would surly be produced by such a choice.

At least some of this pain and shame would have been difficult to miss just by looking at her and observing her demeanor. She was not the sort of lady one would want to be found hanging out with very long and certainly not alone. Every decent respectable person would have assumed that any man of good moral character could see what was rather obvious to everyone else and would keep a safe distance from such a woman to avoid becoming contaminated by her reputation. This should not need to be explained to anyone; it would have simply been the obvious social expectation that everyone would assume any man should just understand and with which he would comply.

So when the disciples came walking back from town and noticed from a distance that Jesus was engaged in very serious and intense conversation with a woman of this caliber, there very well may have been raised serious questions in their minds about His ability to discern character and His willingness to protect His own reputation with others. His choice to even have any words at all with a woman in public period was against social norms, but to have an extended and intense personal conversation with a woman of this class was absolutely insane – even political and religious suicide in some people's opinions. Because of this there was immediately an issue of trust raised in the hearts of these young men, some of whom may likely have still been teenagers themselves. What in the world was Jesus thinking after all, getting tangled up with such a questionable character out in the country all alone with a woman like this? Why didn't He just do what any other reasonable, self-respecting man would have done and turned His back toward her until she had finished her business and left?

The questions raised in this verse seem to strongly indicate things someone would have felt compelled to say to a man who was evidently oblivious to the fact that He was way out of line with social and moral norms. These are the kinds of comments that would be addressed to reprimand someone who had overstepped proper boundaries and needed to be checked before they got themselves into too much trouble. This verse seems to indicate an incensed frustration and even shock that a young man who claimed to be a representative of God on earth would allow Himself to be so compromised and come so close to ruining His reputation, especially so soon after just launching His career as a respected teacher and leader in society. In their minds Jesus was in serious danger of blowing His chances of being accepted by His people if He allowed Himself to make such major social blunders and become associated with such questionable characters in the minds of the public.

Maybe their teacher was in need of some correction and guidance Himself. Maybe He was too naïve to realize the far-reaching consequences of hanging out with such people that could seriously tarnish His reputation. Maybe His idealism and emotions and unusual ways of relating to people needed to be checked and He needed some stern reminders of what proper and upright young men should act like around women of questionable reputation.

But whatever they were thinking – and this verse makes quite clear that they were indeed thinking along these lines – they chose to restrain their astonishment and dismay at the compromising situation Jesus was gotten Himself into and risk letting Him make some potential blunders without interfering in His personal choices. They decided to give Him a little more space and maybe deal with this issue later when things had cooled down a bit and reason might again take control.

It is hard to tell from the context whether both of these questions if verbalized would have been intended for Jesus alone or whether the first question might have been directed toward the woman. Either way, it seems clear from the context that the disciples were shocked and confused and concerned by the compromising situation that they found their master in upon their return and felt compelled to question His motives and apparently poor choices socially. They did not really know Jesus all that well yet at this early point in their relationship with Him and so they chose to see how this might play out without their input. They may have thought that at least they had shown up just in time to slow down whatever was going on between Jesus and this woman before things got completely out of hand. Maybe that would be enough to bring Jesus back into line and give Him some time to get His emotions back under control and realize how close He had come to falling into serious trouble. Maybe it was providential that they had come along just in the nick of time to keep Him from making the mistake of a lifetime before He had even gotten started in His budding career as an aspiring leader in Israel.

I realize that this is not typically what people talk about when they read this story. But I can't help but see all of this lurking behind these statements and going on inside the disciple's heads if this verse actually says what it appears to be saying. It is often too easy to gloss over many things in the Bible that give us clues to things that we would rather not think about that makes the stories very messy more than they already appear. But God ways are not our ways and the disciples were beginning to find that out quite clearly even here in this early story in their relationship to Jesus.