Heart Hunger

The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." (John 4:25 NIV)

Somehow I sense that there is a lot more lurking in this verse than what I can yet see very well. I am asking God to show me rich things in here that my heart needs to hear.

Why did this woman make this statement? Was it just a religious cliché to fit into the conversation, meant to be a catch-all when one runs out of good answers? We do that many times in our religious discussions. We have clichés and pat answers that we toss out when we don't want to really grapple with difficult issues or if we feel too uncomfortable looking deeper inside when conviction is too close.

Is that what this woman was doing? Was this the standard end of every discussion that she had had about this topic of the right place to worship or the right church to attend? “When the right person/prophet/ preacher/teacher comes he is going to explain everything in a way that will really make sense to us. Then we will really know the truth.”

That might be the case. But also I sense that this woman was already an out-of-the-box kind of thinker and that had likely made her a pain in the side to many other people who knew her. She may have been repeatedly coming up with questions that made other people in her church squirm and react in defensiveness. She may often have been criticized and condemned and shut down because her ideas didn't fit in nicely with the accepted views and doctrines that her people were supposed to endorse. Because of this I sense that maybe deep in her heart she believed that the Jews really were much closer to the truth and that the increasing anticipation for a coming Messiah promised in the prophecies of the Old Testament especially among the more honest but less influential people among the Jews was likely really going to happen soon.

And think about this. What if she might have known one or two humble peasants herself who were honest of heart and searching the Scriptures and sharing with her on occasion the hope of a coming Messiah; peasants who had better access to the Jewish writings and who even may have been Jews themselves but not nearly as prejudiced as most other Jews. I believe that may have been possible. Since this woman apparently was rather ostracized among her own people she may have found it actually easier to sometimes connect with people from the “other side” since she had less to lose as far as her reputation was concerned. Sometimes people at the bottom of society do not share some of the same prejudices that most other people in society do as far as other races or ethnic groups go, and they can form friendships that become sources of enlightenment for them as a result.

Somehow I believe that this statement by this woman with such a history of seeking for acceptance and love in all the wrong places was at least in part an expression of a deep desire of her own heart. Maybe she had stayed awake nights after another painful conflict in a broken relationship with yet another man and contemplated what it might be like to meet this Messiah character that so many people were starting to talk about. She had heard rumors that the prophecies indicated that the time for this Messiah to appear was actually ripe to be fulfilled. She could at least allow herself to dream and fantacize about how wonderful it might be to meet this amazing man in person herself. Even if it never happened in real life it could bring her a little comfort and peace and relief from the ever-increasing pain and loneliness that always shadowed her life.

Maybe she had even gone a step further and begun to intentionally hang her hopes on whatever it was that this coming Messiah might be coming to accomplish. Maybe the Jews were not completely right in their insistence that the Messiah was coming to crush the Samaritans and every other nation of gentiles that made life miserable for the Jews. Maybe this Messiah was going to be one to surprise even the Jews with the real nature of His mission to earth. Just maybe He might be coming to aid and rescue the hurting, the down and out, the marginalized of society, the ones who were depressed and caught in a hopeless trap of sin with no apparent way to escape. Maybe, just maybe this Messiah would make sense out of life where all the religious leaders of every stripe had failed to do so far.

So maybe this woman's declaration of hope in a coming Messiah was an expression of a deep longing that she had been hiding in her heart for many years. Maybe as her heart had suddenly jumped in startled excitement at the feelings being stirred by this amazingly compassionate, sensitive man like no one she had ever encountered before that she just couldn't help herself from exposing her secret but very intense hope that she had hardly dared to share with anyone for fear of being scorned. Maybe this man might even be able to share more information with her about who this Messiah might be or at least teach her how to better recognize Him or what to look for.

So far this man seemed to fit the picture that had been coalescing in her mind about what the Messiah might act like if she were ever to meet Him. Of course she may have pushed aside the hope that she might meet Him herself someday, but then again hope is a strong urge that refuses to give up easily and she was willing to take the risk and at least bring up the subject and see what Jesus might have to say about it. What could go wrong with that idea? He had treated her so far with the utmost respect and her heart was telling her that this man was radically different than any man she had ever encountered in her life before. And she believed she knew men pretty well by now after all her bad experiences with them. So when she finally met a man that seemed to be so different and who seemed to care for her heart so tenderly, she simply could not turn away and reject this opportunity to at least give Him a chance to reveal His heart a little more to her.

This man seemed to have a magnetism about Him beyond what she had ever felt before. Oh, she had felt drawn to men before, that was very obvious. She had even earned a reputation of being too easily drawn to men and her heart repeatedly was crushed time after time believing that a man would genuinely care for her heart instead of wanting to just exploit her body. Time after time she fell for promises that proved to be empty and her heart had by now been betrayed so many times that it was hiding under many layers of scars, fears and pain and was very reluctant to trust any man ever again. But when her heart felt the tug from this new man that seemed so promising, she just couldn't help but take yet another risk and open up her hiding heart just a crack and see what might happen in hopes that this time she wouldn't be exploited but might find real satisfaction.

She had little clue as to the enormity of the surprise about to blast away nearly everything she had ever felt about men and even life in general. Her whole world was about to turn upside down and her complete perception of reality was about to explode and come back together completely different in the next few seconds. Her heart was unknowingly communing with its Creator even now and because she had tried to follow her heart instead of tradition and societal norms more than the average person she was uniquely situated to experience an encounter of love and have her whole life of passionate living suddenly come together in ways that would not only change her forever but everyone around her.

But that is coming in the next verses that I will look at later.