Thursday March 31, 2011

John 4:15-19

"The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.' Jesus said to her, 'Go call your husband and come back.' The woman answered and said to him, 'I do not have a husband.' Jesus answered her, 'You are right in saying, "I do not have a husband." For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.'"

So today is not so much the day I back off my agenda of defending the Samaritan woman but it is the day I just take directly to task the Little Black Book.

"Once the woman appears to understand a bit more, Jesus invites her to bring her husband - perhaps so that they can engage in deeper conversation."

WTF?

Serious, I apologize for the disguised profanity and netspeak, but that's really the best way to express my feelings on that sentence. Really? Really? In the twenty-first century, you want to make the statement that the Samaritan woman needed her husband present in order to have a deep discussion about theology? To understand the nature of God? O-kay then.

The Little Black Book continues, "At this point, the woman gets a little bit snippy" which I think the book is confusing for me getting a lot snippy. Plus: if the woman got snippy anywhere in this conversation, it was definitely the bit about Jacob that I talked about yesterday.

In the section today she does exactly what a good disciple should AND she has the courage of honesty.

Now that I have vented that spleen, I will talk about what I mean. Having heard Jesus' promise, she asks for Jesus to help her. And then Jesus throws her a test (because, Little Black Book, your presumption besides being offensive to me also supposes that Jesus didn't know from the beginning of the conversation how this woman lived her life). He asks her to acknowledge her lifestyle, her sins, before He proceeds to grant her a direct line to grace. It must have been heartbreaking moment for her.

Because she must have thought, in this moment, that the man who looked at her and spoke to her as a person, as an intelligent and beloved child of God, in a way she may never have experienced before, was only doing so because He didn't know about her past. She must have thought that His respect for her was about to evaporate when she told Him the truth. And yes, she didn't say everything, didn't spill everything He asked for. She did not have the courage to blurt out all of her sins and imperfections. She just said, "I do not have a husband." I am not the woman you think me.

And yes, His answer showed that He had unearthly knowledge, but that is really oh so very secondary to what it meant that this prophet, this holy man, had known from the start that she was a woman with a "deplorable lifestyle" so shunned by her community. He had known from the start, and He had still spoken to her, still looked at her, in that way. With loving, respecting, knowing eyes. It hadn't been an illusion or a dream - it hadn't been something that could only happen because He was a stranger. There is a man who knew her, every sin and imperfection and dark and twisty bit, and loved her even so.

And when she tells him, "I can see that you are a prophet" what she has truly realized is that the representative of God on earth is that kind of man: not the judging Pharisee but the infinitely forgiving and loving prophet by the well who spoke in truths as plain as day. Who took the task that was her daily shame and made it a metaphor for the glory of God that He still saw within her. The Samaritan woman knew, from that moment on, how she would recognize the Light of God in others. It would be by how they treated her, how they looked at her. How close it was to the way this stranger did - this stranger who could look at her and know every thing she had ever done and love and respect her just as if she had been perfect.

The knowing was a cheap parlor trick in comparison to that.

Dear Lord, thank You for the endless love You have always shared in my life. Help me to be a good representative of You in the world, help me to always see the Light of God in every person that I meet and to treat them accordingly. Help me to show others the Light of God in themselves as You did for this woman. Help me to let Your Light shine out in me.