Grace and peace from the mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. The Samaritan woman at the well.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
John 4:5-42
The woman at the well asked Jesus why he’s breaking a cultural taboo by asking her for a drink. Jesus begins his responds to the woman with these words, “If you knew the gift of God…”
Is this an indictment for not knowing? I don’t think so.
To demand we know something is a huge expectation. How can anyone really know anything fully? How can a person know the mysteries of this universe much less God?
Even if we were to become convinced of something it’s a belief, but it’s not a knowing. I can know what I believe, but I can’t trust that what I believe is absolute truth.
“It’s because they think they know.”
A therapist asked me why it was so difficult to break through with patients who identify as evangelical Christian. I repeated something a wise mentor and psychiatrist told me: “It’s because they think they know.”
Jesus tells this dear woman, “If you knew …” Maybe this was his way of saying, with compassion, “If you would have known, you would have asked for the source of all water. You wouldn’t need a bucket either!”
That’s when she says, “Hey, I want what you’re drinking!”
Jesus shows her he knows her past. Perhaps he knows it’s the biggest obstacle to her belief that she has access to living water.
What if this was not an indictment of the woman and her five marriages, but a way of Jesus the liberator showing her she’s being seen for the first time. By a man. A Rabbi. A person who would go out of his way to connect her with her inner wellspring of life.
Is it more important for me to know God or God to know me?
“I have no husband.”
Jesus displays his knowing by asking her to go home and get her husband. She responds, “I have no husband.” Jesus responds, “True story, well woman. As a matter of fact, you’ve been married five times and now you’re living with someone.”
There is no indication it is an indictment. It is simply Jesus saying, “I see you.” Whatever she went through in each marriage, whether being widowed, or rejected, Jesus somehow knows.
In that moment, Jesus earns the right to be heard. She is about to receive a bucketless relationship with an inner well that doesn’t run dry. There is no shame in her not knowing.
There is no shame
There is no shame for those of us who get lost in the limitations of our brain’s capacity to think our way into change and transformation.
Knowing is overrated.
To be liberated from the need to know, and live fully, is to enter the adventurous life of faith. Faith means action taken in the face of my not knowing… actions taken in the midst of fear and doubt. The Liberator of our need to know is Christ. In Christ we are known and seen.
Maybe the liberating message would put manipulative, money-hungry churches and their charlatan pastors out of business. People might drop the dependency they’ve created through their structures, and nurture a reliance on the inner gift of God.
To communicate to others a well-spring of eternal love, connection, and thirst-quenching water within them, would be transformative. Perhaps they would want to be in community with others who have let go of the need to know and experience the fullness of this well-spring together… loving each other in the uncertainty and unknowing nature of the human condition, yet living in an experiential environment of grace and joy.
Jesus, the anti-superhero
In Marvel movies, the superhero uses his power to liberate those who are suffering. He uses his gift to rescue others from global catastrophes, and the inevitable, imminent apocalypse.
Jesus is an anti-superhero. He simply says to the Samaritan woman that in her is a wellspring of living water. He tells her how to access this gift within herself, so she’s not dominated by external powers.
Jesus said, “If you knew…”
The Samaritan woman at the well
According to all the cultural and religious rules about what makes a person fit in, this woman is living wrongly.
She had five husbands.
She associated with pagans.
She couldn’t worship in the temples.
She was a woman.
She lives on the wrong side of the tracks.
She evidently is an educated woman.
She is respected by the fellow marginalized men in her community.
She probably even takes long walks on the beach and calls it prayer.
For reflection
Here are some questions for us now that we can be liberated from having to “know.”
- What draws you and I to the well?
- What are we deeply longing for that a bucket full of religiosity cannot quench?
- How have we not been seen?
- Where have we felt indicted?
- How have I waited and settled for a second-class life simply because I thought I should know? Believed better? Behaved better?
- How often have I felt I’d disappointed God by not knowing, not having enough faith?
- How have I rejected the idea of a caring higher power because I needed to know that it’s true?
Jesus is revealing that the wellspring of life is not an external gift. It is an internal gift that we have access to when we let go of our need to know and drink from this wellspring of engagement with the liberator. The Spirit of Christ within us.
How would you live today if you knew?
Amen.
Wednesday Respite is a 30-min contemplative service of scripture, prayer, music and a Spirited Touchpoint by Henry Rojas, spiritual director at Spirit in the Desert.
Touchpoint is a reflection on where God’s story touches our life story. It is a short homily based on a biblical story of people in the Old and New Testaments and their relationship with God. Our spiritual ancestors’ experience of God’s grace connects with our lives in the present and our relationship with the Divine. Previous Touchpoints are available as PDFs
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