An Unexpected Saviour Series

I know a woman whose daughter went to an expensive private school. She wasn’t too happy with the school because she felt that it wasn’t catering to her daughter’s education needs – or something like that. She caught the train into the school one day to have meeting. She sat next to someone going to work and struck up a conversation. She told her why she was on the train that morning, and gave the other woman the whole spiel about how the school wasn’t doing it’s job and even made some personal comments about the deputy principal. When she had finished her rant, she asked the woman, “so what do you do?” and the woman answered, “I’m the deputy principal at your daughter’s school”.

The Samaritan woman is in a situation a bit like that, because in the whole conversation so far, she hasn’t known who she’s really talking to. At first, she thought he was just a Jewish man. Then she realized there was something more to him – maybe he was a prophet. And in vs. 25, she says that she knows that the Messiah is coming. Then in vs. 26, Jesus comes out with another of his “blow-you-away” lines: “I who speak to you am he.” He’s told her before in vs. 10, but she missed it and so he tells her again: I am the one who can give you living water. I am the one who will bring in this new worship, I am the one who will grant the Spirit of God to those who truly believe. Or, as the Samaritans themselves acknowledge in vs. 42, “I really am the Saviour of the World.”

Unexpected Harvest

After hearing this, the woman goes and tells her people about this man who knew everything she ever did and who had claimed to be the Christ. The disciples want him to sit down and eat something, but he tells them that spreading the word of God is more important than earthly food. Whether they were telling people the good news – sowing the seed - or being there to welcome people into the kingdom – those who reap – the sowers and the reapers can be glad together because people are coming to know Christ. Jesus knows the gospel has gone out to the Samaritans that day. He knows they are ripe for the harvest. No doubt, the disciples weren’t expecting this: these people were Samaritans, after all! But vss. 39-42 demonstrate the truth of Jesus claims about a new way of worshipping that is not caught up in place or race, but which is in spirit and truth. Many Samaritans believed because of the woman’s testimony - in one sense, she’s done the hard work spoken of in vs. 38 - and even more come to know Jesus because of the words of the Christ himself. “We no longer believe just because of what you said,” they told the woman, “now we have heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.” They were transformed by the word of God.

Well, how is that you respond to God? Do we recognize when he speaks to us? Do we appreciate that he knows our hearts, that we can’t hide things from him? Do we really know that true worshippers have changed hearts and worship God not just by saying a creed in church or by reciting the Lord’s Prayer everyday but by being true believers whose hearts are focused on the Christ? Jesus brings a new age in the way people relate to God: he gives us living water, the Spirit of God, that will well up in us to eternal life and he gives us a spiritual renewal that transcends place and race so that all the true worshippers may worship in spirit and in truth.