The Village who came to believe because Jesus knew all there was to know about someone. John 4:1-42.
Helen Keller was a great author, political activist and lecturer. Who though born with normal vision and hearing, lost them at the age of 19 months due to an illness, this left her mute.
When Helen was seven years old her family appointed a governess, Anne Sullivan, who immediately started to try to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words on to her hand. Anne Sullivan tried to teach her the to spell out words such as d o l l and m u g, but Helen could not understand that every object had its own unique word. It was only when Anne took Helen outside to the pump and ran water over her hands spelling out the word w a t e r, that Helen began to understand what her teacher was trying to do.
Helen stated, “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand.
In John’s gospel he gives us a depiction of Jesus, tired after a journey, through Samaria sitting at Jacobs well in the town of Sychar, he quite simply asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. This starts a conversation around faith and worship and differences in how the Jews and Samaritans worship.
The differences exist because, Samaritans are descendants of the people from the northern kingdom of Israel from the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, but they came about as a people group through intermarriage with Assyrians during the Assyrian occupation of Israel. They worship God on Mount Gerizim. Due to these differences Jews and Samaritans did not generally interact. As a result, when Jesus asked her, her comment was one of surprise, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink.”
So we have a race issue, one of segregation, generally interaction was frowned upon due to religious and ethnic differences.
His answer, “If you knew the gift of God and who it was that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
Between them, there’s an ongoing discussion here about how Jesus might supply this woman with water as he does not have the tools to get the job done. The Samaritan woman has taken Jesus words as literal, ‘how will he provide water, he doesn’t have a bucket or a rope?’ There is a discussion about their common ancestor Jacob, whose well they are at. There is a discussion about how this water, like all water we drink, this liquid once it is consumed must be consumed again, consumed on and on, as thirst will come again and again, as it is required to sustain life. There is a question from the woman, “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well?”
Jesus comment to her after all this discussion, is this, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Her reply was simple and direct, perhaps even a little sarcastic, “Sir give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Now there is further discussion in which Jesus and the woman discuss her husband, well the man she is with, and her former husbands, all five of them. She comes to see Jesus knows things about her that are out of the ordinary, Jesus has an understanding of this woman whom he has just met that is extraordinary, she realises this. The penny drops there is something about this man that is out of the ordinary. She decides she is in the presence of a prophet. Then they discuss the differences in how their races worship God.
So, the conversation between them has arrived at a point, once Jesus has given an indication to the woman that he is no ordinary person. Jesus has shown her something about himself, when he says, “Yet a time is coming and has come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and truth.”
I think at this time she had her suspicions and was wondering just who she was speaking to, this was no standard Jewish traveller she had met at the well, even as a Rabbi he knew things, understood things that surprised her, the words all knowing, omniscient come to mind. Her comment that follows may be based on a hunch; “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
He replies…”I who speak to you am he.” She understands that she is in the presence not of a prophet but the Messiah. Her eyes are opened to this man who has asked her for water being “the living water!”
There is more to this story, the woman went back to her town and the people of the town came to hear her story about Jesus. Jesus went to that town and stayed for a couple of days, he broke down the barriers of race and religion, the rules that restricted and bound interaction between Jews and Samaritans, the rules that restricted freedom of contact between these two peoples. But more than that, the people of this town came to understand that, more than that, believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ.
The interesting point here is that these Samaritan people recognised Jesus as the Immanuel, the Messiah, or in English the Christ, who would come and set their people free as prophesied, as he was present with them.
We all live or in the past have lived in a place in our lives where we are spiritually blind and a little like Helen Keller in her physical state of blindness and deafness, not having the language, or not understanding the language to comprehend the spiritual things of God, until we have an encounter or develop an understanding that sets us free from our lack of not knowing, our own misty consciousness is awakened. We don’t know what we don’t know, prior to coming to faith in Christ, we live in a kind of darkness of unknowns. Here’s a kind of example, who knows what ‘Falooda’ is, there is nothing wrong with not knowing, if you do know I will tell what it is soon, I know Catherine doesn’t, Sarah doesn’t know either, Rochelle does because she looked in up, and before Thursday I had no idea, a show of hands, who doesn’t know? Well let me enlighten you; “falooda is a Mughlai cuisine version of a cold dessert made with noodles. It has origins in the Persian dish faloodeh, variants of which are found across West, Central, and South Asia. Traditionally it is made by mixing rose syrup, vermicelli, and sweet basil seeds with milk, often served with ice cream.” (1) I have a packet, would anyone like to try it out, it’s best before date was June, 2019? It is a good thing to gain an understanding of anything, even if it just Falooda.
We don’t know what we don’t know, we live in a kind of darkness of unknowns until we know. Is that our fault? Under the law it is. If you break the law and don’t know, it is no excuse. Jesus tells us he came to fulfil the Old Testament law and the prophets, (Matthew 5:17). He never disobeyed any of Moses laws. But he also through is death and resurrection liberated us from sin and death and set us free from judgement and death, through taking our sins upon himself and allowing us to enter the Holy of Holies as the curtain in the temple that represented his body was torn in two from top to bottom at the time of his death.
In Johns description of the woman’s encounter with Jesus. The woman at the well, is known to Jesus. Because of his knowledge of her, she realises, who Jesus is, she comes to know him, and understand she is in the presence of the Messiah. We many of us also know him as Messiah, we all can and at some stage the scripture tells us “that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” (Philippians 2:10-11). I think we are close to a time when there will be a great thirst for knowledge of Jesus as Messiah, a great desire to be in God’s presence.
It is interesting to note Jesus’ discussion with this woman was not condemning of her relationship, or of previous relationships, he plainly offered her a spiritual connection that would not dry up not just that, but a spiritual relationship with the One true God that would lead to eternal life.
She is known to Jesus in the same way we are all known to God. As a result she spreads the good news and many from her town believe.
Knowing Jesus, being in his presence is not always experienced as an extraordinary event it can be as simple as a request for water, as simple of understanding who he is, and realising that who he is worth sharing with others. Knowing and accepting the Messiah is in itself the life changing water that leads to eternal life.
