"The man who told me everything I ever did".

Anytime I used to read or hear the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4 I was always disturbed. Jesus seemed either cool and removed, or cruel and haughty, in my reading of it. There's a *lot* going on in this narrative that I would love to talk about, but in this blog I want to focus on one narrow aspect. Or two and how they relate. Cool?

Ok. So basically Jesus talks to a Samaritan woman at the well and mysteriously talks about Living Water. She doesn't really understand what he's saying but asks him for some anyways. He talks it up pretty good; it must be worth a shot. He tells her to summon her husband, to which she replies that she has none. He replies back, "No. You're right. You've had five husbands and the guy you are with now isn't your husband."

She affirms that he is right and that he must be a prophet. Then they go into a tangetial conversation about religion and whether the Jews and right or the Samaritans are right. Cool, cool stuff going on here, but not what this blog is about. Maybe another one. Eventually Jesus admits he's the Messiah and she goes off into the village telling everyone, "Come see the man who told me everything I ever did! Could he be the Messiah?"

The story disturbed me on many levels. It was always weird to me that Jesus called her out like that. She tried to dodge an awkward situation of explaining about the man she is living with by telling him, "Oh, I don't have a husband." And he calls her out. Straight up. No, Missy, you ain't dodging that bullet! Does it sting?

As a kid/teen/young adult, I always read that and felt that it was so unnecessary the way he did that. If that was me, I'd have been all kinds of defensive. Or offended. Or legitimately just freaked out. But she responds, "Oh. You must be a prophet." Knowing that he has special insight from God, she seeks his wisdom on the topic of worship. Astounding. And later she uses the story of him knowing all about her as a reason why he could be the Messiah. She doesn't keep it quiet (though her own story is involved and could be at stake), but tells the whole village! How unexpected!

Detour: Most people who grew up in the church have a serious problem understanding God/Jesus. They see God as the "bad cop" and Jesus as the "good cop". I always had the opposite problem. A real love for God and a real fear of Jesus. He was so unpredictable and so harsh in his judgments and words. Or that's how I'd always thought of him. That's the lens through which I always read this narrative.

But I had a crazy realization today in a very profound way. It unfolds like this: Jesus wasn't speaking to the woman to convict her. Unlike with other people he encounters (even in this gospel), he does not say to her, "Go and sin no more!" He doesn't address the issue more than just showing her that God revealed her situation to him. A prophet, as she called him, does not speak on his own, but speaks the words of God and the insights of God. The fact that he spoke of her story indicates that God himself saw and knew her intimately. The wonder she must have felt at knowing that she had captured the attention of the Almighty!

She was spoken to in a way that elicited trust and belief, not condemnation, defensiveness or fear. She responds not by explaining her situation, nor by ending the conversation and walking away. Knowing that she is known by God, she asks this wise prophet how to worship God truly. She opened herself to a vulnerable position knowing that he could, and probably would, say that her worship was false. As a Jew, of course she expected him to say that Jews were right, the end.

But he turns everything on its head. Jesus does not say that her worship is untrue. Only that she worships who she doesn't know. Ironically, God knows her, but she does not truly know him. The Jews, on the other hand, know God. But soon, he claims that the specifics of where to worship will no longer matter, because God will make it so that people could worship all over "in Spirit and in Truth". In a sense, that the Jews knew God more than the Samaritans did, but that both still had a lot more to learn as Christ himself was revealed (and God revealed through him).

She says that she knows of the Messiah and he tells her that he himself is the Messiah. At this the woman leaves her jar at the well and runs off to the town to talk about him and invite others to see him.

I had always read Jesus as brash and cruel, calling her out as a sinner/liar and telling her that her religion is wrong. I had always misread Jesus. This new insight makes this whole narrative make more sense. Pushing it even further, the understanding of this second half of her encounter even makes the first half make more sense.

This is a woman who has faced hardships. She was either involved in a life of sin or had many husbands pass away. Or both. She was hardened towards the very idea of a Jew talking to her, unwilling to interact with Jesus until she got the record straight about why he would even want to talk to her. But he saw her need for Living Water. He saw the thirst in her that could not be quenched. At first glance it seems like this conversation is never resolved. But we find that it is resolved throughout the text when Jesus talks about worshiping "in Spirit and Truth" (God doing a new thing in worship which, we readers find out, is actually through Christ), and when he reveals that he is the Messiah. He is the Living Water.

This is the God who sees us and knows "everything we've ever done" and tells us where we've been, who we are in Truth, and how to worship in Truth that we too would truly know God and worship who we know.

How amazing that God knows us but just wants us to know him. Ultimately, Jesus came to reveal to the world who God is. Later in the same gospel (John 14), Jesus and one of his disciples have this exchange:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

This is the God who desires to be known so fully that he came in flesh to a world that did not know him, though he created it, so that it could know him and his immense love and so it could have life. That is what Jesus was showing the woman at the well in Samaria. That what Jesus shows and offers us today. The reality of knowing God.