Issue 397
Have you noticed that there are some things you never learn? This is not because they are necessarily really hard to learn, but because you have to re-learn them on a regular basis. If you can play an instrument and then stop, you will know that you may have to re-acquire this skill. In fact, almost any task that you undertake regularly can, if paused, require re-learning.
So here is our fourth exploration of Jesus’ ‘What do you want?’ You will need to read the fourth chapter of John’s gospel, remembering we are arguing that Mary was John’s co-author. There are whole bunch of characters in the chapter and, at first glance, there is not a great connection between team. First glances, however, are rarely adequate with this carpenter-turned-teacher. We know this already – John and Mary have told you.
The chapter describes a journey from south to north in Israel and spans about three days. There are four cameos in view.
So before I show you the cameos, ask yourself a series of questions and attempt brutal, honest answers. Do you function as if some places are holier than others? Compare your church with your local bar. Compare your sanctuary with your office or workplace.
Do you function as if you can turn on your faith and turn if off? Consider how you are on different days of the week.
Does your awareness of God change according to where you are and what you are doing? Can you feel God in any and every moment?
At the deepest possible level, are you satisfied? There might be ups and downs, but deep inside, are you OK?
In this two or three day journey, Jesus demonstrated how to handle these questions. Cameo one was with a Samaritan woman, at a well. Jews and Samaritans had been enemies for 700 years. Many Jews going north would avoid this area altogether and take a longer route, just to bypass Samaria. Jesus deliberately goes this route and meets a woman. She is deeply dissatisfied and has been trying to find satisfaction in serial marriage.
Jesus offers her living water, instead of well water. This living water has certain properties. You never thirst again. It satisfies you deep down. You don’t need to go to a well to get it, because when you get it, it creates a sustainable, self-replenishing well inside of you. You can only get it from Jesus of Nazareth.
This Samaritan woman found a man who had deliberately chosen to cross her path and to cross 700 years of racism, along with millennia of sexism to offer her what she had been looking for all her life.
Cameo two unfolds as Jesus’ male team return with supplies. Shocked at seeing Jesus with a woman, and a Samaritan woman, they wisely say nothing – except to talk about food. Jesus tells them life is not just about physical food, but spiritual food. Now we have living water and living food, which has different properties to ordinary water and food.
Cameo three sees a whole bunch of Samaritans take up the offer of this satisfying drink on the basis that Jesus told the woman all she had ever done. Since in that town a few people knew that all she had ever done she had done with them, they were very curious. Note Samaritans are not our kind of people.
Cameo four sees Jesus heading north. A royal official asks for help and Jesus heals his son from miles away. This turned out to be Jesus’ second big act after the water into wine episode, also not far from where he was now.
Jews and Samaritans were all convinced that their place, their race and their ways were the holy ones. Jesus blows this theory out of the water and demonstrates by being at a well, with a woman, that you don’t have to think like that to get what you need.
His followers discover that Jesus does not need to eat to be satisfied. The Samaritans discover they can all share the party.
The official discovers that Jesus’ food and drink can restore even at a distance. You don’t have to be standing right next to him – he can deliver to your door.
So what do you want? A version of living which elevates one place, one time, one gender, one race, one type of work to a higher level than others? What do you want? A type of spirituality that only works in some building but not others?
What do you want? A type of food and drink that you have to keep replacing? Fine – go for it – you will never be satisfied, always judgemental and superior and constantly looking for more. You will live a fragmented, disintegrated and confused life.
This traveller will go from south to north to show you that real, living spirituality goes everywhere, is everywhere, lasts forever and is self-sustaining. It is not found down wells or in markets, it is found in Jesus of Nazareth, who is everywhere. He goes out of his way to meet you where you are and he goes out of his way to show you that he can meet you without even being there.
What do you want? Living water, divine food – or time, place, gender and tradition bound rituals?
The Christian faith is designed to be practised everywhere that you are. It is designed to cut across boundaries of your prejudice. It is designed to last forever.
Don’t settle for ordinary water and food – anyone can do that.
What do you want – a somewhere or everywhere type of faith?
John 4
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” 25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
The Disciples Rejoin Jesus
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” 33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” 34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans Believe
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers. 42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Jesus Heals an Official’s Son
43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there. 46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
48 “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.” 49 The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 “Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.” The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.” 53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed. 54 This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.
In preparation for the next GEOFFSHATTOCKweekly, do feel free to email us your thoughts to wtw@worktalk.gs or leave a comment on our Facebook or Twitter profile. You can also visit our YouTube channel - get inspired and share Worktalk's vision with others.
Work well
Geoff Shattock
© Copyright 2024 Geoff Shattock
All GEOFFSHATTOCKweekly archives are for personal use only. For permission to use for any other purposes please email using the address below thank you.
WORKTALK LEARNING
1 Washington Villas, Hythe Road, Marchwood, Southampton, Hampshire, SO40 4WT United Kingdom
T:+44 (0)23 8086 8543
http://www.geoffshattock.com
comms@worktalk.gs
