Sep 07
6
Accepted
Posted by Stephen6
Tags: learning, trust
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The Samaritan woman at the well wasn’t terribly popular with the other women of her town. She had a pretty colorful history and was probably tired of the gossip and slights of the others. So she came to draw water when nobody else would be there.
When Jesus asked for water, she replied with an attempt to maintain a religious, cultural and gender barrier. She wanted to give him plenty of reasons to reject her. After all, everybody else did. Jesus refused to be drawn into the Jewish / Samaritan conflict, and instead started to nudge her to reveal why she was in this situation in the first place, fetching water at noon. The woman likewise resisted being drawn from behind her barrier. She gave a cautious, guarded answer: “I have no husband.”
Jesus’ next statements showed that he knew the details of her past, but said nothing to judge or condemn her. In fact, he commended her for telling the truth. The woman was taken by surprise. So she turned the conversation to spiritual matters, still trying to hide behind religious differences. Once again, rather than taking sides Jesus presented a new center for worship that was available to all. Instead of the rejection she expected, a place of worship that would leave her shut out, excluded, Jesus revealed a new way to God that threw its doors wide open to her.
The woman started to get excited. Could he be the Messiah? Jesus told her “I am” was speaking with her, the divine name revealed to Moses in the distant past (Exodus 3:13-15). This was a bigger revelation than Jesus gave to Nicodemus, Philip or Andrew earlier in the gospel. That did it. Just like the disciples’ fishing nets, the woman left her jar behind, she was so eager to go and tell others of what she’d just learned.
Jesus did not reject her for her past life. He did not look down on her limited spiritual understanding. For the first time in years the Samaritan woman felt accepted. It had such a transforming, liberating effect on her that she risked ridicule and annoyance from the town and pulled them all out to see a man she didn’t entirely understand herself. The woman who started out hiding behind high walls of the mind ended up casting caution to the winds.
Jesus led her to faith. But first he addressed her need for acceptance. You can read the whole story in John 4:3-42.
That was typical of Jesus’ approach: he first met people’s needs. He gave blind Bartimaeus his sight; he met shunned Zacchaeus’ social need; he gave the cripple at the Bethesda pool his health and strength back, and then left without even telling him who he was or why he had healed him; he didn’t just heal the leper–he touched him, meeting the outcast’s need for human contact. Jesus went directly to spiritual matters with only two people–Nicodemus and the thief dying on the cross–because they already knew their deepest need was spiritual.
Jesus is the same today. He wants you to come to faith in him. And he will patiently deal with your deepest need first, physical, social, emotional or spiritual, until it is no longer a barrier to faith.
