The Woman at the well: A Story of restored hope. Part 3

You can find Part 1 here

You can find Part 2 here

 

Broken Vessel

Who would qualify to be used by God? In our preconceived ideas of God, the vessel He uses has to at least be holy or “christian”. After all, if God is holy, His vessels ought to be also. Yet Jesus doesn’t seem to be concerned about our expectation and our own qualifications. A woman with a string of broken relationships is a perfect mouthpiece for His kingdom. This is a momentous shift from our preconceived idea that God would use the well to do, the people who have their lives all together, the preachers in suits, to carry His salvation message to the world. Our idea of a liberator is oftentimes steeped in the heroism of old, the exploits of brave conquerors, or the wit of political leaders.

But this encounter between the Lord and this Samaritan will stir freedom from the unlikeliest of places in the form of a downcast, emotionally weak and socially rejected woman. Her encounter with Jesus, like many before her and many after her inspired so much courage that she rushed back to her village to become their voice of freedom. Just like the disciples leaving their nets and their boats when Jesus calls them, this Samaritan leaves behind her bucket to tell the whole village about this strange man sitting alone at the well. It would have been one thing for a man to return home and announced he had met the Messiah, but it is completely another for a woman to do so.

Back in the Second Temple period, the testimony of women was not admissible in court. Some would say this disdain for women originated in the Garden when the woman was deceived and as such no one would trust what she had to say. This Samaritan couldn’t care less about what people would think. What she had just experienced was valid enough to share with her own people, and as a result engender the salvation of them all. Isn’t it fascinating that the carriers of the most important revelations in the Gospel about Jesus is oftentimes through women? Here, His identity is revealed to a woman who goes out to preach it, and later in a garden when He appeared to Mary Magdalene on His first day of resurrection, telling her to go back and tell the disciples that He was in fact alive again. I suspect Jesus orchestrated that to restore women back to their proper respectful places in society, and to undo centuries of rejection. It would have made more sense for Jesus to really remove any doubt about who He was to use a more reputable source since the unbelief was so rampant. Yet here, Jesus isn’t concerned about the vessel carrying His message of hope as He is concerned about the restoration of all things.

So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” They went out of the city, and were coming to Him. John 4:28-30

From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” John 4:39

 

Simple Faith

Consider for a moment that the Samaritan turned a whole village upside down while the disciples had mixed results on their missionary journeys. We don’t hear of cities being turned upside down through the disciples until the day of Pentecost. The contrast is baffling. The disciples had powerful encounters, they healed the sick, they performed miracles and their success was mitigated.

This woman on the other end is nothing like the disciples. She has no training, she hasn’t been taught much, she is of questionable character and her message – to be quite honest – isn’t earth-shattering. All she said was “come see a man who told me everything I have ever done.” That is it, nothing less and nothing more. Yet this seemingly insignificant revelation is every bit as powerful as any miracle anyone could perform. The frailty of her newfound faith becomes evident when she even questioned His identity: “could this be the Messiah?” One has to ask the question; what was so radical about her encounter? She had just met a man and instead of being judged and rejected like she was accustomed, He completely and utterly accepted her without judgment or condemnation. She was for the first vulnerable and fully emotionally exposed and yet what she felt from Jesus was unconditional Love. She was fully known and yet fully loved. This alone was transformative enough to get her out of her isolated life away from the judging eyes who knew her, and straight into the village unashamed and totally loved right in the midst of the same people who looked on amazed at her boldness.

 

Conclusion

This story defies all current western logic of evangelism. Unlike power we perceived to be the seal of approval of God, this woman is everything but well grounded in her faith and complete in her doctrinal understanding. We tend to reduce the power of the Gospel with the need to have healing and miracles flowing out of our hands to hope that our message will be heard and have an impact of whomever to talk to. Her faith is tentative at best, and yet this is exactly the kind of faith that is enough to turn cities upside down. There is nothing supernaturally extravagant about it. There is nothing pompous and extroverted. There is nothing doctrinally deep and complex. It isn’t the rumbling mountains, the power or physical miracles, and the supernatural glory that will convinced unbelievers to come meet this man called Jesus. It is the simple yet profound truth that Jesus fully knows us, fully accepts us and fully loves us just the way we are.

Love is everything in the kingdom of God,  as Paul would later highlight in his letter to the church in Corinth in Corinthians chapter 13. There is something undeniably powerful we someone tells their story about how they brushed up against Jesus. There is something powerful happening for those who hear it and for those who tell about it. The transformative power can be seen in this Samaritan woman when she believed that this man knew everything about her whole life and He was completely in love with her no matter her past.

Our story with Jesus is the most life altering power we can share with people however insignificant we think it is. It doesn’t have to be pretty or exceptional to convince our friends and neighbors of God’s love and goodness it just needs to be fresh and honest, raw and unrefined, simple and beautiful. This is not to undermine what Jesus continually does in terms of powerful encounters when he heals the sick, raised the dead, or feed the multitude with the smallest amount of bread. Of course Jesus is powerful and a miracle worker feeding multitudes and restoring vision to the blinds. Of course His mission was also to destroy the workings of the enemy and to show how big our God is. But apart from all that, what this story is telling us is what people really hunger for isn’t a deity who can fix everything for them or perform miracles. What is going to transform lives is knowing that this powerful God is more interested to restore the broken, the misfits, the outcasts and the least amongst us then to be demonstrative is power to cause people to bow in fear. The world is desperate for your authentic story.

For this woman, she doesn’t need to hide who she is any longer, as we often do with people around us for fear of rejection. She has met Jesus and through her encounter, and she felt fully exposed and vulnerable and yet fully covered in His love and acceptance. Whatever caused her to live a secluded life far from those who had hurt her in the past is now a beautiful scar inviting people to meet Jesus. She is completely loved and completely accepted. We hide our true self is because we think if people knew what we have been through or what we think or what we have done, it would somehow make them love us less. There is a longing inside of us to be truly seen and truly known and yet fully loved and accepted. Jesus is offering us this kind of relationship, will we accept His invitation?
Painting by  Emmanuel Nsama

Excluded or Included?

Wisdom of a Shepherd Part 5

You can find previous posts here:  part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

 Stories told around the dinner table reveal more about the host, than just a nice conversation piece. 

“Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God, but the love of ego.”— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

 

This is something the guests at the Lord’s table discovered when a group of religious scholars called Him out on the fact that He was eating with people of-not-so uplifting reputations. Among His guests of honor were prostitutes, tax collectors, sinners and mainly all the people that religion deemed lost and unworthy of their attention. Religious scholars would in no way dare to touch a sinner. For them, they saw this as being defiled and ultimately becoming displeasing to the God they served. For them, religion had created a god so austere and indifferent to the plight of humanity that nothing would ever satisfy his Holy self but total undivided service of worship. Only then God would pour out some of His blessings on them as a token of his pleasure, like a treat one gives to a pet for performing a trick . This separation between the profane and the holy was the reason Jesus began to share the parable of the lost sheep.

…….A shepherd on a quest to find a sheep isn’t an anodyne story. It is loaded with symbolisms that did not escape the minds of scholars hearing it. For those who knew the Scriptures by heart, it was a direct quote from a prophetic text written by Ezekiel some six centuries before Jesus. Foreseeing the ineluctable separation that religion ultimately produced, he began writing about wandering sheep gone astray, and shepherds only caring for themselves. Ezekiel brought a scathing rebuke to the leaders of Israel, and the religious elites who should have taken care of the broken people but instead were more concerned about keeping themselves from getting too involved with what they considered problematic sheep. In verse 3 and 4 of chapter 34 we read:

You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. Those who are silly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and with severity you have dominated them. (Ex 34:2-4)

…….Jesus is quite intentional in sharing a parable about a lost sheep. For Him, the disenfranchised sitting at His table were the sickly, the broken, the scattered. They were the ones neglected by the shepherd of Israel that Ezekiel wrote about. As usual, Jesus found a way to pierce the heart of religious leaders. He brought into focus how they had singled out those of questionable reputations, and at the same time He revealed the heart of the true shepherd. One who is concerned for every single one of them to the point of risking his own life to find them. Jesus reminded them that these sheep had been abandoned by the very ones who were called to care for them. If we close our eyes we would almost hear Him say: “Look guys, you dropped the ball on these people and now you are acting all self-righteous by rebuking me for eating with them? Don’t you remember what the Scriptures say about the Good Shepherd? Yes, that’s right, He will go after the lost and the wanderers. So to make it clear, I am the shepherd who goes after the one sheep you deemed worthless.”

Ezekiel puts it this way:

“Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. “As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when his is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered”. And: “I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord God. “I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick.”Ez. 34:12, 15,16 (NASB)”

…….Do you realize what Jesus did with this parable? He didn’t pull any punches. He completely embarrassed the religious leaders by identifying them as bad shepherds and most importantly, He identified Himself as the good shepherd of Ezekiel 34.

…….The God they worshiped was never to mingle with sinners but rather was to be found only in the presence of righteous, pious people. Without perfect behavior, God would not dare come down. It was scandalous to have one who proclaimed to be the son of God sit down with these miscreants. But Jesus doesn’t seem to be concerned. As a matter of fact, He came to unveil centuries of false ideas about Abba. Opinions on how God is to act are but fictions of men’s mind based on disappointment and preconceived ideas based on how we would act if we were gods. Jesus, in his mercy, wants to go to the root of their theology. He wants to break down the walls of religion and let God shine through. The same God they put in a box was now busting their own confined mind and they didn’t like it. There was God eating with sinners and He liked it! This was the first seismic shock to their theology. 

…….What Israel’s past history had done to the image of God was detrimental to the revelation of His heart. All the years in exile had branded their understanding of Him as being a disinterested, distant deity only responsive when people obey every little part of the law. To be fair, our actions have consequences. But to impede our consequences on Him as if God was the one enforcing them would be the equivalent of blaming the ground for breaking your ribs when you tried to impress your wife and decided to jump off a cliff. God is not interested in micromanaging our everyday life and dispensing blessings when we do well and terrible catastrophe when we act silly. He does not withhold His love and affection based on our merit and performance. Even earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more is our Heavenly Father who is so madly in love willing to jump off His high places to join us in our mud puddle?

…….The image of a distant God uninterested with the broken is incongruent with the heart of the Father. The reason Pharisees and the likes kept away from sinners was because they believed sin would corrupt their holiness, and somehow in return God would separate Himself from them. They thought God required perfect obedience and moral rectitude in order to be pleased. And if they separated themselves from the ungodly, it certainly meant that God would do the same. But God was not like them. This is what religion does from the beginning of time, it creates an image of God based on our own image. Have we forgotten that It is not God who is created in our image, but the opposite?

…….Invariably we think God is so turned off by our misconduct that He removes Himself from us. We even go at length to show how much disdain God has for sinners by telling the story of the Garden of Eden when the original couple failed to heed to His voice. We are quick to point out that God kicked them out, but forget that God didn’t stand back in the beauty of Holiness and sterile environment of the Garden. Quite the contrary, He left everything behind and began a long journey of restoration that would climax on a piece of wood millenniums later. If we remove our preconceived ideas of God, and begin to read the narrative with an open heart, The “God too holy” to be in relationship with creation isn’t real. If God was too holy to be close to sin, then the first killing in history at the hands of Cain would be the ultimate repellent to a God who cannot tolerate sin. Yet, He reached out to Cain to converse with him. The reality is that His love for humanity was fully manifested when He came to embrace creation at the cross, His arms stretched opened on the rugged wood to receive all humanity.

 

Nutella and the Cross

…….To better drive this important distinction home, let me share a personal story. White shirts and Nutella do not go well together. This is the discovery I made one morning as I was getting ready to leave for our Sunday service. Feeling fashionable, I decided to wear a nice white button down shirt. As is a custom in our household, my children want a kiss from daddy before stepping out of the door. Sitting at the breakfast table was my twins girls, eating their bagels covered by a generous layer of Nutella. Even though I am a fan of the hazelnut chocolate paste, that particular morning it wasn’t on my list of likes. After all, have you ever tried to remove chocolate stains from a white shirt? Mia couldn’t contain her love for me, and got down from her chair to chase after me for a big ole hug and kiss. The problem was her hands and lips were smeared with chocolate. This was a beautiful sight, I mean a child running for a kiss breaks down every rejection issue any man would ever have.

…….But this particular morning was a little different, I had a white shirt. What was I suppose to do to preserve the pristine whiteness? You guessed it, I pulled away from my incoming chocolate lover, no matter how cute she was. My shirt suddenly became more important than the affection my child asked for, and should have received. After all, I was going to speak about God that morning and I couldn’t possibly allow stains on a white shirt to distract my audience. This is without a doubt what religion has done to the image of the Father. He is so white, so holy that any kind of potential stain would mar His perfect image. We come to believe God is so clean that a little dirt, a little chocolate, a little humanity would have a negative effect on His glory. We think God cannot tolerate stains on His pristine presence. Unlike me and my attempts to protect my white shirt, the Father opened up His arms, lowered Himself down and picked us up while we were still sinners (covered with Nutella) Romans 5:8. The God who keeps His distance from humanity is only real for the religious demands. He is only real for the ones who think they don’t need Him because they washed their hands before approaching Him, but Nutella has never scared God away!

 

What does it mean for us?

So, returning to our story of the lost sheep, what becomes quite evident is that sheep wandered because bad leaders focused their attention on the ones worthy of their attention. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the disenfranchised, the sickly, the broken, the scattered, and the lost.

When people worship rules, they are kept in a state of fear, which keeps people in bondage with thoughts like “If you sin, God will cut you off”. But, if we dare sit at the table with Jesus, what we will encounter is a love that says “even if your life seems worthless and covered in sin, I will never cut you off”. The power that changes us is not the weak restraints of rules, but the overwhelming, disarming power of His love.

this parable isn’t just for the leaders of Israel some two thousand years ago, it is pertinent to us every day. In our quest to be more like Jesus, let us be mindful of who we exclude based on different set of beliefs or behavior, and learn to love outrageously to the point of being excluded for the love we show.

Next we will look at what it means to go after the lost sheep.