John 4 March 23
My mother was raised in a coal company town in Pennsylvania. I got her to write to our daughters about what Monday wash day wa slike. Mostly she wrote of hauling water. Her job was to lug the water from the shared pump to the kitchen. then it had to be loaded on to the coal stove for the water to heat and for different containers to be used for washing rinsing, final rinses with something called bluing. You did not waste water in our house, as the memory of all of that sheer work stayed with her.
This long story in John may well speak for itself, but I do wish to touch on a few points.John continues to have fun with folks who take the words of jesus at a basic physical level and refuse to move up into a spiritual plane.
We often imagine here as an ancient multi-married Elizabeth Taylor, but recall that divorce was the male prerogative. Either she is widowed many times over or she has been sent away over and over and now is in social and legal limbo.
She reminds me a bit of Eve as she has this theological discussion with the crusher of the serpent, Jesus.the famous promise of living water is prompted by her drawing water. what does running, living water mean? My immediate reaction is to think of the polluted water in West VIrginia after another chemical spill that poisons and fouls that most precious of natural commodities.
As a biblical type scene, this is a place for a marriage to emerge. Here a different sort of spiritual union is formed. Instead of a marriage, they exchange a most intimate connection, a religious discussion. Notice how Jesus engages her as a full discussion partner at a time when men and women were not to speak openly in public as in radical Islamic society.Just as Jesus was using a physical image with Nicodemus, we hear it again from the woman. She too gets stuck on the water in the well and loses its spiritual import.she would love running water, instead of having to haul it from a well back and forth.
Jesus certainly found this foreign woman who lived a life of real struggle worthy to have a discussion with him, just as he just had a discussion with a leading religious figure, Nicodemus, even if we are not graced with her name. perhaps that is to draw us into her story, to draw us into conversation with Jesus, to realize that Jesus sees us as worthy of dialogue and respect as well.After all, in Communion we do claim a union with Christ.
At Massah and meribah, the question lingers, Is God among us or not? Is God in samaria or Jerusalem? Nothing separate sus us from God as much as hard times and religious quarreling.Here we are in the midst of spiriutal living, life giving water.At the end of the story in Exodus, the peopel get all the water they need. At the end of our story in John, we have a se ort of wedding feast,as the whole community gets involved in spirit and truth. she is not certain. In Greek she expects a negative answer-this cannot be the Messiah? Nicodemus is impressed with signs,and she is impressed with the knowledge that Jesus has on her life. Still, Jesus offers her the living water, even given the highs and lows of her past. No matter the highs and lows of our pasts, Jesus looks past all that to the treasures within each one of us. jesus looks to a bright future of a deeper, richer, fuller life that moves far past any physical deprivations. No matter who we are, where we come from, jesus welcomes us with wide open arms.
No comments:
Post a Comment