St. John
4:26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak
to you am he”.
Mom loved
her God and her Bible. She held the
family record for reading the Bible cover to cover, certainly much more than
this her second son. She was a lonesome
reader, listening on a very personal level, intent on making another connection
with our ultimate reality and of that fact the family had no doubt. The Bible was her life, her love and her
solace.
Mom owned
and read almost every version of the Bible but she resorted to larger and
larger giant print editions in her later years.
I believe she quit living when she could no longer live within the pages
of this book, as she had done for a lifetime.
A tape recording of the words of the Bible were not the same as the
book. The doctors will have a different
tale but they only deal in reports and numbers.
While
sorting out her stuff, I came across one of her Bibles, a regular book bound
study Bible with a paper jacket. The back paper jacket flap opened this Bible
to page 1261, the Gospel of St. John, Chapter four. This was the last point of
reference for Mom in this Bible or it was the most significant passage that she
reread time and time again. Either way,
it is these words of Jesus that were underlined in red and yellow, “I who speak
to you am he.”
In comedic
terms, this was the punchline of a conversation between a woman drawing water
from a Samaritan well and Jesus. The
entire conversation is fascinating but this punch line and the outrageous claim
that it contains will change the world.
Jesus for the first and only time, clearly identifies himself as the
Messiah, the long hoped for person, king or prophet who would rescue the people
of Israel from centuries of interference and occupation by peoples beyond their
borders. This was the Messianic hope of
the Jewish people that would hopefully soon or at least someday, usher in a reconstituted
Israel.
But wait,
the question needs to be asked, why is Saint John the only biblical writer to
record this conversation between Jesus and the woman at the Samaritan
well? Why does Jesus avoid making this
claim in Jerusalem or in his hometown of Nazareth? Why does Jesus, according to John, reveal his
Messianic identity to the Samaritan woman at the well and not his most faithful
disciples? The only possible answer to
these questions is that the popularly understood Jewish definition of the Messiah at the time of Jesus was short sighted or just plain wrong. The prophets foretold of a Messiah that would bring spiritual freedom and political freedom but they are silent about when each would happen. Mom would not have lived within in the pages
of this book if the book was solely about a political Messiah. The politics would arrive for the Jewish people two thousand years after Jesus.
Every God
idea before the time of Jesus was founded upon the differences between
peoples. This does not mean that God recognized
these differences, it means only that it is easy for we humans to assume that
our God is one of our own. Jesus asks
the Samaritan women for a drink of water that she draws from the well. In verse 9 of chapter 4, the woman asks, “How
is it that you, being a Jew, asks a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans.” Though the Samaritan and
the Jew had a shared religious history, at the time of Jesus, the Jew
considered the religion of the Samaritan inferior, almost a gutter religion and
according to the Jew every Samaritan deserved shunning.
When the
disciples returned to the well they were surprised to see Jesus and the woman
in conversation. Considering how the
Greek word meaning surprise or marvel is used by St. John elsewhere in his
gospel, surprise may not adequately convey their reaction. Astonishment or shock that leaves one
speechless may more accurately describe their feelings. The disciples could not understand why Jesus
would bother to give her, or any Samaritan, the time of day. We can only imagine their anxiety when the
town comes out to meet Jesus and the travelers are welcomed into the Samaritan
town and Jesus stays two whole days. Can
you imagine, knowing the racial prejudice that the disciples carried, sitting around and listening to Jesus share with the Samaritans for
two days. Surely, Jesus was expanding upon his conversation with the woman at the
well. One might ask, were the disciples
listening to the words Jesus? What did
the disciples do during those two days?
We are
not told for the disciples will remain followers of Jesus but stuck in their Jewish
religious mindset with their limited and comfortable understanding of the Messiahship
of Jesus. A stuck mind is the normal
human condition for all of us, it is exceedingly difficult for a stuck mind to
break free and really listen. The
understandings that we have learned from childhood, taught to us by succeeding
generations, have such great power over us. Religion is one of those understandings. A stuck
mind will not listen and every religion trades in stuck minds.
What will it take for the disciples to break
free .... a cross?
G.Goslaw
Landers, CA
