By Jerry Harris
When I was a kid, I led two separate lives: I had my school/neighborhood life, and I had my church life. My church life was the best part of me. I loved learning from God’s Word, and I loved the approval of my parents. There was a different standard there for kids and parents. It was safer, more predictable, and more loving. School/neighborhood was a different place with different rules. I learned a lot there too, but it was seldom good. There were different rules, a different language, different expectations and behavior.
Junior high and high school really changed things. Cliques existed in both environments, but it seemed to me as though the school was more honest about it. My church experience began to feel hypocritical with a combination of cliques, judgments, and lifestyles that didn’t match the rhetoric. This led me to start moving away from the church in my sophomore and junior years. In reflection, I was looking for a place where I fit in or could shape myself to fit in, while keeping my foot in the door of church, although it was much more on the side.
College was more of the same. I made many decisions that could have defined me, marking me for life in negative ways. It wasn’t until I had finished two years at Indiana University that I experienced God’s call on my life. It completely reversed my trajectory, returning me to a pursuit of God. I was 20 years old, and my life has never been the same from that moment until now.
Choices that Affect Us
It makes me think about how our lives are affected by our choices or the choices that people around us make. It’s not hard to wonder how, if one of those choices or experiences had gone a different way, it would have affected my life’s direction. We all have a back story, a director’s cut so to speak, and an alternate ending that could have been a single decision away.
Laws of life are much like the laws of physics. Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Then there’s the second law of Thermodynamics that states everything in nature tends toward disorder. Wood rots, metal rusts, our bodies wear out, and with every bad choice, our lives become more and more complicated and out of order. It might be a decision or group of decisions we made, or it might be decisions that others have made that have affected us. We all have a catalog of self-inflicted wounds and wounds inflicted by others or some combination of them, but the result is the same: reactions and disorder. Otherwise known as life!
With these realities in mind, a powerful story from John 4 can be very helpful for us. It’s a story about a woman Jesus met at a well in Samaria, a story that has more impact when read as a first-person narrative rather than a third-person account. By that, I mean we understand ourselves a bit more from the perspective of the main character.
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon (John 4:1-6).
The first verse of this narrative is one we might overlook, but it sets up a context to connect the story of the Samaritan woman with the back story of Jesus. Jesus was living under a threat. The Pharisees already hated John the Baptist because he undermined their control. And now here comes someone potentially even more dangerous than John! How do you think that threat affected Jesus? Do you think it affected him at all? The book of John was written to prove that Jesus is God in human form, but that doesn’t take away the fact that he was fully human. Verse 6 lets us know he was tired and thirsty. Sounds pretty human to me! But does that humanity stop him from being fully divine in these upcoming moments?
Jesus Understands
Jesus understands what it’s like to be human. He knows that we make bad choices and often let the choices of others affect us. He just didn’t let it control him. He was there for a divine appointment. John 4:4 says, “Now he had to go through Samaria.” He “had” to. As a practical matter, he didn’t. Jewish tradition at the time would have dictated that he couldn’t go through Samaria because of the racial hatred between Samaritans and the Jews. There were other routes; he just didn’t them because he knew who would be at the end of the route he chose.
Do you think Jesus has divine appointments today? With you? Do you think he has more important things to attend to than to bother with you? I can assure you that Jesus never, ever misses an appointment and that you are worth every bit as much as the woman in this story. The question is, how have you responded to your divine appointments?
John 4:7-26 describes this divine appointment. Everything about this appointment makes the case that the woman was an outcast. First, she came at noon. Women in this culture would draw water early in the morning for the day. The implication is that she was avoiding the other women living in Sychar. In the conversation, she pointed out the obvious; that she was a woman and Jesus was a man. This also broke with cultural norms as casual, public conversations between people of the opposite sex were taboo. She also pointed out that she was a Samaritan and Jesus was a Jew. This references the 700-year-old hatred between the races. She concluded that she wasn’t worthy to talk with Jesus—at least not in her own mind. She didn’t even fit in with her own people. The reason for that becomes obvious as the story unfolds.
We really don’t get an answer as to the “why” of her back story. Maybe it was her choices or maybe the choices of others, but more than likely it was a combination of choices that put her life into reaction and disorder. This is why I think we need to read this as a first-person narrative. She could be any of us!
In any case, Jesus faced an array of defense mechanisms. If we go back to physics, I’m reminded of Newton’s first law of motion: an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Whatever our lives look like, we tend to protect them from change, even though change is what we need the most. We get used to not fitting in.
What’s in Your Jar?
Now read John 4:27-30. This is my favorite part of the story. The woman left her water jar. You see, that was the whole point of her being there, at least from her point of view. She needed water for the day, and she wanted to get it while avoiding conflict. How much of our lives are spent just filling up water jars? A better question is, “What are you trying to fill your jar with?” I’ve seen people put forth so much effort to fill their lives with things they really don’t need. I’ve seen them sell out those things for the next jar of water. Is it time to leave the water jar behind and capture something much greater?
The second thing I see is the miraculous way Jesus turned her tragedy into her testimony. Her past didn’t change, but her attitude toward it changed completely. She had plenty to be ashamed of, but there was now something greater than the shame, greater than the circumstance, that fit her into God’s plan of the ages. He can and will do the same for us. I wonder what tragedies in our lives Jesus can turn into testimonies.
Now this is where I’m taking you in the law of giving and receiving.
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. 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” (John 4:39-42).
This divine appointment began with a woman far from God, but it didn’t end with only her finding faith. We leave the story with a whole town finding faith in Jesus! While the Samaritan woman’s faith is a great part of this story, Jesus has something even greater in mind. Why? Because Jesus is better than you thought. What are we seeing? Faith becomes real when the ownership shifts from the giver to the receiver. It wasn’t her faith anymore, it was theirs. That’s what Jesus does. He writes a new story for everyone that faith in him touches.
“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” (John 4:35).
Just look around you. The harvest is right there.
Jerry Harris is publisher of Christian Standard.
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