I think I have a new insight on this passage…and it changes my perspective on the importance of living the Christian life.
We’ve heard this story before, and even it it’s new to you, it’s right there waiting to be read. You probably already know the most salient parts of the account: the Samaritans were offensive to the Jews, women were second class and women who had questionable lifestyles were even more despised. No self respecting Rabbi would allow himself to be photographed in this situation. The most important part of the account is when Jesus confesses to this woman that He is the Son of God, the Messiah, the One who will rescue all mankind. “Salvation is from the Jews” Jesus proclaims. Since Jesus is God’s own Son, that means all other religions from different heritages are now excluded.
We’ve heard this story before, and even it it’s new to you, it’s right there waiting to be read. You probably already know the most salient parts of the account: the Samaritans were offensive to the Jews, women were second class and women who had questionable lifestyles were even more despised. No self respecting Rabbi would allow himself to be photographed in this situation. The most important part of the account is when Jesus confesses to this woman that He is the Son of God, the Messiah, the One who will rescue all mankind. “Salvation is from the Jews” Jesus proclaims. Since Jesus is God’s own Son, that means all other religions from different heritages are now excluded.
I see two things happening here: 1. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit has insight (a word of knowledge) beyond what a normal human can have. He not only can see the future, He can see what has happened in the past, what has happened behind closed doors. He knows what people are thinking as well. This sort of knowledge can only come by divine revelation. Since Jesus is the model of the perfectly surrendered human life, his abilities, character and habits are indicative of the life that is available to us. We cannot be Jesus, and we cannot fulfill His mission: but we can exhibit in our human bodies the same spiritual characteristics and power. But how?
2. I think part of the answer comes from the discussion about bread. We know that food sustains us and makes us stronger. If you don’t eat, you grow weaker and faint. Jesus and his traveling partners had run out of supplies, so they went into town to purchase some bread. “Ya gotta eat” right? I’m not thinking about how uncomfortable they must have felt buying bread from Samaritans, I’ll leave that for another time.
I’m thinking about Jesus’ words when the returned with food. “I have bread you know nothing about”. Jesus knew of a way to be sustained from spiritual sources of supply that the disciples couldn’t even conceive of. I believe that Jesus was trying to demonstrate something to His disciples here. Obedience to the Father is the real way to sustain the body, both spiritually and physically. I think that we receive the energy we need to live the ordinary Christian life by obeying the will of the Father. If we don’t obey, then we may pack our bodies full of physical food but we will still be weak.
If we as the Church want to operate in the power and gifts of the Spirit, then we must be obedient to the Spirit’s leading. And we must align ourselves to the mission of the Father and the Son as well. Jesus was filled with power because He aligned Himself, not because He was “God”. Of course, He was, and is God, but in human form His whole life was an example of what the fully surrendered disciple should look like.
Perhaps the Church is lacking in the spiritual gifts and our witness in the community is weak because we haven’t been doing the things Jesus told us to do…the things He did himself. More specifically, we need to speak up, share our testimony, go out of our way to share the Good News with people who are not like us…even considered “offensive” to our way of living.
I believe when we begin to step out of our comfortable position outside the limelight, when we leave the place where we can believe without speaking up or drawing attention to ourselves, we will begin to experience God’s power flowing through us in ways that we never experienced before.
We will find strength, wisdom and abilities available to us that we never considered possible.
Excited for the journey,
PR