From the Daily Lectionary for Monday in the Second Week of Lent
John 4:27-42
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
We need some context here. In the preceding verses Jesus has been having a conversation with a Samaritan woman who has come to a well for water. Jews don’t associate with Samaritans, nor do male Jews associate with women in public. Jesus tells her that he is “living water.” And before this encounter Jesus has just “cleansed the Temple.” He has driven out the sacrificial animal merchants and money changers, essential for the ritual sacrifice that takes place in the Temple on high feast days. Jesus tells his stunned disciples and the Temple authorities that he will destroy the Temple and build it back in three days. The writer tells us that Jesus was speaking of his raised body. Even our idea of food waxes metaphorical.
In this passage we enter at the end of Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman, who has been converted to following Jesus. All of this is to challenge our allegiances to the status quo, to institutionalism, to tradition, to social practice. It is about breaking boundaries into new insight, despite the way things have always been done. It is about liberation.
Instead of a Temple of stone being the house of God, the raised body of Jesus becomes God’s dwelling place, which means, according to John’s theology, that those who follow Jesus bear God’s life as well. I would say that to be human is to bear God’s life. We do not come to God, God comes to us. Jesus breaks the taboo of consorting with the stranger… more than stranger, an enemy, and even accepts Samaritan hospitality. All the boundaries are being broken.
God is always on the move, not limited by the hardened stones of institution, nor by our xenophobic prisons. God’s love is all-embracing, drawing the world entire to Godself. We would do well to hold lightly our preconceptions, our hallowed paradigms, our fragile institutional knowledge. In God’s world nothing is in stone. God is improvising creation into being. Possibility is ever before us. Love will break the boundaries of our blindness, and love will help us see.
A Prayer for Self-Dedication (BCP p. 832)
Eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
