Encountering Christ

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
-John 4:7-9

Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well and transformed how she saw herself.  She saw herself as lesser than the Jewish man who was asking her for a drink of water.  Jesus didn’t see her ethnicity or gender as an obstacle to his engaging her in conversation.  He wanted more than just a drink of water, he wanted to free her from those confines in her own mind as well.

Later in the conversation Jesus told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”  She claims not to have a husband and is surprised to hear Jesus proclaim that he knows about her past and five husbands she had and the one she is now with is not hers.  The fact that Jesus knew her past was shocking to her but also revealed the fact that he was a prophet, so she asked Jesus where they should worship?  Jesus told her it wasn’t WHERE that mattered, but HOW, “A time has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) is coming.”  Jesus tells her that he is the one that was to come.  This is the first declaration of Jesus to another person that he is the Messiah.  She becomes the first apostle and shares her encounter with Christ with everyone in her town.  She has seen herself in a new way.  No longer trapped by her past, no longer shamed by her community, she has encountered Christ and is freed from the pain and shame of her life.

What is an obstacle in your life to that encounter with Jesus?  What from your past is keeping you from seeing yourself fully?  God wants us to worship in spirit and in truth.  God wants our hearts.

God, sometimes you work too slowly for us.  We want something we can see, something we can do now, something quick and easy. So we turn our eyes toward “the way it’s always been” and we try to re-create the days when everything was simple and good.  But you call us to hear your promise of a future with hope, a promise we can’t understand, or see—a promise for which we must wait and look and work.  Forgive us our impatience with mystery and promises, and turn our eyes toward your future.
Lead us, Lord, to walk your way on any road we travel.  Amen.