Coloring outside the lines
Commentary
(Dr. Foster R. McCurley has had a distinguished career as St. John's Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. In addition to his career as a pastor, seminar leader, and international lecturer and consultant, he has written numerous books and articles and is currently the Theologian-in-Residence of Tressler Lutheran Services, LSS of South Central PA and LutherCare.)
We are often criticized for insisting that children color their pictures by scrupulously staying within the lines. The attack often comes from those who consider such discipline to thwart creativity and expression. Insisting on adherence to the rules produces like-minded people, but interesting things happen, they say, when the rules are broken.
We all have different personalities, of course, and we all respond in different ways to coloring within or outside the lines. I myself had always been meticulous about staying within the lines when I received a new coloring book. Yet I love to listen to the music of Ray Charles, because for me he sings "outside the lines."
Perhaps there is a bit of ambivalence about the lines. On some matters many of us will be particular, and on others we will cherish some creativity. Our lessons for today challenge us to decide which side of the line we are on when it comes to an understanding of the gospel and the identity of Jesus.
Exodus 17:1-7
There is good news and bad news in the first seven verses of Exodus 17.
First the good news. The people of Israel had entered the wilderness, actually the desert, at 15:22 following the miracle at the Reed Sea. Their first experience was the one we would expect of a few hours in the desert: thirst. Because of the extremely low humidity combined with the heat of the sun, the body can dehydrate quickly. They arrived at a place called Marah -- so named because the water was "bitter" -- and so the people began a response that literally became proverbial: "they murmured against Moses" (v. 24). Their murmuring sent Moses running to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree that, when thrown into the water, turned the bitter water to sweet, and the people drank.
Our pericope repeats the need for water, their murmuring against Moses, his crying to the Lord, and the Lord's miraculous way of providing for this necessity of life. Here we have some additional pieces that add to the drama. The NRSV tells us "the people quarreled with Moses" (v. 2) over the obvious need for water. That translation puts the matter lightly, because the Hebrew word means "contend with" and is used in court cases for "file suit against" someone. Moses defended himself somewhat by indicating the people are really contending with the Lord, even testing him, but the people hold Moses responsible for getting them into this predicament, even accusing him of bringing them out of the land of Egypt "to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst" (v. 3).
After his usual flight to the Lord, Moses was instructed to take some of the leaders of the people with him to a designated spot. There he struck a rock with the same rod with which he had split the Nile, and out flowed water for the people to drink. Again the Lord had provided for their needs. On this occasion, however, an interesting, even unusual, piece is added. The Lord promised, "I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb" (v. 6). We readers are not told that Moses or any of the elders saw the Lord standing on the rock, but because that rock was the one which gave the water, we can assume the divine point was to ensure that Moses at the very least recognize the source of the water is not the rock itself but the Lord who is ever present on their journey.
Now for the bad news. In spite of the gift of the Lord to provide for the needs of the people in the desert, the name of the place will forever be Massah and Meribah, that is "Test" and "Quarreling" (or "Contention"), because there the people acted accordingly toward the Lord who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. That proverbial murmuring on the part of the people provided the punch line for this pericope, as it does so many others. Think of it. In the wilderness the people murmured over water, over food, over the menu God provided, over the danger from enemies, eventually over the journey itself. So common was their murmuring in spite of the gracious gifts of the Lord that it became the theme of later psalms, especially Psalm 78.
The punch line notwithstanding, the message of the pericope is that God provided water for the people he had redeemed from their bondage in Egypt. That divine care for the necessities of life has been evident in Scripture from the very first chapters of Genesis where the Lord God provided food, water, and living space for the human beings made in the image of God.
Romans 5:1-11
In chapter 4 the apostle Paul had demonstrated repeatedly that Abraham was justified not by works but by faith and that with Abraham the promise to all is only to faith. He concluded chapter 4 by asserting that the God who raised Jesus from their dead "for our justification" will reckon to us the same kind of faith as righteousness. Now he begins a section that runs through 8:39 about the reality of the righteousness of faith as Christian freedom.
Paul ties our pericope to the previous announcement about God's justifiying us in Christ with the use of the word "therefore." On the basis of that gift of justification "by faith," he begins by spelling out the present benefits of that divine gift. First, we have at present "peace with God." It is a peace, Paul will say on another occasion, that surpasses all understanding, a peace that exists even in the midst of trials and tribulations. In fact, it is a peace that is ours even in sufferings. This peace is a key theme throughout the epistle. Prior to our pericope Paul uses "peace from God" as a Christian greeting (1:7); at 2:10 peace, along with glory and honor, is given to people who do good; and at 3:17, a quotation from Isaiah 59:7-8, "the way of peace" is not known to the unrighteous. Following our pericope, at 8:6 peace and life are the result of setting one's mind on the Spirit; at 14:17 peace, along with righteousness and joy, constitutes the kingdom of God; at 14:19 peace and mutual upbuilding are the goals of the Christian community; at 15:13 peace and joy are the gifts of God that enable the Christian to abound in hope; and at 15:33 and 16:20 peace is a characteristic of God. The role our pericope plays in the development of this theme is obvious: we experience peace with God here and now as a consequence of God's justification.
Second, we can "rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God" (v. 2). "Hoping against hope" was the basis of Abraham's belief that he would become the father of many nations (Romans 4:18), and "sharing the hope of Abraham" (4:16) is the means by which God guarantees the promise to others. The connection between faith and hope is defined later by Paul when he writes that hope is the opposite of what we see here and now (8:24-25; cf. Hebrews 11:1 on faith). In our passage the hope God gives us as a result of justification is that of sharing the glory of God over against all that we see and experience in the present time -- the sufferings, the decay, the disharmony.
So powerful is this hope that it will enable us to "boast in our sufferings." Boasting was not often recommended by Paul. In fact, those who boast in the law dishonor God when they break the law (2:17, 23; cf. 3:27). On the other hand, "in Christ Jesus I have reason to boast of my work for God," Paul writes, because of the grace of God that called him to be an apostle (15:17). Here the opportunity to "boast in our sufferings" must have come as quite a shock to the readers, because in their time suffering was often considered to be a curse from God. To boast in suffering implies a completely different perspective, one that sees in suffering the opportunity to grow in endurance, and in enduring the development of character, and "character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." This new perspective is possible because of God's love that "has been poured into our hearts," literally becoming part of our being.
People of faith find solace here in the midst of their suffering. However, when I hear these words quoted from someone suffering physically or emotionally, I find that they often stop short of Paul's development of the theme. The suffering person will usually talk about endurance and character but stop before the development into hope and, more important, the love of God as the basis for hope in the face of suffering. I also hear people using these words with the implication that God has brought this suffering in order to build endurance and character. This passage, however, does not attribute the suffering we experience to God. Rather Paul teaches here what God does with suffering once we have been endowed with God's peace and can hope in sharing God's glory.
Having spelled out some of the present blessings of justification, Paul moves toward the future blessing to which we can look forward. Emphasizing that Christ died for us while we were "still weak," "ungodly," and "sinners," Paul announces that blessing yet to come: "will we be saved through him from the wrath of God" (v. 9), "will we be saved by his life" (v. 10). While at 8:24 Paul speaks of salvation as a present gift, here he uses salvation as the future benefit of present reconciliation. On this basis, when someone stops you on the street and asks, "Are you saved?" the appropriate answer is, "Not yet. But I am justified and reconciled to God."
Of that gift "we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ...."
John 4:5-42
The omission of the first four verses of chapter 4 eliminates the context for the story that follows. Jesus had left Judea and was journeying through Samaria toward Galilee because he learned that the Pharisees had heard he and his disciples were baptizing more disciples than John and his disciples (see 3:22-24). Why this rumor would cause Jesus to travel to Galilee is not completely clear, but the readers of the Gospel of John have the word "baptizing" blinking before them as they read about Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well in Sychar.
This long pericope contains many issues for discussion. We will focus here on four: the unlikely partner Jesus chose for the conversation, the living water, the two mountains, and the statements about Jesus' identity.
The issue of the identity of Jesus' conversation partner is raised by the partner in verse 9. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" The first issue, of course, is the fact that this partner in conversation is a woman. In light of our own history of the past two or three decades, the gender issue might slip by some younger readers. But in former days, especially in Jesus' own day, it was unheard of for a rabbi to talk with a woman. The reality of the day is highlighted by the reaction of the disciples when they returned from their grocery shopping in the city: "They marveled that he was talking with a woman ..." (v. 27). Certainly what Jesus did in terms of bringing women into the community of faith was staggering to his own culture but entirely consistent with what he knew of the creation of male and female "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:26). John will later report that "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus" (11:5) and that it was the woman Mary Magdalene who discovered the empty tomb and to whom the resurrected Jesus first spoke (20:1, 11-17).
Equally perplexing to the woman in Sychar was that Jesus, a Jew, would ask a drink of water from a Samaritan. The Samaritans had developed as a separate group of non-kosher folks with whom the Jews did not associate. Luke's Parable of the Good Samaritan and other stories involving Samaritans in the New Testament demonstrate how Jesus was breaking down these barriers, too, on the basis of his knowledge of God's love for the whole world. To receive a drink of water from such a person would have been unheard of for a Jew. Yet the occasion of the water from the well provided the occasion for Jesus' teaching about living water.
Consistent with the first lesson's understanding that God provided water to the people in the wilderness in order to sustain them on their journey, Jesus here acknowledges the importance of the well from which the city dwellers drew their water. Yet to satisfy that thirst people need to return day after day to the well. By contrast, then, Jesus offers the woman "living water" that will cease their thirst forever. "The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life" (v. 14). In one sense Jesus is drawing upon imagery from the Old Testament. At Jeremiah 2:13 the Lord speaks of himself as "the fountain of living waters" and laments that the people of Israel have forsaken him, hewing out cisterns for themselves. In another sense, Jesus is offering the woman the gift of himself, probably in John's theology the gift of baptism for eternal life.
What is striking about this gift of water "that I may never be thirsty" is that it occurs solely in John's Gospel. Also unique to John's Gospel are the words of Jesus from the cross, "I thirst" (19:28). Only by becoming thirsty for us could Jesus ensure the living water that would keep us from thirsting again. Such is the water with which we are baptized.
As for the two mountains, the woman assumed that, as a Jew, Jesus insisted on worshiping in Jerusalem and refused to allow the legitimacy of the Samaritan worship at Mount Gerizim, hovering above Sychar. Interestingly, both Mount Zion and Mount Gerizim are considered to be "the navel of the earth" in the Old Testament, and so both qualify as holy mountains. Yet, typical of this evangelist's Jesus, the sacredness of places is replaced by the holiness of the person Jesus. "The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ... when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth ..." (vv. 21, 23). God is spirit, and any reader of John's Gospel will discover that Jesus himself is the truth. This is the nature of worship in the kingdom.
Now the matter of Jesus' identity. Following Jesus' teaching about the new worship, the woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." And Jesus answered surprisingly, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you" (vv. 25-
26). The response is surprising because Jesus only rarely admits to the title Messiah or Christ. Only in Matthew's version of the discussion about who people think Jesus is does Jesus admit to Peter's confession that he is "the Messiah, the son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). Only in Mark's version of the trial before the Jewish leaders does Jesus answer "I am" to the high priest's question, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" (Mark 14:61-62). Now here Jesus identifies himself as Messiah to the woman at Sychar's well.
The title Messiah, however, is given a new twist as the pericope comes to a conclusion. When the Samaritans from the city came out at the woman's excited invitation to see and hear Jesus for themselves, many came to believe in him. While coming out to see the Christ, they called him "the Savior of the world." Clearly the Christ they confessed Jesus to be was not the Messiah of the Synoptic Gospels who came to the house of Israel. This Jesus, the one talking to the Samaritan woman -- of all people -- and now to Samaritans of the city, presented to them a much larger version of good news: he was "the Savior of the world."
We might expect such a big picture coming from John's Gospel. After all he was the one who told us that the one who had become flesh to dwell among us was the Word that existed from the beginning, who was God, the one through whom all things came into being. John was the evangelist who reported Jesus saying to Nicodemus that "God so loved the world ..." Even though the world was at present ruled by the evil one, it was God's world, and to the world God sent his Son, and to the world his Son sent the church (John 17).
These and many more issues arise in this pericope. Simply because Jesus chose to speak with a Samaritan woman, the whole world looks different. That is what happens when someone dares color outside the lines.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
[Dr. Elizabeth Achtemeier, an ordained Presbyterian minister and Adjunct Professor of Bible and Homiletics at Union Theological Seminary, is known throughout the United States and Canada as a preacher, lecturer, and writer. She is the author of twenty books and frequently contributes to church publications.)
Exodus 17:1-7
Israel is underway in this story, as the church is underway. Israel's story is our story. She has been redeemed out of slavery in Egypt, just as we have been redeemed by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ out of our slavery to sin and death. And now, like Israel, you and I are making our way through the wilderness toward a promised land of rest. We are midway between our redemption and our final salvation in the Kingdom of God. The goal toward which we press lies out there ahead of us (cf. Philippians 3:12), as the promised land lay out ahead of Israel.
But as we journey on this pilgrimage of ours toward our final salvation, surely we like Israel find ourselves in a desolate and forbidding wilderness. Israel was threatened by heat and thirst, hunger and scorpions and jackals. We in our comfortable lifestyle know none of those things. But we do know fear of illness and death, don't we -- fear of disrupted loves and disappointments in relationships; fear of violence and terrorists, of crime and sudden calamities, of a world that has lost all sense of good and that is plunging into chaos? And in the midst of our own private and corporate wildernesses, we are like the Israelites -- we look for someone to blame.
It is notable in our text that Israel, despite all of the wonders of the exodus that she has experienced from God's hands, directs her eyes solely to the human realm. She blames Moses for her difficulties. He has led her out of slavery into her difficulties. He is blamed for her thirst and privation. His purpose is to kill the adults and children and cattle. He is at fault. Here is a people who has been delivered from the pursuing troops of the Pharaoh and led safely on dry land through the Reed Sea, not by Moses' power but by God's. Here is a folk who has been guarded at front and rear by God's protection in pillar of fire and cloud. Here is a company that has been delivered into a foretaste of "the glorious liberty of the children of God." And yet, when she faces renewed dangers, she forgets all God has done, and considers her fate to be entirely in the hands of a human being.
We are very much like that, aren't we? We remain in our vision of life on a human level. Our lives, we think, are in the hands, not of God, but of the politicians, the military, the multinational corporations. Our successes and failures are due to our bosses, our spouses, or yes, to luck or chance. Maybe a teacher misguided us, or our parents didn't raise us right. Maybe we grew up in the wrong kind of environment or were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or just maybe we ourselves have to work a little harder, or learn better how to get along, or read that new "how to" book in order to improve our lot. Our pilgrimage, we think, is a solely human journey, and God has nothing to do with it.
One of the reasons Moses is such a towering figure in the Old Testament, however, is because he knows who is in charge of all life. Moses knows that he is not leading his people. God is. And Moses knows, in the midst of difficulties, to whom to turn. He does not try to justify his leadership or to make excuses for the people's situation. No. Moses prays to God for help in his desperate situation. Moses knows that the Israelites really are questioning not him, but God's guidance. They are putting not him but God to the test.
Moses' cry to God for help is genuine. He does not know what the answer will be to his plea for aid. He himself cannot fathom why God has brought them into such a wilderness situation. He simply, in faith, turns to his Lord whom he knows is always present, because he realizes that we have to do in our wildernesses not just with human beings, but with the Lord who is always with us.
The incredible happening is that for his disobedient people, God supplies their need. If you read through the stories of Israel's wilderness wanderings, you find a continual history of complaint (cf. Exodus 15:22-25; Numbers 11:4-6; 14:1-3; 20:1-13). And yet, God, in the face of all of our complaints, our forgetfulness of him, our lack of trust, supplies his faithless people with water to quench their thirst. And that water is not provided from an unnoticed spring or succulent desert plant, but from a rock, because God is Lord over nature's ways, too, you see. He could send ten plagues upon the enslaving Egyptians and roll back the waters of the Reed Sea. So too, as the Lord of all nature and history, he can bring forth drink from stone. But Moses names the place of that supplying water Massah and Meribah, meaning "proof" and "contention," as the perpetual reminder of the fact that Israel -- and we -- constantly complain in all our difficulties, and never remember with what forgiving mercy we are being supplied by our God.
The final verse of our text says that Israel's question was, "Is the Lord with us or not?" But actually, through most of the story, Israel never even considers that question. She forgets entirely that it is God who is guiding her pilgrimage, despite the fact that Moses early (v. 2) tries to remind her of God's leading. And we, who repeatedly hear in our churches that God is with us and guiding us, seem always to think not of God, but solely of human matters. We remain on our profane and secular level, and never see God's working among us.
May I remind you, then, that God is guiding your individual lives and the life of this church on a pilgrimage toward his good kingdom? That he has redeemed us all out of slavery to sin and death by the sacrifice and resurrection of his Son? And that Jesus Christ has promised that he will be with us always, even to the end of time? We are not alone, good Christians, as we journey through all the difficulties and terrors of our wilderness existence. Jesus Christ goes with us, a front guard and a rear guard, and our Savior always in our midst. And more than that, he tells us that in our time of thirst for good and need for victory over evil and even death, his is the Spirit that can give us water welling up to eternal life (John 4:13-14). "If anyone thirsts," he teaches us in John's Gospel -- if any of you are parched for comfort and guidance, for strength and goodness and love -- "come to me and drink," (John 7:37) our Savior says, and never thirst again.
We are often criticized for insisting that children color their pictures by scrupulously staying within the lines. The attack often comes from those who consider such discipline to thwart creativity and expression. Insisting on adherence to the rules produces like-minded people, but interesting things happen, they say, when the rules are broken.
We all have different personalities, of course, and we all respond in different ways to coloring within or outside the lines. I myself had always been meticulous about staying within the lines when I received a new coloring book. Yet I love to listen to the music of Ray Charles, because for me he sings "outside the lines."
Perhaps there is a bit of ambivalence about the lines. On some matters many of us will be particular, and on others we will cherish some creativity. Our lessons for today challenge us to decide which side of the line we are on when it comes to an understanding of the gospel and the identity of Jesus.
Exodus 17:1-7
There is good news and bad news in the first seven verses of Exodus 17.
First the good news. The people of Israel had entered the wilderness, actually the desert, at 15:22 following the miracle at the Reed Sea. Their first experience was the one we would expect of a few hours in the desert: thirst. Because of the extremely low humidity combined with the heat of the sun, the body can dehydrate quickly. They arrived at a place called Marah -- so named because the water was "bitter" -- and so the people began a response that literally became proverbial: "they murmured against Moses" (v. 24). Their murmuring sent Moses running to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree that, when thrown into the water, turned the bitter water to sweet, and the people drank.
Our pericope repeats the need for water, their murmuring against Moses, his crying to the Lord, and the Lord's miraculous way of providing for this necessity of life. Here we have some additional pieces that add to the drama. The NRSV tells us "the people quarreled with Moses" (v. 2) over the obvious need for water. That translation puts the matter lightly, because the Hebrew word means "contend with" and is used in court cases for "file suit against" someone. Moses defended himself somewhat by indicating the people are really contending with the Lord, even testing him, but the people hold Moses responsible for getting them into this predicament, even accusing him of bringing them out of the land of Egypt "to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst" (v. 3).
After his usual flight to the Lord, Moses was instructed to take some of the leaders of the people with him to a designated spot. There he struck a rock with the same rod with which he had split the Nile, and out flowed water for the people to drink. Again the Lord had provided for their needs. On this occasion, however, an interesting, even unusual, piece is added. The Lord promised, "I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb" (v. 6). We readers are not told that Moses or any of the elders saw the Lord standing on the rock, but because that rock was the one which gave the water, we can assume the divine point was to ensure that Moses at the very least recognize the source of the water is not the rock itself but the Lord who is ever present on their journey.
Now for the bad news. In spite of the gift of the Lord to provide for the needs of the people in the desert, the name of the place will forever be Massah and Meribah, that is "Test" and "Quarreling" (or "Contention"), because there the people acted accordingly toward the Lord who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. That proverbial murmuring on the part of the people provided the punch line for this pericope, as it does so many others. Think of it. In the wilderness the people murmured over water, over food, over the menu God provided, over the danger from enemies, eventually over the journey itself. So common was their murmuring in spite of the gracious gifts of the Lord that it became the theme of later psalms, especially Psalm 78.
The punch line notwithstanding, the message of the pericope is that God provided water for the people he had redeemed from their bondage in Egypt. That divine care for the necessities of life has been evident in Scripture from the very first chapters of Genesis where the Lord God provided food, water, and living space for the human beings made in the image of God.
Romans 5:1-11
In chapter 4 the apostle Paul had demonstrated repeatedly that Abraham was justified not by works but by faith and that with Abraham the promise to all is only to faith. He concluded chapter 4 by asserting that the God who raised Jesus from their dead "for our justification" will reckon to us the same kind of faith as righteousness. Now he begins a section that runs through 8:39 about the reality of the righteousness of faith as Christian freedom.
Paul ties our pericope to the previous announcement about God's justifiying us in Christ with the use of the word "therefore." On the basis of that gift of justification "by faith," he begins by spelling out the present benefits of that divine gift. First, we have at present "peace with God." It is a peace, Paul will say on another occasion, that surpasses all understanding, a peace that exists even in the midst of trials and tribulations. In fact, it is a peace that is ours even in sufferings. This peace is a key theme throughout the epistle. Prior to our pericope Paul uses "peace from God" as a Christian greeting (1:7); at 2:10 peace, along with glory and honor, is given to people who do good; and at 3:17, a quotation from Isaiah 59:7-8, "the way of peace" is not known to the unrighteous. Following our pericope, at 8:6 peace and life are the result of setting one's mind on the Spirit; at 14:17 peace, along with righteousness and joy, constitutes the kingdom of God; at 14:19 peace and mutual upbuilding are the goals of the Christian community; at 15:13 peace and joy are the gifts of God that enable the Christian to abound in hope; and at 15:33 and 16:20 peace is a characteristic of God. The role our pericope plays in the development of this theme is obvious: we experience peace with God here and now as a consequence of God's justification.
Second, we can "rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God" (v. 2). "Hoping against hope" was the basis of Abraham's belief that he would become the father of many nations (Romans 4:18), and "sharing the hope of Abraham" (4:16) is the means by which God guarantees the promise to others. The connection between faith and hope is defined later by Paul when he writes that hope is the opposite of what we see here and now (8:24-25; cf. Hebrews 11:1 on faith). In our passage the hope God gives us as a result of justification is that of sharing the glory of God over against all that we see and experience in the present time -- the sufferings, the decay, the disharmony.
So powerful is this hope that it will enable us to "boast in our sufferings." Boasting was not often recommended by Paul. In fact, those who boast in the law dishonor God when they break the law (2:17, 23; cf. 3:27). On the other hand, "in Christ Jesus I have reason to boast of my work for God," Paul writes, because of the grace of God that called him to be an apostle (15:17). Here the opportunity to "boast in our sufferings" must have come as quite a shock to the readers, because in their time suffering was often considered to be a curse from God. To boast in suffering implies a completely different perspective, one that sees in suffering the opportunity to grow in endurance, and in enduring the development of character, and "character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." This new perspective is possible because of God's love that "has been poured into our hearts," literally becoming part of our being.
People of faith find solace here in the midst of their suffering. However, when I hear these words quoted from someone suffering physically or emotionally, I find that they often stop short of Paul's development of the theme. The suffering person will usually talk about endurance and character but stop before the development into hope and, more important, the love of God as the basis for hope in the face of suffering. I also hear people using these words with the implication that God has brought this suffering in order to build endurance and character. This passage, however, does not attribute the suffering we experience to God. Rather Paul teaches here what God does with suffering once we have been endowed with God's peace and can hope in sharing God's glory.
Having spelled out some of the present blessings of justification, Paul moves toward the future blessing to which we can look forward. Emphasizing that Christ died for us while we were "still weak," "ungodly," and "sinners," Paul announces that blessing yet to come: "will we be saved through him from the wrath of God" (v. 9), "will we be saved by his life" (v. 10). While at 8:24 Paul speaks of salvation as a present gift, here he uses salvation as the future benefit of present reconciliation. On this basis, when someone stops you on the street and asks, "Are you saved?" the appropriate answer is, "Not yet. But I am justified and reconciled to God."
Of that gift "we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ...."
John 4:5-42
The omission of the first four verses of chapter 4 eliminates the context for the story that follows. Jesus had left Judea and was journeying through Samaria toward Galilee because he learned that the Pharisees had heard he and his disciples were baptizing more disciples than John and his disciples (see 3:22-24). Why this rumor would cause Jesus to travel to Galilee is not completely clear, but the readers of the Gospel of John have the word "baptizing" blinking before them as they read about Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well in Sychar.
This long pericope contains many issues for discussion. We will focus here on four: the unlikely partner Jesus chose for the conversation, the living water, the two mountains, and the statements about Jesus' identity.
The issue of the identity of Jesus' conversation partner is raised by the partner in verse 9. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" The first issue, of course, is the fact that this partner in conversation is a woman. In light of our own history of the past two or three decades, the gender issue might slip by some younger readers. But in former days, especially in Jesus' own day, it was unheard of for a rabbi to talk with a woman. The reality of the day is highlighted by the reaction of the disciples when they returned from their grocery shopping in the city: "They marveled that he was talking with a woman ..." (v. 27). Certainly what Jesus did in terms of bringing women into the community of faith was staggering to his own culture but entirely consistent with what he knew of the creation of male and female "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:26). John will later report that "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus" (11:5) and that it was the woman Mary Magdalene who discovered the empty tomb and to whom the resurrected Jesus first spoke (20:1, 11-17).
Equally perplexing to the woman in Sychar was that Jesus, a Jew, would ask a drink of water from a Samaritan. The Samaritans had developed as a separate group of non-kosher folks with whom the Jews did not associate. Luke's Parable of the Good Samaritan and other stories involving Samaritans in the New Testament demonstrate how Jesus was breaking down these barriers, too, on the basis of his knowledge of God's love for the whole world. To receive a drink of water from such a person would have been unheard of for a Jew. Yet the occasion of the water from the well provided the occasion for Jesus' teaching about living water.
Consistent with the first lesson's understanding that God provided water to the people in the wilderness in order to sustain them on their journey, Jesus here acknowledges the importance of the well from which the city dwellers drew their water. Yet to satisfy that thirst people need to return day after day to the well. By contrast, then, Jesus offers the woman "living water" that will cease their thirst forever. "The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life" (v. 14). In one sense Jesus is drawing upon imagery from the Old Testament. At Jeremiah 2:13 the Lord speaks of himself as "the fountain of living waters" and laments that the people of Israel have forsaken him, hewing out cisterns for themselves. In another sense, Jesus is offering the woman the gift of himself, probably in John's theology the gift of baptism for eternal life.
What is striking about this gift of water "that I may never be thirsty" is that it occurs solely in John's Gospel. Also unique to John's Gospel are the words of Jesus from the cross, "I thirst" (19:28). Only by becoming thirsty for us could Jesus ensure the living water that would keep us from thirsting again. Such is the water with which we are baptized.
As for the two mountains, the woman assumed that, as a Jew, Jesus insisted on worshiping in Jerusalem and refused to allow the legitimacy of the Samaritan worship at Mount Gerizim, hovering above Sychar. Interestingly, both Mount Zion and Mount Gerizim are considered to be "the navel of the earth" in the Old Testament, and so both qualify as holy mountains. Yet, typical of this evangelist's Jesus, the sacredness of places is replaced by the holiness of the person Jesus. "The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ... when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth ..." (vv. 21, 23). God is spirit, and any reader of John's Gospel will discover that Jesus himself is the truth. This is the nature of worship in the kingdom.
Now the matter of Jesus' identity. Following Jesus' teaching about the new worship, the woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." And Jesus answered surprisingly, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you" (vv. 25-
26). The response is surprising because Jesus only rarely admits to the title Messiah or Christ. Only in Matthew's version of the discussion about who people think Jesus is does Jesus admit to Peter's confession that he is "the Messiah, the son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). Only in Mark's version of the trial before the Jewish leaders does Jesus answer "I am" to the high priest's question, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" (Mark 14:61-62). Now here Jesus identifies himself as Messiah to the woman at Sychar's well.
The title Messiah, however, is given a new twist as the pericope comes to a conclusion. When the Samaritans from the city came out at the woman's excited invitation to see and hear Jesus for themselves, many came to believe in him. While coming out to see the Christ, they called him "the Savior of the world." Clearly the Christ they confessed Jesus to be was not the Messiah of the Synoptic Gospels who came to the house of Israel. This Jesus, the one talking to the Samaritan woman -- of all people -- and now to Samaritans of the city, presented to them a much larger version of good news: he was "the Savior of the world."
We might expect such a big picture coming from John's Gospel. After all he was the one who told us that the one who had become flesh to dwell among us was the Word that existed from the beginning, who was God, the one through whom all things came into being. John was the evangelist who reported Jesus saying to Nicodemus that "God so loved the world ..." Even though the world was at present ruled by the evil one, it was God's world, and to the world God sent his Son, and to the world his Son sent the church (John 17).
These and many more issues arise in this pericope. Simply because Jesus chose to speak with a Samaritan woman, the whole world looks different. That is what happens when someone dares color outside the lines.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
[Dr. Elizabeth Achtemeier, an ordained Presbyterian minister and Adjunct Professor of Bible and Homiletics at Union Theological Seminary, is known throughout the United States and Canada as a preacher, lecturer, and writer. She is the author of twenty books and frequently contributes to church publications.)
Exodus 17:1-7
Israel is underway in this story, as the church is underway. Israel's story is our story. She has been redeemed out of slavery in Egypt, just as we have been redeemed by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ out of our slavery to sin and death. And now, like Israel, you and I are making our way through the wilderness toward a promised land of rest. We are midway between our redemption and our final salvation in the Kingdom of God. The goal toward which we press lies out there ahead of us (cf. Philippians 3:12), as the promised land lay out ahead of Israel.
But as we journey on this pilgrimage of ours toward our final salvation, surely we like Israel find ourselves in a desolate and forbidding wilderness. Israel was threatened by heat and thirst, hunger and scorpions and jackals. We in our comfortable lifestyle know none of those things. But we do know fear of illness and death, don't we -- fear of disrupted loves and disappointments in relationships; fear of violence and terrorists, of crime and sudden calamities, of a world that has lost all sense of good and that is plunging into chaos? And in the midst of our own private and corporate wildernesses, we are like the Israelites -- we look for someone to blame.
It is notable in our text that Israel, despite all of the wonders of the exodus that she has experienced from God's hands, directs her eyes solely to the human realm. She blames Moses for her difficulties. He has led her out of slavery into her difficulties. He is blamed for her thirst and privation. His purpose is to kill the adults and children and cattle. He is at fault. Here is a people who has been delivered from the pursuing troops of the Pharaoh and led safely on dry land through the Reed Sea, not by Moses' power but by God's. Here is a folk who has been guarded at front and rear by God's protection in pillar of fire and cloud. Here is a company that has been delivered into a foretaste of "the glorious liberty of the children of God." And yet, when she faces renewed dangers, she forgets all God has done, and considers her fate to be entirely in the hands of a human being.
We are very much like that, aren't we? We remain in our vision of life on a human level. Our lives, we think, are in the hands, not of God, but of the politicians, the military, the multinational corporations. Our successes and failures are due to our bosses, our spouses, or yes, to luck or chance. Maybe a teacher misguided us, or our parents didn't raise us right. Maybe we grew up in the wrong kind of environment or were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or just maybe we ourselves have to work a little harder, or learn better how to get along, or read that new "how to" book in order to improve our lot. Our pilgrimage, we think, is a solely human journey, and God has nothing to do with it.
One of the reasons Moses is such a towering figure in the Old Testament, however, is because he knows who is in charge of all life. Moses knows that he is not leading his people. God is. And Moses knows, in the midst of difficulties, to whom to turn. He does not try to justify his leadership or to make excuses for the people's situation. No. Moses prays to God for help in his desperate situation. Moses knows that the Israelites really are questioning not him, but God's guidance. They are putting not him but God to the test.
Moses' cry to God for help is genuine. He does not know what the answer will be to his plea for aid. He himself cannot fathom why God has brought them into such a wilderness situation. He simply, in faith, turns to his Lord whom he knows is always present, because he realizes that we have to do in our wildernesses not just with human beings, but with the Lord who is always with us.
The incredible happening is that for his disobedient people, God supplies their need. If you read through the stories of Israel's wilderness wanderings, you find a continual history of complaint (cf. Exodus 15:22-25; Numbers 11:4-6; 14:1-3; 20:1-13). And yet, God, in the face of all of our complaints, our forgetfulness of him, our lack of trust, supplies his faithless people with water to quench their thirst. And that water is not provided from an unnoticed spring or succulent desert plant, but from a rock, because God is Lord over nature's ways, too, you see. He could send ten plagues upon the enslaving Egyptians and roll back the waters of the Reed Sea. So too, as the Lord of all nature and history, he can bring forth drink from stone. But Moses names the place of that supplying water Massah and Meribah, meaning "proof" and "contention," as the perpetual reminder of the fact that Israel -- and we -- constantly complain in all our difficulties, and never remember with what forgiving mercy we are being supplied by our God.
The final verse of our text says that Israel's question was, "Is the Lord with us or not?" But actually, through most of the story, Israel never even considers that question. She forgets entirely that it is God who is guiding her pilgrimage, despite the fact that Moses early (v. 2) tries to remind her of God's leading. And we, who repeatedly hear in our churches that God is with us and guiding us, seem always to think not of God, but solely of human matters. We remain on our profane and secular level, and never see God's working among us.
May I remind you, then, that God is guiding your individual lives and the life of this church on a pilgrimage toward his good kingdom? That he has redeemed us all out of slavery to sin and death by the sacrifice and resurrection of his Son? And that Jesus Christ has promised that he will be with us always, even to the end of time? We are not alone, good Christians, as we journey through all the difficulties and terrors of our wilderness existence. Jesus Christ goes with us, a front guard and a rear guard, and our Savior always in our midst. And more than that, he tells us that in our time of thirst for good and need for victory over evil and even death, his is the Spirit that can give us water welling up to eternal life (John 4:13-14). "If anyone thirsts," he teaches us in John's Gospel -- if any of you are parched for comfort and guidance, for strength and goodness and love -- "come to me and drink," (John 7:37) our Savior says, and never thirst again.
