A cinquain on unconditional love:

Unconditional Love

Non-Judgmental, Accepting

Surprising, Overwhelming, Joyful

Speaking, Trusting, Respecting, Listening

Life-Changing

That’s one of the poems participants wrote during our Monday night Lenten Series this week. I had just flown in from Chicago, where I spent the weekend with my extended family celebrating my much-older sister’s 50^th birthday. I really love being with my family. It’s safe and familiar and I consider my brother and sisters to be among my best friends in the world– something I know not to take for granted. They know me very well, but I’m not sure they are necessarily the people who know me best. Sometimes it is not with family and friends but with relative strangers that we reveal important parts of our identity. There are often parts of who we are that we are not able to disclose to those closest to us, but are drawn out by those most unlike us.

       That has certainly been true in my own life. I have learned important things about who I am away from home, among people not like me: As an exchange student in Mexico in high school, as an adult working in the inner-city. That’s why I think cross-cultural experiences are so important– they not only expand our horizons, they help us know who we are.

       So I am struck, in this story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, how these two strangers tell each other the truth. In the Gospel of John, this is the first person he has told “I am the messiah.” Here he is for several months traveling around with people from his own family and tribe, and he does not tell them. When he goes to his home town and preaches in the synagogue, they nearly throw him off a cliff. Yet sitting here beside a well, deep inside Samaritan territory, this is where Jesus decides to say, “I am he.”

       And the Samaritan woman is not just a stranger, she is just about as far outside his known world as Jesus could have gone. They should not even have been in Samaria. Jews and Samaritans did not have relations with one another. Most Jewish travelers would have taken a circuitous route to avoid traveling through Samaria in the first place. He certainly had no business asking for a drink of water. To drink water from a Samaritan well would have made a Jew unclean. And speaking to a woman alone in public would have been utterly prohibited, which is why the disciples are so astonished. Yet it is here, in this encounter, in this setting, with this woman, that Jesus first says, “I am he.” It was something about this encounter with her that drew it out of him.

       Another cinquain on unconditional love:

Unconditional Love

Acceptance, Revelation

Admiration, Surprise, Faith

Telling truth, sharing self

Messiah

O f course, it was not just Jesus who told the truth. The woman also reveals herself. I have no husband, she tells Jesus. That’s right, Jesus responds, you’ve had five husbands, and the one you are with now is not your husband. Many commentators have read into this some sort of moral taint, but you sense no judgement in Jesus’ response. It is one of the characteristics of the gospels that when Jesus encounters someone, he responds to them as a unique individual. He sees them for who they really are, and yet loves them fully. The woman tells him the truth, and we can only speculate on what that truth might imply. As Brian Stoffregen writes, what if each of those marriages ended when the husband died? She would have buried five husbands, gone through five funerals, suffered pain and loss in her life too great for her to commit herself in marriage to another man. Maybe this is why she comes to the well alone. Her pain is too great to talk about it with anyone else.

       Or what if each of those marriages ended when an abusive husband got tired of her and threw her out of the house and divorced her? What if she had spent her life being victimized by these men and then was discarded like yesterday’s trash? Maybe she had become so distrustful of marriage that she wouldn’t go through the ritual with another man. Could the bruises on her body keep her from associating with other people? Could the terror in her mind keep her from talking to anyone about her suffering? Is that why she is alone?

       We don’t know, of course. All we know from the story is that she leaves the encounter with Jesus saying, “He told me everything I have ever done.”

       Another cinquain on unconditional love:

Unconditional Love

Engagement, Acceptance

Grateful, Joyful, Forgiven

Engage, Ask, Answer, Receive

Grace

O f course, the woman doesn’t just keep this to herself, she goes and tells the entire city. She is not only the first person to whom Jesus reveals his true identity, she is the first evangelist. Come and see the person who told me everything I have ever done. The problem with most churches, someone once commented, is that Jesus called us to be fishers of people, but we expect the fish to just jump in the boat without our having to expend any energy to catch them. The disciples go in to town, but come back alone. The woman returns with a crowd of people. Despite what Jesus has said to her, she does not entirely understand who he is. “He can’t be the messiah, can he?” Yet this Samaritan woman– whom he has just met, who misunderstands much of what he says– brings more people to Jesus than his own disciples. She does so with words that are simple and direct: Come and see.

       We don’t know if Jesus’ encounter with this woman helped him establish his identity or just drew it out of him. We do know that her encounter with Jesus left her transformed. She didn’t come to the well that day to see Jesus. She wasn’t seeking the messiah. An innocent conversation about water suddenly became something more. One minute they’re talking about well water, and the next minute they’re talking about “living water.” One moment they are strangers, and the next moment Jesus is the one who “told me everything I have ever done.” Like a deep well, they draw things out of each other, and pretty soon she is responding to a need she didn’t even know she had. Sir, give me some of this water, she asks.

       Isn’t that how it is in the life of faith? Our encounter with Jesus draws out needs within us that we previously did not even know we had. The more we worship, the more we thirst for God’s presence. The more we come to the table, to more we recognize our true hunger. The more we know about Jesus, the more we know about ourselves. In him we still encounter the one who can tell us everything we have ever done.

       Another cinquain on unconditional love:

Unconditional Love

Acceptance, Trust

Self-knowledge, self-esteem, self-love

Asking, Knowing, Believing, Telling

Wholeness

I suppose the question is, if we’re not inviting people to church, if we’re not telling people about our encounter with Jesus, why not? Do we have no story to tell? What would it take for us to take up the woman’s mantle and simply say, “Come and see”? The townsfolk come initially because of her testimony. She beckons them because of her encounter with Jesus. They stay because of their own encounter. When the Samaritans came to him, John tells us, they asked him to stay, which he did, 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.” Which means that is not our job to bring people to faith, only to invite them into an encounter, to “Come and see.” The rest is up to Jesus.

       Another cinquain on unconditional love:

Unconditional Love

Courage, Acceptance

Hope, Joy, Excitement

Telling others about the message

Faith

✞

© 2008 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel