Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.
Who do you think Jesus is?
John 4 traces one woman’s progress in discovering who he was?
When Jesus met her at a well and asked her for a drink, she identified him as a strange Jewish male: “Jews like you don’t ask Samaritans like me for a drink” (Jn 4:9).
Unlike her, I often forget that Jesus was a Jew. Born in Palestine in a Jewish family, he grew up honoring the law of Moses, wearing sandals and a robe, going to synagogue. But today he’s my savior, and I see him as a man like me, not someone from a vastly different time and place and culture.
The well where Jesus met this woman was over a thousand years old, dug by Jacob, a father of the Jews. When Jesus offered to give her living water instead of Jacob’s well water, she said, “What are you going on about? You don’t even have a bucket. Are you better at well building than Jacob?” (Jn 4:11).
How’s that for a put-down comparison! Jacob had been famous for two millenia, but who was this newcomer, offering a new source of water in a dry and desert land? But think: it was an apt comparison because Jesus offered something Jacob couldn’t.
John the Baptist heard and accepted Jesus’ big claims by calling him “Lord” – as in “Prepare the way of the Lord” (John 1:23). The woman at the well used the same word, Lord, for Jesus, but my Bible translates it as “sir”, as in “Sir, where can I get this living water?”, or “Sir, give me this water” (John 4:11, 15).
Sir, or Lord, is an interesting word, suitable for John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord. And suitable for a carpenter asking his client, “Sir, do you want a table of olive wood or cedar?”
Store clerks sometimes call me “Sir,” but never “Lord.” I want to tell them, “Sir is a term of respect for people with social status. If you knew my lowly status you wouldn’t call me Sir.”
I think John uses the word as a double entendre. The woman’s respect for this random Jew was slowly growing. Calling him “sir” moves her a step toward “sir” with a capital S, which for her is the same as “Lord” with a capital L.
And finally, when Jesus tells her that true worshippers worship in spirit and truth, she replies, “I don’t understand you, but when Messiah, the Christ, comes, he will explain this stuff clearly.”
And Jesus says, “That’s me.”
What a story. Her estimation of Jesus morphed from random Jew to comparing him to Jacob, to a respectful Sir or Lord, and finally, a glimpse of the Messiah.
In the noonday sun by the well, Jesus led her on a pilgrimage of discovery.
Let’s pray.
O Jesus, like the woman we struggle to grasp who you are.
We read your many names—son of God, Messiah, savior, healer—but do we know you? Do we drink living water from your well? Or are we still drinking water from Jacob’s well?
We worship at Jerusalem, we worship in our church. But how can we worship in spirit and truth?
O Jesus, come to us and question us as you questioned the woman. Expose the truth of our lives. Quench our thirst with living water. Transform our lives with a vision of Messiah.
Amen.
I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.
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