Religion has become a power grab, or perhaps has temped people’s desire for power. Because in religion, specifically Christianity, God is the supreme judge. He makes the rules and the decisions. So being tied to God means that if you are in a position of moral leadership, your decisions and rules can be associated with coming directly from God. And, if people trust you as having the ear of God, then this position can put people in direct confrontation with you. And people hungry for power do not want their power confronted.
John the Baptist
In biblical times, John the Baptist began preaching a message of repentance. His message was telling people to return to serving God and be cleansed, through baptism, by water, from ways that take you away from God. This confronted the traditional way people sought God for forgiveness. Traditionally, people went to priests to confess, and the priests offered sacrifices to God in request of forgiveness.
Having not lived during this time I cannot know for sure what was happening when John began to preach baptism for cleansing and connection back to God, but I can imagine that if religion then was anything like it is now, going to the priest did not make people feel forgiven or connected to God. Confession to a priest puts the person at fault in an unlevel power dynamic. The person who receives the confession is also put in an unfair power dynamic because they are made to look more forgiven and more accepted by God than the person confessing. They are the ones with the special privilege and duties. Duties that even if the person confessing wanted to they cannot do.
There was little, during the time of John the Baptist, that a person could do to feel connected with God. This is important especially for Jews at the time and Christians now because our religion is tied to our identity. If you cannot feel connected to the God who is supposed to be your provider and protector and instead you feel distant from him, disconnected, condemned by him, misunderstood or at worse neglected by God then religion becomes meaningless.
But spirituality, belief in something never becomes meaningless in the life of a human. We naturally seek purpose and meaning for our lives. Providing for our families gives meaning and purpose. Being good at our jobs and accepted by society gives us meaning and purpose. Having money so that we can live the kind of life that we want, gives meaning and purpose. All these things and many others give us meaning and purpose. Just like religion, when our identity is tied to these things, if you remove them from our lives, we lose our sense of identity and purpose and either seek to reconnect to those things, get them back or we find something else to fill the void, which sometimes is hopelessness, guilt and shame.
John arrives preaching a message that there is a way for everyone who wants to be reconnected to God to find their way back without the help of priests. And scriptures say that people were seeking him out and his message of repentance and baptism and were following him out of the cities and away from the places of worship to the wilderness to be taught and baptized by him (Matthew 3:1-6).
The Pharisees
The religious leaders, the Pharisees, tolerated John’s message because John’s message was a message to return back to God and the Pharisees knew that people who returned to God would have to return to the law. As keepers of the law, this meant that this would still maintain their positions of power, dictating regulations for worship and acceptable ways to approach God. They would continue to be seen as spiritual leaders upholding the law and seen as some of the most righteous law-abiders. They saw John as doing them a partial service that brought people back to their religious tradition and in turn would make them accountable to religious leaders and laws. John contradicted the way people traditionally looked to God for repentance and forgiveness and eventually this was enough to have him put in prison for being an agitator and being a spiritual guide for people in an unorthodox way (Mark 1:14; Matthew 4:12; Luke 3:16-20). John was able to speak to people’s desire for meaningful connection and sincere sense of forgiveness. And that meaningful connection led people to look to John to interpret scriptures the way people had traditionally looked to priests and Pharisees to interpret scriptures. This made him a notable agitator.
Jesus begins to preach
Then Jesus begins to preach and God reveals to John that Jesus is the Messiah (John 1:29-34). The Messiah in Jewish religion is a figure that God promises to use to rescue Israel and restore them from all the disasters that they go through because of their decision to reject God and look to other gods, nations and things to give them meaning and purpose. When Israel was taken captive by other nations, meaning no longer were their own nation but became subjects of other nations, God spoke though many of their prophets most notably Isaiah, Micah and Ezekiel that even though they had been taken captive, God would send a ruler that would rescue them from their captors and give them their nation back and rebuild his place of worship. God prophesies through his prophets that he would do this not through an army or military but by himself, through his chosen savior, a Messiah who would deliver them from their enemies and restore Israel as a people. But in the accounts of the New Testament the Pharisees never mention that this Messiah would also establish a new covenant that is prophesied in Hosea 11, Jeremiah 23, Ezekial 23, 16, 34, 44, Zechariah 10, 13, 14 and very specifically in Micah 5 and Isaiah 9. As teachers of the law they knew about these prophesies but chose to focus on traditional laws that gave them spiritual authority.
When Jesus begins to preach, he is preaching about the kingdom God promised through the prophets and the psalms that would renew a spiritual relationship between God and humanity that would not only forgive but promise eternal life (John 6:26-40).
John 4:1 says that Jesus’ message was “gaining and baptizing more disciples than John”. Jesus’ message that said that there was a new way to God, through his Son, put the Pharisees in direct conflict with him because Jesus was not just preaching repentance, like John, telling people to return to God he was saying that he was sent by God, the Messiah and was performing miracles that testified to the truth of his message and made more people believe and follow him (John 6:26-40; John 4:25-42).
The Pharisees’ message was that only through the laws and commandments can people return to God. John the Baptist was saying a repentant heart is enough to come back to God and Jesus was saying that if people repent and believe that he is the Messiah he has the authority to forgive. He was also preaching that he was sent from God to be a final sacrifice and would establish a new covenant that would put people in close relationship with God.
This message caused the teachers of the law to follow Jesus looking for ways to discredit him and find something disputable with his message. While Jesus was not afraid of controversy, when he heard that the Pharisees found out that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, John 4:1 “he left Judah to go to Galilee”. Presumably to preach his message there and avoid direct conflict with the Pharisees for a time.
Jesus on his way to Galilee
In John 4 Jesus is on his way to Galilee but he has to go through parts of Israel that have historically separated from Judah. Historically Israel split into two nations after King Solomon’s son Rehoboam became king (2 Chronicles 10).
Historically Israel was a kingdom that became a nation from the sons of the patriarch Jacob, who had twelve sons that became the twelve tribes of Israel. The Old Testament chronicles their consecration as God’s people in a region of people who did not know or worship the God of Israel. After Solomon’s son Rehoboam becomes king, he rules Israel with such a harsh hand that the tribes do not believe that the king is for them all. As a son of a secession of kings from Judah they believe that he is focused on ruling over them and not being a representation of them as a nation of many tribes.
This king is from the tribe of Judah and the temple that King Solomon built to be a dwelling place for God is in Jerusalem. After the split Judah becomes a nation with Jerusalem as its royal and religious center. The remaining tribes become the nation of Israel in the north with Samaritans as people who emerged from the ten tribes who were both descendants of Jacob and also their neighboring nations. Samaria became their royal and religious center. During the time of Jesus all of the tribes of Israel are under the political control of Roman authority and their religious traditions are what continued to set them apart from their rulers. During the time of Jesus the dispute that divided Jews from Samaritans remained. The people belonging to the nation of Judah called themselves Jews and did not associate with the Samaritans.
In John 4 Jesus is travelling away from Jerusalem and the Pharisees, the strict keepers of Jewish law because he is seen by them as more of an agitator than John. He is on his way to Galilee and John 4:4 says that Jesus had to pass through the region of Samaria. He, the one who had been confronting Jewish religious traditionalism in Jerusalem and was all but running away from them has to go through Samaria. He has to confront the historic dispute of the people of Israel, and this controversy is rooted in who God accepts. The Pharisees in Jerusalem say that the law is given to the Jews through Moses and that the temple in Jerusalem in where God dwells (John 9:28-29). John the Baptist says that you can come to God through repentance (Matthew 3:1-12) and Jesus says, I am the Messiah who has been sent by God to forgive and accept all people and bring them back into relationship with God (John 6:26-40).
John 4:6 says that Jesus was tired from his journey. Tired from what? Specifically from travelling from Jerusalem to Galilee but symbolically weary from the heaviness of the mission. If Jesus as God understands our condition and has taken our situation on himself. It can be understood that Jesus felt the weight of the conflict between the people of Judah and the people of Samaria. People who wanted a relationship with God but could only find condemnation and confusion when they looked to spiritual leaders for help.
Jesus and his disciples decide to stop at a town in Samaria called Sychar, this town was on a plot of ground Jacob the historic patriarch had given to one of his sons, Joseph. And there was a well there (John 4:5). John 4 tells the account of Jesus sitting at that well and speaking to a Samaritan woman. When the Samaritan woman arrives to draw water from the well Jesus asks her, “will you give me a drink” (John 4:7)? The woman immediately recognizes that he is a Jew and says that she is not able to associate with Jews because she is a Samaritan. The religious power dynamics have made it impossible for the two people to accept one another. The Jews who worshipped at Jerusalem would not be able to drink from a cup poured by a Samaritan because it would not have been treated in Samaria the way that it was in Jerusalem. The woman asks Jesus, how can you ask me for a drink when you know the rules?
And Jesus cannot help but respond from the heart of God. He says to her, “if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10). Jesus was saying to her that he knew the divide that existed between the Jews and Samaritans, that he himself was fleeing persecution from religious elite, but that he had to flee because they would not accept the message that he was preaching. The message that the Pharisees in Jerusalem were preaching was that acceptance is through sacrifices and only in accordance with the law. The Samaritan woman was echoing what she knew about them. That their message only has power to separate but not to reconcile.
Jesus said that he has authority to give life that would bring a type of peace more refreshing than water after a long wearisome journey. The message of the religious elite only has the power to condemn. But Jesus says, if you knew who I am you would know that you could ask me for life and I would accept you and give it to you (John 4:10).
The woman at the well agreed that she did not know who he was and even if he was someone with this authority, she looked at him and saw that he had no way to draw water from the literal well. So she says, “sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock” (John 4:11-12)?
It was symbolic that Jesus had stopped at the town where their patriarch Joseph son of Jacob had put a well. It marked that since the time of Jacob people had been receiving their water from patriarchs’ messages Water symbolizing the words from their spiritual guides, the laws that they lived by.
It was from this spiritual well that they had been drawing water, they had been sacrificing their animals in accordance with the law and passing the spiritual traditions to their descendants to repeat. The woman was saying who was Jesus to give or get water from a place greater than the historic patriarch who God built the nation from?
Jesus often spoke in parables so that people would understand the reference and perhaps be illuminated to its spiritual meaning. Jesus said to the woman that people like the descendants of Jacob and Joseph who put their faith in religious traditions over the fulfillment of the promises of God will have to keep looking to those traditions for life because the water that they give will make the person looking for acceptance and connection to God thirsty again (John 4:13-14). “But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Jesus was saying that the message that he is bringing is directly from God, the source of life, he created humanity and can give reconnection in a way that will never make the person looking for spiritual connection to God ever disconnected, an eternal connection to the source of life. This is the water that Jesus says that he can give that is greater than the water that the patriarchs drank, that will give more life and a better way to live.
Then the woman gives us a glimpse into the type of person she is. She says, okay then, “give me this water, so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water” (John 4:15). Which meant that she was willing to throw aside traditions, specifically religious traditions and historic disputes for something that would make her life better. She knew the patriarchs, but she wasn’t willing to uphold their traditions, she was willing to do something else. Jesus knew this about her and exposed another tradition that she had not upheld. He says, okay, “call your husband and then come back” (John 4:16). The woman replied that she did not have a husband (John 4:14) and Jesus said, yes, I know, “the fact is you have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:17-18).
Jesus was not trying to expose her to condemn her but to expose that he knew who she was and why she was willing to take the living water he offered. Because she was not a person who was upholding traditional religious laws or customs by the fact that she had broken a religious law by having multiple husbands.
When exposed she did not deny it but was quick to say that Jesus, the man she was talking to, must be a prophet and know the divide that existed between Jerusalem and Samaria. As if to say, we do things differently here, almost as an excuse she offers a more important, in her eyes dispute between the two people saying, don’t look to this small matter about me look at the greater dispute. Everyone in Samaria from our ancestors until now say we are to worship God in Samaria and you Jews claim that where we must worship is in Jerusalem (John 4:19). She was saying that if anyone is guilty of a sin the greater sin is not with whom I marry in the sight of God but if I keep the requirements of where to worship him. So either all of us in Samaria are condemned, not just me, for what I have done, or all of you in Jerusalem are condemned in the sight of God for not worshipping at the place he has designated. The woman was echoing the divisive way religious leaders and elite used religion to condemn and not connect us to God.
But Jesus says that he did not expose her to condemn her, but so that she would believe in him and that everyone through him would be able to worship God in the way that he accepts. He says that Samaritans do not know God because they do not know the law, but the people in Jerusalem have the law and the law has prophesied a salvation that will come from Judah, the Jews. And when this salvation arrives it won’t matter where you are, you will be able to worship God in a new way. You will be connected to him through his Spirit (John 4:21-24). Jesus says, people who worship God in this new way he has created with direct connection to God, is what God desires (John 4:21-24).
Then the woman says in defense that, ‘we in Samaria know about the Messiah, the salvation that God has promised that he will send and when he comes, he will put an end to this division he will explain salvation to us’ (John 4:25). Jesus says to her, ‘I—the one speaking to you—I am he’ (John 4:26). I, the one who has spoken about a living water that I can give you, that the laws are unable to provide, I am the salvation that has come. I am the one who will bring you back into relationship and connection with God.
This account is meant to illuminate who Jesus is for us. He has come to remove from us the divide that religious elite and traditionalism have placed between us and a relationship with God. When they serve as our leaders, they cannot give us anything nourishing, only able to control, condemn and reject. But Jesus has come with a message that gives life. As he has said, he is the living water. The message that he brings will give life that God has promised. A life where you will not thirst for reconnection or meaning or purpose but will find eternal life through him.
True disciples of Jesus will not allow their ministry to become greater than what Jesus has done for us. John is an example of a religious leader who when he saw in Jesus that God’s promise of salvation had come, he stepped aside. John 3:22-36 shares this account and says,
“After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them and baptized. Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Alim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming and being baptized. (This was before John was put in prison). An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. They came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, that man (Jesus) who was with you on the other side of the Jordan –the one you testified about—look, he is baptizing and everyone is going to him.’
To this John replied, ‘A person can receive only what is given them from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, “I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.” The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.
The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.”
My Seed Faith 