The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water..."
She asks a perfectly reasonable, even obvious question. In today's parlance, she "names the issue". Wouldn't you have wanted to know? His answer doesn't really allow for a serious conversation about it, nor does it make any sense. It's a magician's answer, designed to deflect attention away from the obvious. John puts the focus on Jesus' divinity when he emphasizes "who it is that is saying [this] to you." But I can't get past the first part of his answer - "If you knew the gift of God..."
Do I know the gift of God, the living water that is right in front of me? I think about my favorite scene from the play "Our Town", where Emily, who has died in childbirth, gets to come back to revisit one day of her life. She chooses her twelfth birthday. She is appalled by how oblivious everyone is, including her 12-year-old self, to the short, sweet day in which they are alive. She asks the stage manager, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?" He's skeptical: "Saints and poets some," he says.
This, of course, is the genius of Jesus, our saint and poet. He gets it. God, deliver me from my "serious issues" that keep me demanding answers and not tasting the water you give.
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2 comments:
OK, different take on this. If I was the woman, I would think "What
s up with this gift of God and "living' water? How come he knows about it and I don't? Is this something else they're keeping from us Samaritans? He should explain; after all, it's just he and I here at the well".
Maybe this detour in Jesus' journey was just to run in to her. I think it's an invitation to learn more. One we probably miss every day, as you point out, when we ignore the stranger at the well while we struggle with those big issues.
You make a good point. Isn't living water something everyone has, rather than the special knowledge of someone? Perhaps he serves as the one to point it out to us.
The detour is definitely to run into her. Jesus could have stopped anywhere for a drink of water.
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