Many Samaritans from
that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all
that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay
with them, and he stayed there two days. 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 indeed the
Savior of the world.” | John 4:39–42
This Sunday, I got to preach the story of the Woman at the Well (for the third time in the last few months). One of the great things about going over a section of Scripture over and over again is that you get to see different things jumping out at of the text. I focused much of my time on how Jesus came with an offer of dignity to a woman who did not experience it in this life. He came to present Himself to her as the Messiah; to make it clear that she was invited into this relationship. While she was used to judgment and rejection, Jesus promises to love her faithfully.
After the service, one of the women in the church told me that her favorite part of this passage was that Jesus did not just bless her with dignity, but He gave her life purpose: she was the one He used to save many people in her town. I agreed with her excellent assessment, while simultaneously kicking myself for not making that connection myself. I think that this omission is common.
If we look at the life of the Samaritan woman, we see a life that is similar to so many around us. A woman who has attempted to find value and purpose in her life through earthly things, husbands specifically, only to find herself more lonely and rejected than when she started. While people chase different things, the pattern is similar: put your time, energy, and hope into some end, only to find that it does not produce what you expected. Even worse, it leaves you feeling emptier and more unfulfilled than when you began. The next step is often to give up on meaning and to settle into patterns of living that manage the emptiness; just trying to get through the day. Like the woman in the story who is now living with a man she is not married to, many people just try to organize their life to get by.
This only lasts so long. Somewhere along the line, often in ‘middle age,’ people recognize the drain of these management patterns and start wondering what ever happened to the hope and dreams of their youth. This ‘awakening’ often leads people to the self-help section of the bookstore, searching for the life changes that are going to not only recapture joy, but give a renewed sense of what can be.
Having pastored for 10+ years now, I have seen this pattern repeat over and over again. Christians are not immune to this, they simply have their own flavor. The Christian facing this crisis simply searches out self-help that has been baptized in semi-religious language. If you want to know what I am talking about, THIS ARTICLE summarizes how the church looks for the answers to longing in authors like Rachel Hollis, Jordan Peterson, and Dave Ramsey. I think the author hits the nail on the head, when he says:
self-help without Christian wisdom does not yield a happiness too strong, but a happiness too weak—too dependent on willpower, too in debt to products, and too vulnerable to the harsh realities of life in a fallen world, including realities outside our control.
Too often, the response to: this is what people are looking for, is: how can the church meet people where they are? I don’t think that this is a bad question, but too often, the answers are something to the effect of: cultivate a brand like Hollis, talk to men like Peterson does, or be more focused on practical issues like Ramsey. What if the answer has nothing to do with helping people to reach their perceived goals, but instead to shock them with a something that is so much more? What people actually need is a more satisfying hope, not a means to achieve the earthly ones they have set up.
We see this in the story of the Samaritan woman. Jesus does not just get her a husband (filling the role she has been looking for). Instead, He offers Himself to her as a bridegroom of a different sort; a Messiah who will take away the continual need to keep consuming and accomplishing to offer us eternal fulfillment. HE IS THE LIVING WATER.
The Samaritan woman experiences the first part of this, as the woman who had been rejected and ignored, now becomes the voice by which many are rescued from the same repetitious cycle and invited into the family of God. This woman met a man at the well, and by the end of the day, she was told that her past did not define her, her ethnicity did not define her, her gender did not define her, but more importantly, these things were all part of how God created her to be able to play a role in His great plan of redeeming His people. She has a purpose, not just to ‘go and sin no more,’ but to use her life and witness as a means to point to the one who has given her value.
We were made for more. We were created as worshippers who point to Jesus; the many ways we try to find meaning in ourselves apart from Him will add to our discontentment. It is not in making something of ourselves that we find peace. This can only be found in relation to He who holds all things in His hands.