Knowledge is power, you understand, but it's a particular kind of power, one that increases the more knowledge you get. It reminds me always of the opening screen of Mortal Kombat II, which flashed, only for a moment, the phrase "There is no knowledge that is not power." That was hilarious, coming from a game that required you to print out a list of moves off of the world wide web just to be able to play it. It was a game steeped in mystery, and you really had to do your homework just so you could get around to playing it. Everything in that game was a secret.
And of course, we played it gamely, and you listened to you friends who knew of a secret finishing move where Reptile pulled out your small intestine and made a macrame potholder, all those things that seemed really plausible, but a generous proportion of them never actually existed. But, hidden secrets everywhere, to the extent that anything worth doing was a secret.
Fast forward to today, and we are very much living in an internet connected culture. That's how you're reading this blog right now! I've had thoughts, composed them on a keyboard, and then you're reading them off your PC or smartphone screen. What an age we've arrived at. But in this age where we can look anything up at a moment's notice, where we can find any and all information in the world whenever we want, what do we actually know?
This is where Jesus comes in, and the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. They had a moment at the well, where Jesus promised to give her living water, which she, as someone who would have been transporting water to and from her house every day, was very much in favor of. Jesus told her that he would give her living water so that she would never be thirsty again. This sounded great to her. And after this came up, Jesus told her to go and get her husband. And this is where things get interesting.
For she tells Jesus that she doesn't have a husband, and Jesus tells her that this is true, that she has had five husbands, and the man she has now isn't her husband. Wow. That's a lot to hear, and a lot to digest. And Jesus, at that point, was a stranger to her, which is why things ground to a halt pretty quickly, and, after bringing people from town to meet Jesus, she spoke about him thusly:
He told me everything I had ever done.
Yes.
That's what Jesus did. And that's part of what makes his words so
spectacular to hear even now. If you go back a little ways in the
scriptures, you will find him speaking, and when people speak about him
remark that he speaks differently than other teachers that they've had,
and speaks as someone who has authority. And that's a big deal. Jesus
was able to speak to this woman and tell her in no uncertain terms,
nothing vague, nothing clouded, what she had done with her life. Now,
that's a surprise, and something that you don't see every day.
But
that's only part of it. It reminds me of the first interaction between
Jesus and Nathanael, where Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him under the tree,
and Nathanael was shocked, surprised, and perplexed by that. And Jesus
says to him 'You believe because I saw you under the fig tree? You will
see greater things than that.' True enough. It is one thing to point
out something very specific about one person. It's quite another thing
to point out something that's true about everyone.
The
real intensity of the work of Jesus Christ is that what he says is
true. Not just that it's true of you, or of me, but that it can be true
of both of us at the same time, and of everyone else. Now, that's a
bigger deal, isn't it? That's a little bit amazing that Christ could
speak with that kind of authority, that he could make those cases, that
he could say things that manage to be universally true, and yet here we
are. This is part of what people key into when they say about him that
he spoke as one who had authority.
He didn't speak like anyone else, because he had authority. And the
words long written down in the scriptures still apply, they still work,
because they apply to us as human beings. They apply to the human
condition.
Think
for a second about the spate of diet books which exist, taking us from
fat being the enemy to salt being the enemy, to sugar being the enemy,
to carbs being the enemy, lather, rinse, repeat. It seems like there is
a real progression that goes on, a constant treadmill that tells us
constantly what is safe to eat, what is healthy, and what isn't. From
paleo to Atkins, from vegan to Santa Clarita, diets are changing all the
time, but our inner workings aren't, so why is it that we haven't figured this out?
Well,
it's the same way with our ethics, our morals, our human condition, our
spiritual yearnings, and the human experience actually hasn't changed
much in a few thousand years. We just think it has. Point being, the
words of Jesus are true. And they are true because they address
fundamental needs that we have as humans, that we have always had as
humans and always will have as humans. They address needs that we have
to make our relationships work, to find meaning in the things we do, to
build for the future, to seek eternity, to have in each day that goes by
some tangible sensation of the eternity that each day almost begs for.
We have in the words of Christ a vision of the reality that underpins
everything, and he tells us as much in his own word. Our needs, our
hunger and thirst for him, is addressed, and that's why he told that
Samaritan woman at the well that upon consuming the living water that he
would provide, the drinker would never be thirsty again. The woman at
the well assumed that he was talking about physical thirst, but he
wasn't. He was discussing spiritual thirst, spiritual desire for
fulfillment, spiritual craving for truth and stability. And to quote
Augustine - Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.
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