"Christ secured himself, not by a miracle, but in a way common to men, for the direction and encouragement of his suffering people." Matthew Henry, John 4
In her book Braving the Wilderness, research professor Brené Brown tells a story of women who lived in a village and would gather by the river frequently to wash their clothes together. Eventually, these women moved onto the latest technology – washing machines. Not long after, the rates of depression in the village began to increase. Of course, it wasn't the washing machines causing the depression (although laundry can be depressing in my house of nine humans). Because these women didn't come to the river, connection, sense of belonging, and community began to sever. Without this daily ritual, these women became lonely.
Today, we start a Bible study I've refused to write for months. It is a chapter out of my dark soul and a testament to the bright communion God showed me over a long, swarthy night. I know I need to sit still and get some of the messy, messy work God has graciously done down on paper. I dread it and welcome it all in one.
What's ahead will be slow work. We will go verse by verse through John 4:1-43; however, we may only hit a single verse in one study, or even just one word that we need to sit upon. Because as we sit with this Word spread before us, we will learn to sit with our Savior at the Living Well.
If you've grown up in the Christian church, you've likely heard the B-I-B-L-E acronym "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." Ironically, this is unbiblical. We have learned to look at the Bible for practical advice instead of through the Bible for communion with God.
In pop-consumer Christianity, people often view the Bible as a "self-help manual." We have a problem, and the Bible has a solution. I help run a company in Brooklyn, and this is exactly how we "go to market" with our product to gain sales. We discuss how our simple, automated payroll product will solve a specific problem for small business owners. But the Church shouldn't position the Bible's "go to market strategy" as a manual to make life easier. The Word reveals God's character. It is a window for us to understand I AM so we can see how He responds based on His unchanging character (for verses regarding God's consistency, see Psalm 102:27, Malachi 3:6, Hebews 13:8, James 1:17).
As we meet the woman at the well in John 4, you will see a similar situation as we see ourselves in today. The failures of being human have stayed the same with time. We are all in need of a Savior, and one whom we know how to sit with.
We will learn in these verses not about how to handle rocky relationships or a shameful past through a formula of steps but how to connect, belong, and commune with God. These verses will show us how He has engaged with people in the past, which clarifies how He relates to us in the present. What we're about to study was written for us, but not to us, and we must remember that as we learn it. The Matthew Henry quote at this post's beginning also speaks of that. Romans 15:4 says, "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope."
What is this hope in Romans 15:4 pointing toward? Is it a hope that the Lord would make us "better" and that we would be "good enough" for eternal life? Not so. Our hope anchors in the character of God and the understanding that through His Son, Jesus, the righteousness required to achieve eternal life is no longer ours to earn.
These last several months have brought tremendous change for me. Change can be so new sometimes that you don't have words to describe it. It's unknown. It's unfamiliar. And, in my mind, that makes it scary. I'm terribly impatient and live with an undercurrent of restlessness. But in my restlessness, I continue to (imperfectly) learn how to wrestle when I needed to wrestle and rest when I needed to rest.
This season of wrestling has deconstructed my faith in a sacred way. It has been refreshing and completely disorganized, so I've struggled to convince myself (or, better yet, allow the Holy Spirit to convince me) that it is time to write. It's time to process some of these things on this paper with you.
So, as we begin, please create a vast space for Grace. There will be ramblings and some errors, which the Lord will hold me accountable for (and you can, too). We should also leave room for questions, challenging thoughts, and wrestling with today's "Christian" culture with a revived fierceness.
In these coming John 4 verses, I pray we will understand the character of our Messiah refreshingly and meet the first non-Jewish New Testament evangelist—a local town preacher, you might say. And, my friends, she is a broken, hurting person, just like us.