This past week at a small group I’m involved with, we talked about the “woman at the well” found in John 4:1-42. This story is a story of abnormalities, shame, grace, healing, and worship. It starts off with Jesus leaving Judea and going to Galilee, and the text says that “He needed to go through Samaria”. This is very uncommon, because even though it was the most direct path from Judea to Galilee, the Jews went completely around Samaria in order to avoid any contact with the Samaritans. Jesus was at Jacob’s well when a Samaritan woman came to the well at about noon, this wasn’t normal because it was in the heat of the day and most women would get water from the well early in the morning because it wasn’t as hot. Then another abnormal thing happened, Jesus, a Jewish man, spoke to this Samaritan woman. In His missional focus, He began telling her about Himself, and that He alone has living water. When she asked for this living water, Jesus told her to go get her husband. She responded saying that she didn’t have one. Jesus then confronted her with the fact that she had five husbands in the past, and the man she was with now wasn’t her husband. She quickly tried to change the subject.
This Samaritan woman was going to the well in the middle of the day because she was an outcast. She had five husbands, and was now having sex outside of marriage with the man she was currently with. She went for water in the heat of the day so that she could avoid being around the other women, because they looked down on her because of her lifestyle. She was ashamed.
This isn’t anything new. We see the same thing in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve realize that they are naked after eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and are ashamed. The result: they cover themselves with leaves to cover their shame, and try to hide from God.
What do we learn from these texts? We learn that sin causes shame and separation from both God and those around us.
In both of these cases, we see God reaching out and correcting the very thing that shames us. In Genesis, God killed an animal and made clothes for them out of the animal’s skin. In John, we see Jesus tell the Samaritan woman that the place of worship doesn’t matter, but that we must worship God in spirit and it truth. He then reveals Himself as the Messiah. Then the disciples show up and see Jesus talking with the woman and were astonished, but no one asked Him what He was doing talking with her. Then the woman leaves the water jar at the well, and goes back to the city proclaiming Jesus to the very people she was trying to avoid before she encountered Jesus.
How can we worship in truth if we are trying to hide part of our lives that causes us shame? We can’t. God’s desire since the beginning of time has been to produce in us ultimate joy by glorifying Himself in healing that which shames us. This is the Gospel. Before God saves us, we are scared and ashamed of a righteous God in front of whom we have no standing. After God saves us, applying Christ’s blood as the payment for our sin and declaring us holy and righteous in His eyes, He begins the process of making us more like Him, which is healing our shame. Then, just like the woman who was ashamed to be around those that would mock her and look down upon her, we become overwhelmed with God’s grace and we leave what we were doing and tell those around us about the grace and mercy we have just experienced, and God begins to help us to restore the relationships with those around us.
God’s desire for us is that we have real, authentic relationships with each other. That we confess the sins that would cause us shame, and when we see ourselves through the lens of the Gospel, we realize that we are all the same, and instead of passing judgment and condemnation, we restore each other gently, because we know that God did the same for us through Christ’s blood. Then, and only then, are we truly able to worship God in spirit and in truth.
