Drink Deep

Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Whenever I read the account in John of the woman at the well, I always read it too fast, like it would have taken just a few minutes. And, certainly, it wasn’t a long encounter (I suppose brushes with Life in our midst don’t have to be long, for they last a lifetime). But the more I thought about it, the more it’s like my own encounters with Jesus – with this wild God who is so good it hurts, who loves me so much it takes His life… and mine. Wow! I love this!

Picture what it must have been like for her. She came during the noon hour when the sun was scorching, because as hot as it was, it was not as searing or burning as was the scorn from the other village women. She was not respectable at all. In that time, to live with someone you were not married to was shamed, and to have been married as many times as she had was shunned. No doubt she was lonely, and you can almost see in her tired eyes the dreariness and weariness of trying to find solace from her hurt. The man she lived with she didn’t love; he just kept her company, even if it wasn’t all that good of company to keep. He no doubt didn’t return her love; he only kept the bed warm, even though with an unfamiliar heat. She can’t even remember if she’d met his parents, and –where was he from again?

All this she carries as she saunters and stumbles her way, alone, in disgrace, to the water hole. There’s not much for her to do anymore, and certainly her chances of finding anyone to love –heck, even not despise her—were slim, and shrinking fast. So, in the midday sun of her daily duty she came as she had always come.

Except today, someone else was there. Before she had arrived, he had been sitting there, waiting like the Father to a prodigal son who didn’t know he was even heading home. I can’t imagine her shock to find anyone there that afternoon, more less a man, and even more than that, a Jew in a Samaritan world. What was he doing here? Surely, if he knew who she was, he would mock her as they all do, scoff, and turn his back, walking away. Well, the water awaits and the sun is pounding, so she reaches for the water.

Watching her closely with deep eyes and an excited smile, the man asks (and you can almost hear his playfulness, his joy at what kind of discovery she would soon make) “Will you give me a drink?” Who was this man talking to her? Where was he from? Didn’t he know better than to talk to her? Did she have to explain the social and cultural implications of Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman… and if only he knew…

But he pressed on, piercing something in her with his next words, with his forced movement towards her even though he shouldn’t even be here. Her own thirst was evident from her cracked lips and scorched soul. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Of course that was the line. Now she knew he didn’t have a clue where he was. This was Jacob’s well, for heaven’s sake. Was he so arrogant to think he was greater than him? Even this woman, as shameful her life had been, had an inheritance here, for this well belonged to Jacob himself. How dare him.

Still pressing, still gazing intently at this adulterer, this outsider, this ragamuffin, the man reveals even more, something even crazier than his last statement, something wilder than his eyes burning through the coats and hats this woman had learned to put on and take off against the world’s weather. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirst again,” he spoke. “But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.” Finally, she took her eyes off her bucket and directed them into his. “The water I give him,” he continued, “will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

There was an awkward silence, a silence that inevitably happens when someone encounters this man and his words that tear through flesh into cut into the heart. But this woman would not be touched. She had learned her defenses. Cynicism was her bedfellow. In a mocking tone that surprised her by the similarity it had to her own accusers’ torments, she blurted, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

With a smile now fading slightly, with creases on his brow as he considered other identities this woman had taken on, the hurts and lies she had accepted as truth, he leaned forward ever-so-slightly, and in almost a whisper, said, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

She had been here before. Many times. Without missing a beat, and with an aire of defiance to protect her from the coming gasps that would surely come as they always did when she admitted where she was, she said, “I have no husband.”

He knew. But he needed to let her know that he did, and it didn’t phase him. He knew it all, down to the very last hair on her head. And it didn’t phase him. Because greater than her sin, was her identity as the Created, created for Himself. In the next coming years, and in the lives of His disciples to come, He would show by His life and death, and then by the Spirit, that He did not come to condemn, but to give life, and to give it in abundance. He came to offer Himself as the Living Water to souls made only for that.

Just like we so often do when the Truth fillets us open, she points in the distance and aims the conversation at religion in order to take it off herself and her desperate need for Someone to love her. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” But, oh, she didn’t know the meaning of the word worship. Not yet. As the old wedding vows go, “with my body, I thee worship,” God stood there, heart pounding in love toward his bride, anticipating the moment when she would know what real worship was about. “A time is coming,” he said, and the next words he emphasized with his hand almost pounding at his heart, “and has now come,” (and the angels in heaven rejoice with that statement, Jesus’s joy pouring forth), “when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

And now, with the bucket long sat aside, with a face drawn in an expression of anticipation born from a heart just learning to desire and dream again, she wondered –but what was she thinking? –but still she wondered… But would he come? Would he really come like they had said he would? The Messiah was supposed to come, but –and what was this man? Who was he, standing here, offering something she had never tasted of before and rarely, especially now, allowed herself to long for? There was something so strange, and yet so… so… so right and true and living in what he was saying. “I know,” she said, embarrassed by even thinking that – what IF it was true at this instant – this could be Him, “I know that Messiah called Christ is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” With that last statement, she half-wondered if maybe his explanations would sound something like what she had just heard. Not answers, but a deep calling; a drawing; an offering; a living encounter….

I just can’t get over what happens to people when they encounter the Living God, the earth-shaking, doctrine-shattering, reason-exploding, fiercely redeeming, Life-giving God of the Bible. The woman totally forgot why she had come in the first place to the well. She left her jar, left her shame, and ran to tell all her accusers what she had encountered. Could it be? Could it really be the Christ? In a matter of twenty minutes, this woman changed from a loose, desperate village woman to a passionate missionary who cared nothing of her own skin. She had been met by Someone, and this Someone offered her a taste of the Living Water that would leave her thirsting only for more of that Life.

That’s the God I want to encounter. No – bigger than this. Bigger than what I can conceive. I tremble at the thought that God would demand what He did of Abraham, after giving him everything he had wanted, promising him the stars. It scares me to think of what God allowed to happen to Job, and what he wanted from the heart of Jonah. It makes me weep to think that, in the words of my wife, the same God who carved out the Grand Canyon knit me together in my mother’s womb and hems me in, before and behind me. I want to encounter a God that would pour His life into me, and then call me to follow him to a cross. I want to experience the Life that blows away death, the community of fellowship and suffering that brings purpose clearer than the sky on a scorching day. I want to know the Truth that sets free, really free, not that false freedom I try to convince myself is what I really want. I want the Life, the real, abundant Life for which Jesus, with the joy set before Him, endured the cross and scorned its shame.

I want to drink deeply of the Living Water.

For more, read Oswald Chamber's thoughts on the "Impoverished Ministry of Jesus."

Made Alive

It is good to revisit the cross of Jesus and His work there – what it means, what it has done. The writer of Hebrews calls this the "elementary truths" of God's word (5:12) and refers to it as spiritual milk, as for babies. He says that we should grow up into eating the solid food of the teaching of the righteousness of Jesus, and holiness (1 Corinthians 1:30). (The teaching on the righteousness from Christ is the truth that the church in the West has all but missed. God is restoring that to her, though.) But he does not say we should never revisit the work of redemption and rediscover its stunning and rescuing effect on our lives – in fact, the beginning place for the rest that comes through the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ for us. Our new life begins there. We still benefit from milk; we just shouldn't live on it alone.

I was scanning through some Scriptures this morning and came across this one in Colossians: "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins…" I remember what it was like to be dead, as Paul puts it. Of course, I didn't know then that I was dead, but I very much was. A walking corpse, stinking and decaying from the inside out. And unlike Tim Burton's notion, a very alive groom cannot be wed to a very dead bride.

And so He came for me. He absolutely ransomed me out of that death-life. I don't know how; I can only say that being "circumcised unto God" now was not an easy or painless process. It's a lot like being ripped and torn from one world into another, and barely surviving to tell the story. But the wounds I took in that rescue were wounds of love, and God is the one to bare the scares.

Imagine Lazarus. Now here is a man who died – a friend of Jesus, I might add. He was laid in a rock tomb and the a stone was closed behind him, sealing him in, entombing his body. There he lay, rotting. Four days later – four days! – Jesus walks up and says that he will live again. There was a lot of broken hearts standing around, not the least of which was God's own heart. He wept over Lazarus's death, as he wept for those mourning the loss of their brother, their friend, their son, their uncle. He wept for the death that had come to so many of his friends. And I think Jesus was also broken over what it would take to resurrect this friend of his. Here would be a dramatic rescue, and for it he was adding to the weight of his own hell-entering death.

After commanding the stone be removed, Jesus speaks the words of life, words that, because they extend from the reign of life that is in Christ and that is Christ (Romans 5:17), bring a dead man back to life. Literally. Think about that. He was dead, decaying, rotting. His flesh was pale and cold. Worms had begun finding their way into his organs. He was really, really dead. And then these words of Jesus reach his ears. The eardrum vibrates. The tiny bones begin doing their small vibration-dance to the words and something sparks. Life again enters Lazarus body. His eyes open. His lungs suck in a deep breath of stale entombed air. He blinks. He looks around, trying to adjust to the darkness. "Am I dead?" he asks himself, and then frowns at the thought. Pain suddenly shoots into his back and down his legs from having laid on cold stone for several days. His muscles are sore. "Sore," he groans aloud, and then laughs because he knows he must not be dead if he is in pain. He rolls himself off the ledge where he was laying, and is suddenly blinded by the light that sprays into his face. More pain. His feet are tender, the skin new like an infant's, and the rocks and pebbles nearly pierce them. His skin is tight, crusted with blood long dried over his numerous wounds now healed but scarred. He stumbles out into the daylight, compelled by the sound of a familiar voice and startled by the gasping sounds of others.

Minutes of stunned silence went by while Lazarus slowly straightened his stiff back and adjusted his eyes to the brightness of the day. He looks around to see his family, his friends, all with their jaws dropping and dried tears covered over with new ones. And what a sight he was. The soiled grave clothes still clung to his face, his hands, his feet. He looked very much like a mummy. He was able to stand and walk, but not much else. The cloth bound him. Even breathing was difficult, although the stinging and burning pain of inhaling was almost too much to bear, and he hardly minded not being able to take the deep breaths his body now required of him.

And then he heard again that familiar voice. He heard laughter, a serious and at the same time excited laughter. Now his eyes caught those of his dear friend. Jesus' eyes were filled with that fire of love and passion that Lazarus had come to revere (before dying, that is), and Jesus never flinched when he added words not directed at Lazarus, but rather for him: "Unbind him." The disciples around Jesus and the others present – Mary and Martha, for sure – walked straight up to this dead man walking and began to pull off the stuck pieces of blood- and pus-soaked cloth from his body. Some fresh skin ripped in the process, and Lazarus pulled back in reaction. He could hear the still-stunned Mary chide him to be still and let them finish. He needed a bath, but that didn't seem to bother anyone at the time. All of them became almost giddy with excitement and began talking at once. Through the noise, Lazarus heard the unmistakable voice of love finish with, "…And let him go free." Jesus punctuated this last word by closing his eyes and saying it slowly, as if savoring the very meaning of it.

And now he was free. The resurrection life had come to Lazarus. For him, being set free was the same as being set loose – set loose on the world to dance with this Lord, to fly with Him, to share with all the adventures ahead in the great Story with this Lover so true. Coming back to life was not the end for this man; it was the beginning.

So that is Lazarus's story, or an element in it. There's much more that He's living in now, more than can be told (John 21:25). And that's the point, I think, of having our hearts circumcised to God, of being made alive with Christ… that we might live and go free. It's staggeringly beautiful, this redemption. Christ came for me and brought me out of darkness into his Kingdom (Col 1:13), and there I am to live with Him, to know Him, to enjoy Him, and to rule with Him.

We do have a role to play in our own redemption. Christ calls us; it is His work that brings us back to life, but we must awaken. We must rouse our own spirits to follow His voice, to come out of the tomb into the light of the new day. As Thoreau once said, "We must reawaken and learn to remain awake, not by mechanical aid, but by the infinite expectation of the dawn." That is our role in working out our salvation (notice Paul did not say working for our salvation, Phil 2:12). No wonder Paul adds, "with fear and trembling." Coming alive and walking out of the tomb of our small lives into the Great Life with our Creator is an incredibly dangerous and painful thing. And it is the only thing that will bring life.

A Living Expression

Lord Jesus,

I love motion. I love to see the sun rise in the morning, and the movement of the waves in deep sea waters. I love to watch a man who is made to run lap a contestant in a marathon. I love to see my wife's hair dance in the evening breeze. I love movement.

Yet, there's more than rises in the morning than the sun and more that pulses in the ocean than the tides, to quote from Rich Mullins. I want to express that life that is a deeper undertoe to my surface-riding days. It's a life that pulls and draws and pulses and beats. It's a kind of rhythm undergirding everything, and it's heard in the stars that chant your name and the flowers that dance to your song. I want to express that song. I want to be an expression of that song, vibrant, virile, alive.

Jesus, do that in me. Pour into me that I can pour out into the world in worship who you are and what invitation it is that you are offering us. Let's whisper together, You and I.

You are my Everything, and I lift my soul to you.
Amen.

Like Barbed Lightning

Pure, spiritual, intellectual love shot from their faces like barbed lightning. It was so unlike the love we experience that its expression could easily be mistaken for ferocity.
- from Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

Where does the love from heaven seem so intense in my life that it feels fierce?

I love that quote. I’ve reread it several times now. I love how C.S. Lewis describes the love. Pure – undiluted, undistilled, 200-proof love. And spiritual – meaning not aloof, but core, from the deepest places. And intellectual – full of imagination, creativity, thought, intention, purpose, and presence. This is a whole-self love that Lewis describes. No wonder it shot out of their faces liked barbed lightning. And no wonder it could be mistaken for ferocity.

I’ve encountered this love from Christ, or better, this love of Christ in a host of ways. And that is really just saying that I’ve encountered Christ in a host of ways. Lately, it has been His rescue of my heart from those subtle lies that knock me ever-so-subtly off course, away from the path of life. They’re hard to discern, those lies, but they have recently sounded like, “God is disappointed in you,” and “Your life has no impact and never will,” and “You will never live in the Kingdom of God,” and the like. But God’s words and His presence blow those lies out of the water.

This morning I awoke hearing the Father saying to me, “You are my Beloved. Remain in me and you will come to understand your belovedness. You are righteous (that is, alive) not by your own righteousness but because of my own that I poured out to you through Jesus.” In my mind I was replaying the chorus to “Nothing but the blood of Jesus,” and I knew this was God waking me “with the sound of [His] loving voice,” as David had it.

I have become most vulnerable in my walk with Christ over the last few years. This is what He does: He awakens my desire within – desire for community, for intimacy, for adventure, for glory… desire for life – and then He sets out to deepen it until it has been enlarged enough to fill with His life. So I have lived with some desire that has yet to see the light of day, desire like the root of a young oak vining its way into deeper soil when there are yet unsprouted leaves on the branches.

This is the point at which His love is the fiercest. Were it up to me, I would have thrown in the towel long ago. His love is fierce in bringing me into Life because it is a very painful thing, and if it is painful for me, it must be many times over for my God who is, in some very real sense, causing the pain. My heart sings in worship, “I want to run with You,” but my unsteady feet rock with the roll of the boat on the high seas of discontent. He knows, I suppose, that I must fall several times before my legs have the strength they need, and my soul the substance it needs, to run with God.

I’m writing in generalities because I could think of a hundred examples of the way God grows my heart and gives it strength and identity by placing me in circumstances that threaten to kill me. I love the Russian poet Rainer Marie Rilke’s line when he says that what we choose to fight against is so small, and the victory itself makes us small. But what wrestles against us is large, and the defeat grows us. So, this is what life is: to be defeated by constantly bigger things.

It is His intention that I inherit the earth. It is His intention that I inherit the Kingdom. It is His intention that I come fully awake and fully alive into Him and He into me. That’s where His love feels the fiercest, both because of His intention and because of His refusal to give up on me.

Maybe Rich Mullins sang it best.

What I'd have settled for
You've blown so far away
What You brought me to
I thought I could not reach
And I came so close to giving up
But You never did give up on me
I see the morning moving over the hills
I feel the rush of life here where the darkness broke
And I am in You and You're in me
Here where the winds of Heaven blow