Teacher & Savior

Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-22

The “ten best ways,” as we call the ten commandments in Godly Play and Worship and Wonder curriculum, are very important.  I believe they are the foundation of our society together.  It is not that they are put on court lawns or in our court houses, which I do prefer to statues I have seen on court lawns, but that it is the covenant for God’s people.  Let us review, God made a covenant with people, starting within the garden, but accumulating with the great covenant with Abraham and Sarah. 

Then in Egypt, God hear their cry and remembered the covenant.  To make the long story short, salvation from slavery was provided by God’s leadership through Moses.  Then God provided the “Ten Best Ways,” the ten commandments, or better yet the covenant.  This promise was the ways humans should live together.  The first four are about loving the One True God, and the remaining six are about how you treat others, or rather neighbors.

It seems to me  a wonderful Rabbi was asked to choose the most important and he said something like this: 

What you yourself hate, don't do to your neighbor. This is the whole law; the rest is commentary. Go and study. (Rabbi Hillel)

And my savior and the great rabbi Jesus of Nazareth said something quite similar:

He said to him,  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

To me Jesus is restating the convenant God made with people, love God and Love neighbor.  Basically Love, and as Hillel states if you don’t get it read on and study.

Thus when according to John, Jesus enters the temple and drives out the money changers, you must realize that they were the most “religious” people he was angry with.  The priests knew that this market place existed, and instead of worrying about treating the neighbor they were only worried about the institution, the rules and the money.  I am sure many were not being fair with their trading practices, but it developed with a need for people to fulfill the law, the commentary.  It made sense, but the anger I believe came from robbing people of the meaning of the covenant, the Best Way, LOVE of God and Neighbor.

Deeper Well

John 4:5-42

In every town in America there is at least one pizzeria.  I grew up in Connecticut where pizza originated, specifically New Haven.  There you still need to ask for mozzarella for the original pies, only had shaved parmesan.  And I, like many others, is passionate about how pizza should taste.  Even within a town people have passionate opinions about different shops in the area.  And how you like your pizza is generally how you were first exposed to it, so if humans are so passionate about pizza pies, you know how much more passionate they are about religious ideas.

The Samaritans were not liked by the Jews, yet they worshipped something closer to Judaism then any of the Gentiles.  The Samaritans thought they were more pure then the Jews who returned from exile.  This tension between the two groups is only exasperated by the fact they both claim to worship the One true God.  We find Jesus in their geographical area, sitting alone at Jacob’s well. 

Within this scripture Jesus crosses that boundary, but He also clearly crosses the boundary of gender, and with a woman with a reputation.  She comes to the well for her water at midday, while the women without a past, would come in the early morning and late evening, to avoid the sun, and even to enjoy the fellowship.  This woman might have even worried when she saw a man at the well and considered turning back.  She may have thought she would just look down and quickly get the water she needed, but she was shocked when Jesus asked her for water.  So shocked she simply stated “the elephant in the room” and said, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”  Jesus quickly turns the question around and eventually states and proves that He is the Messiah the Christ.  This is often what we pull from this scripture, but it is also important to see how the context amplifies His identification.

There is certainly tension that Jesus is talking to a woman but mostly that she was Samaritan as well.  The tension between the two religions is evident by her statement

‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. (vv. 19-21)

Jesus tells her it will not continue to be worship in specific geographical areas, and with His reference to Living Water one would recall when the Jews were wandering through the desert and were crying out for water.  They were at Mount Sinai (or Horeb as it is also called) when this occurred:

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’ (Exodus 17:1-7)

The Jews received water for life there as well as the Ten Commandments.  The covenant, which they carried in the tabernacle before creating the Temple in Jerusalem.  Those that were exiled also discovered that God was with them wherever they would go, however this tension between the Jews and Samaritans, seems to claim God a geographically bound.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

And this is what Jesus is fulfilling with His statement about the Living Water. 

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ (John 4:13-14)

Like the covenant on our hearts, this living water will be with us wherever we go.  And this well is tapped by Jesus death and resurrection.

C. S. Lewis wrote many great works, and one of these works was a children’s story.  It was to be an allegory for the Christ Narrative for Children.  The title is The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and it is the only children’s book I have ever observed quoted by scholars.  The scene that I want to bring us to, is the death and resurrection of the story’s Christ figure, the Lion, Aslan.  One of the brothers (sons of Adam), Edmund, had betrayed his siblings and his life is due the witch.  Aslan makes a deal that his life would be taken instead.  Anslan goes to the ancient altar for this death willingly, with only the daughters of eve as witnesses.  He is abused and killed.  And as the sisters mourn he does come back to life and the altar broke.  Anslan then explains to the girls that there was a “deeper magic.” If someone willing goes to the altar for someone else, they will be saved and the altar will be destroyed.  For it can only happen once.  It is true that Jesus’ time on the cross has brought forth a deeper well, of Living Water.

God will cross all boundaries to love us.  It may be geographical, gender, and/or reputation, but because of this Deeper Well that Jesus has opened within us with His time on the Tree, we have water for eternal life.