I Am the Messiah

Today we’re starting a new sermon series looking at the “I am” statements of Jesus in John’s Gospel. Our exploration is going to require a tidbit of Greek grammar and today’s story is going to involve some cultural history, but I promise that it actually speaks to the moment we’re living through today, so bear with me and I hope that we’ll learn something valuable in the exercise.

GOD’S NAME IS I AM

Did you know God has a name? In the Old Testament Translations of our Bibles, he is often just called ‘God’ or ‘the LORD.’ But when our Bible says “the LORD” the Hebrew text uses God’s proper name: Yahweh. Yahweh, means ‘I am’. We see this most clearly in the story when God reveals himself to Moses at the burning bush calling Moses to deliver the children of Israel from Egypt:

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

So God tells Moses his name is “I am.”

THAT’S GREEK TO ME

By New Testament times, Hebrew is a dead language (Jesus spoke a related language called Aramaic) The majority of Jews lived in diaspora communities scattered around the Eastern Mediterranean world, where they spoke the predominant language of the region: Greek. So it’s not surprising that once Greek speaking Jews outnumbered Hebrew speakers, Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. In this Greek Bible they literally translate God’s name into Greek: egō eimi (ἐγώ εἰμί).

Egō means ‘I’ and eimi means ‘am,’ but you don’t typically say it like that. It’s enough to simply say ‘am’ because the ‘I’ is implied by the form the verb takes. But the translators of the Greek Old Testament translated it using the ‘egō’ as well as the ‘eimi’. I know this is boring grammar but it is important to understand in this sermon series we’ll be doing for the next little bit.

The New Testament scriptures are written in Greek. In about 8 places in John’s Gospel, Jesus says I am, but says it, egō eimi instead of just eimi. The author uses this awkward grammar because it shows that Jesus means to associate himself with God. So, for example, when Jesus says, Before Abraham was I am. He’s not mixing up his verb tenses, he’s claiming to be the pre-existent God who was before all creation. Commentator Gerald Borchert says “In John the use of egō eimi... is used in the mouth of Jesus as a self-identifying vehicle for announcing some important theological idea concerning him. So each of these egō eimi statements is meant to be a statement not just about Jesus, but also about God in general. So if John’s gospel recorded that Jesus said, “I am wearing bluejeans” he wouldn’t just be saying that he (Jesus) is wearing blue jeans, but that God wears blue jeans.

JEWS & SAMARITANS

The second bit of background we need to put the passage we’re looking at today in context is the historical background of the relationship between Jews and the Samaritans.

First we need to understand the divided kingdom. After the time of the judges, the children of Israel unite under a king: Saul. God replaces Saul, a bad king, with David (who is on balance much better). Under David’s son Solomon, Israel reaches the peak of its power, prestige and prosperity. But Solomon’s son Rehoboam is, to use a theological term-of-art, an idiot. He alienates the people and so not long after he accedes to the throne the country splits in two. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin stayed loyal to David’s dynasty. They took the name Judah. The tribes that lived further north became another country and they got the name Israel in the divorce.

Israel’s kings are universally bad and after about 200 years, God has enough. He allows the big bad Assyrian empire to capture Israel along with its capital, Samaria. The Assyrians cart most of the people off as slaves, leaving a few poor people to tend the land. Then they resettle the land with exiles from other provinces (read: Gentiles). But before too long lions start attacking the people. The Assyrians interpret this as God being angry about not being worshipped properly on his land, so the Assyrians allow some teachers of the Jewish law to go back and properly instruct the people on how God likes to be worshiped. The leftover Jews intermarry with the newly settled exiles from gentile nations. And they all, kind of worship God.

Fast forward 750 years, and the Samaritans have become a distinct people apart from the Jews, but with some theological similarities. They believe in one God (an unusual idea in the ancient world) and they accept a slightly altered version of the Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy) as their scriptures. Samaritans reject all the David and Jerusalem stuff (since it’s not in the part of the Bible they recognize). They believe that God desires to be worshiped on Mount Garizim (in Samaria) not Mount Moriah (In Jerusalem).

Jews looked forward to the coming of The Mesisah, literally, the anointed. The picture here is a return of the king (there had been no king from the line of David for about 600 years by the time Jesus comes on the scene). But this promise of a coming king isn’t in the part of the Bible that the Samaritans accept. But the in the book of Deuteronomy (which they do recognize), Moses speaks of a prophet like himself who will come later:

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.

The Samaritans usually call this person the taheb--the restorer. They believe he will restore the proper worship of God to Mount Garizim while the Jews believe this person will restore the throne to Jerusalem. They are people with theological differences that boil over into personal animosity. In other words, Jews and Samaritans hate each others’ guts.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL

The first of these ‘I am” statements happens during the story where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well.

Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “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.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

The NIV, which I’ve read above, smooths out the translation to make it more readable. I did my own literal translation. And the text says, “Jesus says to her, “I Am the one speaking to you.”

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

To understand the story, we must be attuned to the social reality that exists between Jesus and this woman. He is a Jew, and Jews don’t speak with Samaritans. But it goes deeper. Jewish men did not speak publicly with women, even their own wives. So it’s a major breach in protocol for Jesus to speak with her. But there’s still more. She’s coming to fetch water at noon. That’s not the normal way of doing things. In that part of the world and at that time of day it’s hot. You don’t leave your daily trip to the well for the hottest part of the day for no good reason. But this woman has a reason. Jesus points out that she’s had five husbands and is now shacked up. That explains it. If she came to get water in the cool of the morning, she’d have to face the other women of the village. She’s avoiding them by coming at an off-peak time. This woman is an outcast even among her own people. And Jesus, even knowing her checkered past, talks to her.

At first, the woman is confused about why Jesus is talking to her. But Jesus says he would offer her living water. She interprets it on a natural level (the expression meant fresh and moving water from a stream or fountain). But Jesus means it for a metaphor. In an arid climate, finding water is a matter of life and death. Jesus means God’s sustaining life and grace, but the woman, not understanding that Jesus is speaking of a spiritual reality assumes he’s a crank. He’s offering her a drink, but he doesn’t have the stuff he needs to collect the water. She sarcastically asks if he’s greater than their ancestor Jacob. Jesus doesn’t answer the question directly. Instead, he tells her that Jacob’s water only relieves thirst for a short time. His water will relieve it forever. The woman asks for this water, “Give me some of this water, so I don’t have to keep coming back here” but the way I read this text, she’s being sarcastic, still considering him a crank or a fool.

Jesus isn’t getting anywhere because the woman isn’t willing to consider the depths of what Jesus is saying, so he puts his finger on what’s really at issue. He asks her to get her husband and come back. Her statement that she has no husband is a deflection. Her immoral lifestyle is a source of alienation and shame. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Jesus doesn’t drop it. He gently lets her know that he knows the score. She’s a serial monogamist in a common-law relationship (a scandal in that culture). Jesus isn’t trying to humiliate her, he’s trying to gently show her she needs this life-giving water. He’s also tipping his hand a bit to show that he’s not who she thinks he is.

She interprets Jesus’ knowledge of her private life as a sign that he’s got divinely given insight. He must be a prophet. At the same time, she still doesn’t want to talk about her moral failings, so she decides it’s time to talk theology. She brings up the dispute between Jews and Samaritans about where God should be worshiped. Jesus basically tells her, “actually, on this one the Jews have it right. You Samaritans, by rejecting much of the scriptures, don’t even know the God you worship.” But then Jesus adds something really important. This controversy is a moot point. God is doing something new, and now location really doesn't matter. Worship can now become more inclusive.

Jesus tells the woman that God is spirit and he wants worshipers who worship him in spirit and truth. The Father is separate from creation, Spirit, not flesh, people can’t worship him unless he reveals himself to them. The Samaritans can’t worship God properly because they have refused to accept his revelation by rejecting the majority of Jewish scriptures. They have refused to come to God so that they can know them. But then--this is the really cool part--God has come to them. In one sentence--I am the one speaking to you--Jesus claims to be The Messiah and God himself (these two concepts weren’t considered to be the same thing before Jesus).

People can only worship God if God wants to be found. He’s spirit, so we can’t detect his presence with scientific instruments. We can’t knock on his door and demand an audience. We can only know God when God chooses to make himself known. And here God is making himself known and offering living water--life giving grace, mercy and love--to an immoral Samaritan Woman. If God chooses to reveal himself to a person like this, someone who occupies the bottom rung on the social ladder in his culture, then he wants to reveal himself to you too. Jesus seeks out the excluded and those at the margins because in showing love and mercy to them, he strips away the argument that God couldn't love someone like you or like me.

So maybe you find yourself feeling ashamed of your sin. Maybe you feel like a Holy God couldn’t love a person as tainted as you. Jesus knows your sin. But he loves you in spite of it, and his greatest joy is to offer you forgiveness and the grace so that you can be freed from it.

If you know and follow Jesus and have graciously received his forgiveness, there’s an important lesson here for you too. Jesus compassionately reaches out to someone who his culture didn’t value at all. He goes out of what culturally would have been his comfort zone to be a messenger of God’s healing grace. And as those who have committed to following him, that is our job too. Our job is to follow our Lord in his boundary breaking outreach to all people, including to our own Samaritans. For you that might be the unchurched, the poor, the mentally ill, the addicted, those socio-economically beneath you. Jesus reaches out to all of them. As has hands and feet in this community, so must we.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

What sorts of people do you think tend to feel excluded from the church? Who are our Samaritans?

Jesus brings up the woman’s sin, but he is gentle and understanding with her. What does it look like to address sin in a gentle and understanding way in our society? Is this the way the church typically operates?