Today’s Scripture Reading (August 13,
2014): John 4
Things
change. This might be the single unchanging truth of our time. Everything is in
flux. We used to say “that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but even that time
worn saying is being replaced. It may not be broke, but there still might be
ways to make it better and more efficient. The truth of the major pop makers of
Pepsi and Coke is that they are constantly fiddling with their recipes,
striving to make their product even better. There was a time when the idea of
change for the sake of change was a bad one. Now, anything that remains
consistent over time is simply boring – and change is needed.
For those of
us who are tired of the pace of change in our world, this is not good news. We
want things to slow down, to be like it used to be. But there is very little
hope of that becoming a reality any time soon. “The times, they are a changing’”
But in Jesus
day, this was not as true. The world that Jesus grew up in was very similar to
the world that his father Joseph had grown up in, which was very similar to the
world that Joseph’s father Jacob had grown up in. And as much as this was true
for lives, it was even truer for the religious life cycle of the culture. There,
everything went like clockwork. The festivals were observed, sacrifices were
made, pilgrimages to the Holy Places were planned – and when the year ended, we
would simply repeat the process all over again one more time. Year after year,
everything would stay the same.
And the conflict
over the religious structure would also stay the same. Jesus meets this Samaritan
woman at the town well. To be honest, she was hoping that this Rabbi, whoever
he was, would just let her get her water and go home. But he insisted on
talking to her. And the battle lines between the Samaritans and the Jews was a
long one. The Samaritans were the mixed blood descendants of the Northern
Kingdom of Israel. And almost a thousand years earlier, Jeroboam and the North
separated from the descendants of David in the South. But Jeroboam was worried
that if he allowed his people to continue to go to Jerusalem to worship God
that he would lose his power over them. And so he set up his own holy sites –
and his own gods who he had declared to be the true gods of Israel. And ever
since that time, Jerusalem had worshipped on their holy mountain inside the
city gates while the northern people worshipped on their holy mountains. And nothing
had changed for a thousand years.
But now
Jesus was announcing a very different reality. The time was coming when there
would be a real change and God would not be worshiped on either mountain. A
time was coming in fulfillment of the Hebrew prophesies when God would write
his law on the hearts of the people – and God would be worshipped everywhere.
Any place where we decided to gather to worship God would become a holy place –
and more than that, these many places would experience the presence of God.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Mark 2
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