"The woman said to him, 'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that is Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.'" (John 4:19, 20, ESV)
Or, "The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power." (An excerpt of an article which won first price in the "bad writing contest," sponsored by the academic journal "Philosophy and Literature." The article was written by a UC Berkley professor.)
When our Lord Jesus was getting too close to home, the woman at the well wanted to go to "Mars Hill," get academic, theological/philosophical instead of dealing with her real "issues." This is rampant in American schools and churches. Every time I read this passage I am reminded of just how easy it is to avoid what I really need. It is a diversion when the Word of God is getting too close to the real issues in my life.
The Bible is not like this. Compare the professor's verbal confusion to the clear expression of the Word of God, Jesus, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman at the well was laboring in the "seen" world, as most of us do far more than we should. She had similarities to the professor: escape encounter with Jesus Christ with self-created complexities. "If God exists, why? or "How do we," etc. A person with insatiable questions and on and on verbosity is a person who does not really want answers.
Today there are issues in all of our lives which need, "The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." This, "water welling up to eternal life," is not answers to life's questions, "Well, what do you think I should do?" It is rather, "Whom shall I trust?" The water is a Person, Jesus Christ.
Father, in Jesus' Name, thank You for clarity-------- You. Amen.
*****************
Or, "The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power." (An excerpt of an article which won first price in the "bad writing contest," sponsored by the academic journal "Philosophy and Literature." The article was written by a UC Berkley professor.)
When our Lord Jesus was getting too close to home, the woman at the well wanted to go to "Mars Hill," get academic, theological/philosophical instead of dealing with her real "issues." This is rampant in American schools and churches. Every time I read this passage I am reminded of just how easy it is to avoid what I really need. It is a diversion when the Word of God is getting too close to the real issues in my life.
The Bible is not like this. Compare the professor's verbal confusion to the clear expression of the Word of God, Jesus, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman at the well was laboring in the "seen" world, as most of us do far more than we should. She had similarities to the professor: escape encounter with Jesus Christ with self-created complexities. "If God exists, why? or "How do we," etc. A person with insatiable questions and on and on verbosity is a person who does not really want answers.
Today there are issues in all of our lives which need, "The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." This, "water welling up to eternal life," is not answers to life's questions, "Well, what do you think I should do?" It is rather, "Whom shall I trust?" The water is a Person, Jesus Christ.
Father, in Jesus' Name, thank You for clarity-------- You. Amen.
*****************
When Peter, an 18 year old Norwegian, "heard the call to evangelize China, on that day he not only emptied his wallet into the collection plate, but included a small note with the words, 'and my life.'"
"Looking unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
"Looking unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
