Jesus and Joe Black
If there is one thing that fascinates me about the Gospels, it is the cryptic conversations that Jesus has with other people. They are conversations that have a mysterious touch, leaving things sometimes unsaid, seeming to remain latent and in abeyance, but really saying everything that is important and essential. They are reported conversations, edited dialogues, masterfully put together – perhaps they display something about Jesus.
But in any case, it is the testimony about Jesus that we have, not the real person in flesh and blood. It is the Jesus of the Gospels that awakens the hope we have – the myth. We do not know whether the words that Jesus is reported to have spoken are in fact his words, or the words of the evangelist. Even the philological evidence is thin because the New Testament was written in Greek and not in the language that Jesus spoke: Aramaic.
Just as Paul wrote: “So that we henceforth have known no one according to the flesh, and even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him no more; so that if any one is in Christ—he is a new creature; the old things did pass away, lo, all things have become new.†Paul says that Christians now live under new circumstances, it is not fitting to judge someone as flesh and blood, rather, we should see them as new creatures of a new creation. So too Jesus should no longer be seen in his carnal status, rather in his new status, as Messiah.
It is therefore not surprising that the Gospels portray Jesus in his new status, and not only as flesh and blood. He knows things that others do not, he is assured where others are worried, he is determined although others have yet to understand what the agenda is. And yet a touch of humanity does get through. Something that is lacking in other heroic personalities. He is more like a Joe Black, curiously innocent and yet mighty, all-knowing and yet able to learn.
“He came to a town of Samaria, called Sychar, near to the place that Jacob gave to Joseph his son and where the well of Jacob was. Jesus, being weary from the journey, was sitting on the well and it was the sixth hour.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said, ‘Give me to drink.’
His disciples had gone into the town, that they may buy provisions. The Samaritan woman, seeing he was alone, said to him, ‘How come that you, being a Jew, ask drink from me, being a Samaritan woman?’ for Jews have no dealing with Samaritans.
Jesus answered, ‘If you would know the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, give me to drink, you would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water.’
The woman said, ‘Sir, you haven’t even a vessel to draw with, and the well is deep - where, then, can you have the living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and who himself did drink out of it, as did his sons, and his cattle?’
Jesus answered, ‘Every one who drinks of this water shall thirst again, but whoever may drink of the water that I will give him, will not thirst again and the water that I will give him shall be a well springing up into everlasting life.’
The woman said, ‘Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor have to come here to draw water.’â€
There are a number of questions that seem to be left unanswered, but the woman is receptive and follows the lead she receives. You are a Jew, why are you talking to me? What water are you talking about? Are you able to do more than our legendary paragon? The Samaritan woman is not slow to follow him, but lacks information and is uncomfortable with the situation. She knows that the circumstance is something special and asks the key question that had always been the dispute between Jews and Samaritans – we pray on Mount Carmel, the Jews on Mount Zion, who is right?
Jesus replies ‘The hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth - for the Father seeks such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him, must worship in spirit and in truth … believe me, the hour is coming when you shall neither worship the Father on this mountain, nor at Jerusalem.’ The dispute is not about God, but in reality another form of idolatry - my God is stronger than your God - forgetting that according to the legend of Jacob, he came to understand that the Mystery wasn’t some local idol, but spiritual: God is a ‘Spirit’.
The story tells us that the woman was able to keep Jesus in her town for two days, where he convinced people that he was the Messiah. But the heart of the story is the longing for something to satisfy an unending thirst, for ‘eternal water’ which even springs up as a well of hope on which we can thrive, and as a source of faith and love that is so lacking in our world. The metaphors are simple but that is what people need if their hearts are to be spoken to.
This is why the Bible attracts the sentimental, but in a way that the story of Joe Black attracts us. We know that Joe is Death, and we know that Death is not a person. But the story teaches us something about ourselves – not death. The story is introspective for everyone one reading the book or watching in the cinema. The subject of the Bible is not Death, but Life and the Mystery behind it. Can we be receptive?
Shalom
Bob