JOHN189 - Jesus Is Doing Everything Right, but John Is Still Taking Great Care with His Reputation

Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And I got a buddy who is fantastic, is virtuous, good, hyper honest, and he goes way over the top out of his way to explain himself if anything ever looks weird. And it's interesting because this friend, he doesn't do anything, you know, publicly or on the internet or anything like that.

You know, he's just a dude with a job and a family. But if anything looks a little bit out of sorts, like, why were you there? Why were you late? Or why were you early? Or why were you talking to that dude or that lady, I can just see the sensitivity to it. And at first, when I was going to know this friend, I was like, man, that's dude, you don't need to explain everything to me.

But then as time has passed, and I've kind of watched how polite society works and how adults work and communities work and gossip works, and the way a narrative can travel very quickly, whether it's true or not, I've kind of come to appreciate what the guy is doing, right? Right there. I mean, there's two schools of thought when it comes to this.

School of thought number one is I don't care about any of that stuff. Only God can judge me. I don't care about the narrative stuff. If my reputation doesn't speak for itself, if I don't get, haven't earned the benefit of the doubt to about anything that might look even the slightest bit shifty, then well, I guess I'm not living right.

The other school of thought is, yeah, just can't be too careful with your reputation. And even though it's not, it doesn't make for the most, you know, even enjoyable flow conversationally, every now and then you just got to interject these little explanatory bits to help people understand what the heck is going on for the sake of, you know, reputational care.

Well, I think John is doing a bit of reputational care here in John chapter four, as he introduces a very important theological scene that some of the original audience probably would have written off and mentally waded up and thrown in the trash or gaffawed at before they ever even had a chance to hear what it was about, because this scene involves a young Jewish rabbi, uh Jesus of Nazareth.

I mean, you've probably heard of him, he's in the Bible and stuff. We talk about him a lot around here, and an unnamed Samaritan woman. And as we read along a little further in the story, we discover the unnamed Samaritan woman hasn't had the best track record with men. And so you add all of this up: the cultural expectations of the day, the reputations of the people involved, and a desire to just nip in the bud any objections that the audience might have that would cause them to not hear the important stuff that's about to happen.

You add all that up, and John the Evangelist, the author of the Gospel of John, makes the business decision here to clarify why Jesus, his master, is alone at a well in Samaria with a woman who maybe doesn't have the best reputation or track record. Starting from the beginning of John 4. The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.

When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 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 the sixth hour. Okay, so the scene is taking shape, the audience is formulating their opinions, and already we see the reputational management occurring. Why is Jesus leaving Judea? Why isn't he just staying down there? Well, I bet John had heard these objections over the decades, and the people had said, like, well, why Jesus was a coward?

He fled. Like the temperature turned up just a little bit and he fled. Okay, well, John is making a very light touch case for Jesus' shrewdness and his decision making to help make sense of why he went where he went. I don't even think that's John's primary reason for telling us why Jesus went back north.

But I think a lot of what John is doing is addressing later questions, concerns, and things that came up after the three synoptic gospels and all the people who saw Jesus firsthand had circulated the account of Jesus all around the world. You know, John is coming in after the fact, and this is an opportunity under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to clarify things that people might not have been getting yet.

Okay, so the scene takes shape. Jesus went north, he was shrewd. He had good reason to go back to Galilee. Okay, next point of reputational management. He went through Samaria. Now, as we discussed, almost everybody went through Samaria. Josephus, the first century extra-biblical Jewish historian, tells us that this was just the route that people came and went when they went back and forth between Galilee and Jerusalem and Judea.

So Jesus is there for a reason. It's the natural travel route. But also, you know, John is leading us along to help us understand that he had more than just itinerary reasons for going through there. So he comes to this town in Samaria called Sycar near a plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Well, see, now it's taking shape. Why Jesus would go through here. We already have on paper from John, Jesus is saying that the temple in Jerusalem is his father's house. So Jesus has already affirmed the Jewish narrative of the Jewish Samaritan point of tension. Now here Jesus is standing in the shadows of the mountain on which the historic Samaritan temple is built.

And he's not going up there to offer sacrifices or to do anything. Rather, as that building looms over the top of them from the heights of Mount Gerizim, down here, Jesus is standing by something much older. Ground that he, Jesus, pre-incarnate Jesus, God had conferred upon the descendants of Abraham through Jacob and Joseph.

And God had provided for them by providing this well. And Jesus, well, why does he stop? Well, for theological reasons, for grand narrative of history reasons, but also because he's tired. Tired as he was from the journey, he sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. So any reader would look at this and say, okay, well, that would be completely normal for a person to sit down there.

The sixth hour by Roman rendering of time would be six hours after sunrise. So it's basically high noon. We're right in the middle of the hottest, sunniest part of the day, and Jesus is tired from the journey. Well, again, John is shaping here the reader's understanding of who Jesus is, his reputation, his identity, his essence.

This is a pretty interesting detail. Jesus, so far, there's been a whole lot of emphasis on him breaking the laws of time and space, having authority from beyond. In the initial prologue, we're getting stuff about, you know, through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.

He owns life and light. He's God in the flesh. He's the word of God incarnate. Also, he gets tired. So that's why he stopped at the well. By the time John is writing this, perversions of Christianity have taken root on the fringes of the faith. First John is in part a polemic against Gnosticism. The Gnostics or the dualists were a Christian-ish cult in the first century that emerged.

It was like, hey, we totally believe in this Greek philosophy about the separation of the physical and the spiritual, with the physical being bad and the spiritual being good. And yet we also kind of believe in Jesus. We're going to mush these ideas together. And a lot of the early heresies about Jesus are born out of this idea of separation of natures, physical and spiritual.

And John writes against that in 1 John. He hints at calling it out in 2nd and 3 John as well. This was the early heretical enemy of the Christian faith and of a right understanding of God. And so now here John is writing a gospel after the other three Gospels have been in circulation, probably for a good chunk of time.

And he picks these little moments, these little human moments, to emphasize the full humanity and full divinity of Christ. So Jesus, in the first four chapters, made everything that has been made and is God in the flesh and owns life and light. And also he gets thirsty when he goes on road trips because he's all God and all man, God in the flesh, God making his dwelling among us.

So maybe reputational management isn't exactly the right term there, but it's definitely John saying a few extra things to just make sure we're thinking about the whole Jesus thing and the whole scene correctly and not reading between the lines in some uncouth ways. Well, I also think verse six is important because it clarifies why Jesus would stop.

Because in a minute we find out there's a woman there alone. So verse six then, Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. Verse six then clarifies Jesus stopped for the water, not for the lady. And people would have wondered about that.

Jesus' enemies would have had an opportunity to slander him here, especially when, and we'll get to it tomorrow, we discover a little bit more about the reputation of the woman who is there. John is being a great wingman here. He's going out of his way to offer these little details without impugning anyone, just so that you can see it properly and picture the scene properly and not be distracted by imagined scandal.

He does more of this in the next two verses. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? We're going to talk a lot more about that initial exchange next time around. But for the purposes of our conversation today, then in verse 8, it says, in parentheses, his disciples had gone into town to buy food.

Do you see what John is doing here? Nothing bad is happening here, but John knows that this could leave Jesus open to criticism. So he's clarifying, why was Jesus there? He was thirsty. Why was he alone? His disciples went into town to buy food. Then this woman shows up alone. Well, why is she alone?

You know, the original audience, I think, would have thought, well, don't women usually go to wells in groups because they're pretty vulnerable there. Well, as the story unfolds, we discover why this woman might have to go to the well alone at this point in her life. And it might be associated with reputation.

She might be enduring a degree of shunning or ostracism from other women in her community. We'll unpack that more in a future conversation. So through a mixture of completely innocent but also completely providential circumstances, John the evangelist has brought us into this moment where now God in the flesh, the light of the world, who is the light and life of humankind, is right here dwelling among us at Jacob, whose name is Israel's well in the shadow of the two mountains, Ebal and Gerizim, where from one the blessings of the covenant were pronounced by Joshua 1200 or more years earlier, and where from the other the curses involved in the covenant were pronounced by the same man who then said,

You do whatever you're gonna do. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And here's Jesus at this well with this woman from a rival people group. And rather than turning up his nose at her or looking the other way because somebody might assume something bad was happening here, Jesus engages with her.

Will you give me a drink? And that's what gets everything rolling. So look, in the same way that your social intuition might kick in, if say you were a gentleman and a bunch of people at a place that you frequent saw you hugging very closely a woman who isn't your wife out in the parking lot and then emotionally saying goodbye to her.

And you might feel the impulse to go inside and clarify, hey, just just so everybody knows, like I know that was a long hug, that's my sister. She came to visit and she was leaving from there. Oh, in the same way, you might just offer a detail here and there to sort of manage understandings and prevent gossip and make sure everybody knows that everything's above board so that y'all can focus on more important things.

So John here is offering us a few little extra details to frame this thing up properly and honestly so that we, the readers, won't be distracted by trying to read between the lines and will instead see this for exactly what it is and receive properly the wonderful stuff that is about to come out of this conversation between these two very unlikely conversation partners.

All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.

JOHN189 - Jesus Is Doing Everything Right, but John Is Still Taking Great Care with His Reputation

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