Besides the theme of the ‘Word of God’, another theme evident in today’s Gospel Reading is blindfolds or our wearing of coloured glasses and therefore seeing a coloured and a biased truth.
The Gospel reading opens with Jesus addressing the believers, which believers are these…? These are the newly believing Jews. Jesus has saved the woman found in an adulterous relationship, He has declared himself the light of the world, and how he manifests God our Father – through Himself being the Son and carrying out God’s will. And many believed. But here is the catch. There is the issue of pride in their heritage, which they have covered up and forgotten.
Israel was called to be a ‘nation of priests’ to stand in intercession for the rest of the world, meaning God was also saying the rest of the World is loved by Him. They had forgotten their Babylonian captivity by sweeping it under the rug and had chosen only to remember The Call of Abraham and the glory of David and Solomon – the Temple. For them everything revolved around the Temple. The one for whom the Temple was made, became secondary. Holiness of God was transferred to the Temple. And the Temple became the object of their relationship with the divine, not the means to the divine.
We too have done similar things and transferred the priority and ‘firstness’ of a relationship with God, to doing things, even possibly good things, even things God commends. But if we do not have a relationship with God, and place these as First in our lives, then all things, even good things, even God things, have actually blinded us to the Truth. For only the relationship with God can bring freedom and clarity in our lives.
To put it differently. John 3 speaks of being Born again – meaning to be re-educated in the Truth through a re-reading of God’s Word, according to the values Jesus speaks of in the Gospels. And John 4 spells out what happens when we engage/have a relationship with the Truth. The Samaritan Woman’s transformation from an outcast to engaging with God, seeking the truth by asking questions, being transformed by the encounter, and then proclaiming her encounter with the Living Truth. This is what Jesus is saying He is; the One who brings Light to our darkness with His Truth. Believe.