Back to Basics: I AM

What is truth? Have you ever really thought about “What truth is?” Fact. Absence of opinion. Science would tell you it is repeatable knowledge gained from observation such that the outcome in a similar circumstance is predictable. The postmodern response is “Whose truth?” But what is Truth? Our world tells us that “Everything is relative. Nothing is objective. Point of view and context are critical to understanding what is being claimed.” We are living in the midst of a crisis of authority. It is not a new crisis.

In 1910, when the United Presbyterian Church of North America penned the 6 Great Ends of the Church among them is the “preservation of the Truth.” But it is older than that! When Jesus was brought before Pilate, Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” “What is truth?” retorted Pilate.
What is truth? The question hung in the air as Pilate walked away. It is this moment of climax toward which all of the Gospel of John is building. In the beginning, John poetically proclaims, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

As Martin Luther put it, the truth did not become a book or a concept or an idea, but a baby crying and spitting up in Mary’s arms. And it is no coincidental catastrophe, no mischance or misfortune that the truth carried his cross and was nailed to it, high in the heat of the sun, and when all was completed, said “I am thirsty.”

The truth is that God so loved the world, the solidarity of God with sinners is so deep, that no matter where we are from, who we have been, or how much we doubt, God refuses to stop loving us.

One day, Jesus was going from Judea in the South to Galilee in the North, and sandwiched between Judea and Galilee was an area known as Samaria. It had been part of the Northern Kingdom, and there was a temple at Mt. Gerizim. When the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom, many Jewish people were exiled, and the temple was destroyed, those who were left in the area acculturated to the culture of their occupiers, intermarrying and worshipping foreign gods. Good Jewish men did not associate with Samaritans. In fact, when traveling between Judea and Galilee, they crossed the river, made the journey, and crossed back, to avoid Samaria altogether.

But, Jesus didn’t. Jesus took the route right through Samaria that led past his ancestor Jacob’s well. It was noon, in the heat of the day, he’s been walking all morning, and he sits down, tired, no doubt thirsty. He doesn’t have any way to draw water up from the well. But, a woman is coming, and the boundary of Samaria isn’t the only boundary Jesus is willing to cross today. He talks to her.

Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans. Men were not to talk to women in public outside their familial circle. Women were to draw water together, in the early morning; for some reason this woman is shunned, ashamed, not part of the circle of village women, and so she has waited and made her way to the well at noontime. The result is that, here is a woman, alone, with a man, alone, at the well at high noon. And John records the longest conversation of Jesus we have recorded in the Gospels. Jesus offers her living water, living water is moving water, spring water, not the stagnant water of a well.

When she agrees, “Yes – I’ll take it. I won’t have to come here to draw water anymore!” Jesus tells her to call her husband and come back. Such a seemingly innocent request, she answers, “I have no husband.” I wonder if this is her wound, her shame. For generations, we have judged the situation Jesus then outlines, “The fact is, you have had 5 husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” According to the law, she had no right to divorce or to argue if her husband sought divorce. It may have been that her husband died, and his brother married her, and the next, and the next , and the next, and the next brother had to take her into his household but refused to marry her. Nothing is said about her being promiscuous or immoral. No judgment is made. Jesus knows her. Jesus knows her circumstance. And she sees that he is a prophet.

She must have been excited to ask him, perhaps he would be able to speak with authority, “Sir, our ancestors worshipped at the temple on Mt. Gerizim, and now we are told by the Jewish authority that Jerusalem is where we must worship.” Who is right? What is the truth?

Jesus’ response is neither. There will soon be a time when true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth.
“I know that Messiah, the Christ, is coming,” she responds. She has been expectantly looking for the anointed One! She has been waiting for the Messiah! “When he comes,” she says, “he will explain everything to us.”

The impact of Jesus’ response is lost in modern English translations. The New International Version that I read this morning translates, “I who speak to you am he.” A more literal translation will reveal the truth Jesus spoke in echo to her, “The One speaking to you: I AM.”

Surely she heard the echoes of her ancestor, Jacob, who wrestled all night with God asking his name, the echo of Moses at the burning bush asking whom shall I say sent me and God responding “I AM. I AM has sent you.”

The disciples returned just then, and leaving her water jar, she ran back to town calling everyone to come and see this man who knew where she was from, where she had been, the doubts with which she struggled and offered to quench her thirst, her longings; water to bubble up as a spring of water welling up to eternal life, life lived in communion with God. Could he be the Messiah?

Frederick Buechner said, “A Christian is one who points to Christ and says, ‘I can’t prove a thing, but there is something about his eyes and his voice. There’s something about the way he carries his head and his hand, the way he carries his cross – the way he carries me.”

What is truth?

The one who provides Living Water’s love is so deep that he crosses social and cultural boundaries, that he knows us completely and still he approaches, that he so completely empties himself as he hangs for us that he is thirsty.
This is the truth by which we are called to measure everything else in our lives.