THE ULTIMATE FREEDOM
John 4: 13-15 “Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
I have taken the liberty of naming the main character in this story, Joanna. Fitting,I would suggest, since the Biblical meaning of that name is ‘God is gracious.’
More than a dozen demands jostled for immediate attention in Joanna’s overtaxed mind. Innumerable household chores mocked Joanna’s every necessity for any further delay. But the most urgent need of all was the filling of three empty water jars inside the cottage door of their humble dwelling in Sychar. Would she have time now to make it to Jacob’s well and return with water to cook dinner for her working husband?
Life had never delivered on a promise of happiness in marriage for her; instead, five relationships ended in separation. And to this present moment, she had no reprieve from the demands to behave in ways designed always to please. The scorching noon-day sun threatened to make the current undertaking even more torturous. But then, the sun’s rays would affect her body alone, while the vile gossip of the town’s folks seared her soul. Hopefully, no one else would be at Jacob’s well at this hour to administer the usual treatment; Yet, if presently absent, those leering eyes had imprisoned her memory.
Some days, other details demanded attention, adding weight to already overburdened minds and bodies. People, thinking they knew the details of lost dreams and broken hearts, added their half-truths, thereby destroying every effort to change.
The fact is, this world is often blind to one’s every attempt to be anything other than the image assigned by those who think they know. Conclusions and pronouncements arbitrarily thought to be true often determine one’s destiny. Such action forces another human being to be a mere object, the result of combined forces. The predetermining of another’s future is anathema to the Creator’s will.
Joanna’s awareness of her seemingly inescapable situation echoes throughout. Yet, her desire to be more than another example of human misfortune is also apparent. Her effort to escape the chains that bound her to the world’s harsh dictates is slow at first. Jesus finds that His every attempt to engage Joanna in conversation reveals limited experience in meaningful dialogue. For example, Jesus’ simple request for a drink of water immediately exposes the foremost painful reality in her confused mind: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water? Jews and Samaritans have nothing to do with each other”. Eventually, Jesus’ information about the availability of life-changing water prompts Joanna’s simple question of logistics.’Sir, where are you going to get this water? This well is deep, and you have no means to draw water from it.
Every theme Jesus introduces meets with evasion, reflective of the shallow, worldly wisdom that governs Joanna’s every thought. Joanna’s entire life reveals a pattern of compulsion which changes her from a free individual with the power to choose for herself into a controlled object. Anything predetermining another person’s response is anathema to the Creator’s will.
Jesus Christ is the only antidote to the world’s power to reduce its subjects to mere objects. Everyone who is being controlled and acted upon becomes a thing perpetually imprisoned mentally and spiritually.
But the record of Jesus’ encounter with Satan in the wilderness demonstrates how He, Himself, breaks the world’s iron grip upon the way we are to live and be the children of God.
Here, Jesus refuses to be the one acted upon by worldly influences. But instead, taking control of the situation, He becomes the one who responds incisively. He is the Subject. A Subject is that which determines itself to be. It is the result of neither coercion nor external force.
Jesus now approaches Joanna to change her from an object victim into a liberated subject with the Freedom to choose her destiny.
Joanna’s curt response to Jesus’ suggestion of the availability of living water becomes the occasion for Jesus to reveal the gift already bestowed by God on all humans, the gift of the Spirit’s Freedom!
“Speak thou to Him, for He heareth,
And Spirit with Spirit doth meet.
Closer is He than breathing, nearer than
hands or feet.” (2)
Celebrate with Joanna her God-given reign of actual Freedom. No longer is she a plaything of fate, an object under the dictates of the world. Instead, she is an admirable subject. She learns, ” Not by might and not by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord Almighty’,
( Zechariah 4:6), With a newfound boldness, it follows that she invites her accusers to come to the fountainhead of her Freedom. She acts upon the worries and cares that tortured her yesterday by leaning her Spirit upon the Spirit indwelling her. Here is the Spirit of the Freedom that endures forever.
A Prayer To Follow This Meditation
Gracious Father,
I want to talk to You about Freedom.
Please grant me, therefore, a quiet mind and an understanding Spirit.
Freedom is what a seagull demonstrates as it sails motionlessly across the azure sky;
Freedom is an intense moment of everlasting beauty that imprisons God’s pronouncement to your troubled soul, ‘You are My son ( daughter), today I have become your Father.’
What language can I borrow to capture the essence of Joanna’s feelings upon hearing the final creak of her personal prison bars, and seek to embrace the enriching experience of Freedom along with the offer of an abiding Love?
‘ Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below!
Praise Him on high, you Heavenly hosts!
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
Notes On The Above Text
The scriptures in the above meditation are from the
New International Translation.
2.Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Higher Panyheon.