Confession: Not a means to entrap people in their lies, but free them in their truth.

Confession: Not a means to entrap people in their lies, but free them in their truth.

Ah, the Samaritan Woman, a classic tale that clearly demonstrates God’s MO or mode of operation. God’s MO is worth studying. It has been consistent for thousands of years and demonstrates just how capable and infinitely resourceful God is.

At the time our gospel story unfolds, God is himself in the form of a man named Jesus. and also at work in the life of a Samaritan woman. God continues to work using the same MO. A method whose goal is to positively influence one person at a time, while always hoping for a positive cascade effect.

One teacher, parent or grandparent, one employer, coworker, or friend can demonstrate that God’s MO works for and through ordinary people, generation after generation. God’s MO helps people see things differently, or helps them think about their “same ol, same ol” in a new way. To consider their same ‘ol job, circumstance, or relations as potential places of transformation. Time and time again, God proves that he enjoys a good face to face encounter, and loves to start up conversations.

Jesus, being God, shows up at the well knowing full well his timing is perfect. We might even suggest he arrives with an ulterior motive. Albeit a good one: To change people’s lives for the better. Not just for a moment, but for eternity. So God’s MO also describes a motive of operation, not just a method.

In following God’s MO, Jesus never has to try and override a person’s free will. Instead, he draws people out by asking a simple favor. Like we might roll down our window and ask directions, or request help opening a door, or unloading something heavy, Jesus connects with a stranger by making a simple request.

What if that’s what coming to church is, what prayer is, what confession is? Little things Jesus asks us to do like a teacher who dares to ask a student to stay a couple minutes late to help with something in the classroom.

As a quick aside, I am starting to wonder if coming to worship is seen as a kind of after Sunday School Detention. It seems folks see worship as a chore the preacher asks you to do, like church is extra work you didn’t count on. Some kind of punishment. Coming to worship is a simple request like Jesus made, like saying, “Give me a drink,” as if it were a favor when all along Jesus means to dispense living water. In my case, of course, as a preacher, I’ll benefit, but so will an entire community be strengthened. Okay, back to the gospel lesson. Thank you for allowing me to momentarily segue.

Plenty of us can make the case that God’s MO includes orchestrating something positive. We can swear that God sent an angel in the form of a person that came and assisted us when we were in dire straits. It is not unfair to ask, “If that’s God’s MO, why doesn’t God work harder to prevent negative outcomes? Change always touches people’s lives, for better or worse, so where is God when tragedy strikes?” Right there, drawing people into face to face encounters and starting conversations.

A third characteristic of God’s MO is to notice that God builds a longing for ultimate Good within our natural thirsts for things that satisfy, like water and companionship. Two things the Samaritan woman searched for were existentially tied to her longing toward ultimate Good, which is God. God created water and exists alongside it, but is not a created substance or being.

To distinguish between water from the well and what Jesus offers, he specifies the term living water. The water he offers can satisfy both a natural longing and an individual’s ultimate search for fulfillment. Not unlike how communion bread offers more than so many grams of carbohydrates, and is in fact, the actual presence of God’s anointed one. Living bread delivers forgiveness of sins in a bite-sized morsel.

In his book, That All Shall Be Saved, author David Bentley Hart calls God “not one option among others, but the sole ultimate content of all rational longing, being himself the source of activities that create longing and the end of reality.” His thought brings new meaning to what’s written in the Book of Revelation, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.” The one who gives us the desires of our hearts will prove to be the actual end of our search to obtain them.

A second characteristic of God’s MO is showing up where people happen to be, right in the stream of their everyday lives. We often worry about spouses, children and other loved ones especially because we think if they don’t come to church like we do, God is not willing to speak to them where they are. We mourn the fact that they used to sit in the pews with us and now they choose not to. (I do it myself.) I used to think God wouldn’t talk to folks unless they went to church, where God waited for them to return.

Just because church is where we come to meet God every week, we mustn’t forget that God does not turn his back on his children. Jesus shows up wherever they are in the stream of their daily lives.

Like Hagar in the desert, we cry or mourn what we (fore)see as their loss. We judge them for what we see as the dire straits of their choices. Their lifestyles may be an eyesore. Through the lens of how we fear others see them, we begin to view the very people we love as embarrassments, not unlike people categorize the woman at the well. Jesus went to where the woman worked, for goodness sake, to the destination where she came to do her thing, right where he knew to find her.

And then, he initiated a conversation. Other disciples weren’t there to discourage interaction. The woman came to do what she normally did and was used to avoiding others. She was caught off guard by both Jesus’ presence and action. She questioned his motives, as we often do. “What do you mean by asking me for water?”

Then, she doubted whether Jesus could deliver what he offered. He challenged her gently. “If you knew the gift of God and who speaks to you…” She replied, “How, where, are you greater the one who dug this well?” Her capacity to listen was limited. She could only focus on her immediate need, the desire to break her daily routine of fetching. According to World Vision, a Christian well digging ministry, in developing countries, each woman and child walks an average of over 3.7 miles and hauls an average of 40 pounds of water a day. No wonder she wanted to escape such daily drudgery.

God told Hagar that he heard the cries of her child, not her cries. God knew the needs of her child not because she was praying hard or talking about them out loud to everyone who would listen. God meets our loved ones where they are, not where we think it would be nice to see them. God isn’t standing at the church door waiting for them where they don’t go, but where they regularly go, to work, to a ball game, shopping or out to breakfast on a Sunday morning.

Jesus’ conversation led up to the woman admitting the truth about her life’s circumstances. She was not, in fact, married but living with a fifth guy. Her living arrangement was not really the issue as much as whether she was ready to be honest about her circumstances.

Jesus basically asked, “Are you prepared to make confession?” Rather than trap her in a lie, Jesus knew that honest confessions can’t be had unless someone first knows that their troubled spirit, broken and contrite heart is welcomed and won’t be judged. That the God of mercy and loving kindness, full of compassion only desires to cleanse a person through and through from wickedness and sin.

The woman is candid. She hoped to do better than her current arrangement, but without the resources and economic security possessed by only men of her culture, she had little hope of survival. Rather than prostitute herself to many men, she chose to be with one at a time. Her marital arrangement fit the modern day definition of a long term monogamous relationship.

I asked you earlier if you believed that the word of forgiveness I spoke to you came as if directly from God?” That living water Jesus offered was a word of forgiveness. Confession is not a means to entrap people in their lies, but free them in their truth.

When the woman said, “He told me everything that I’ve ever done,” she spoke to the fact that Jesus is aware of every event of a person’s life, all their inner thoughts, motives and predispositions, desires, hopes, preferences and aversions. God’s MO sometimes shapes reality which in turn shapes what freedom a person thinks they have.

God can “confront a person with possibilities through their own volition that can produce results that benefit many. I always say, “God doesn’t work in spite of our choices but through our choices.” God doesn’t need to manipulate or control what we choose, but works with what is.

Intimacy with God and solidarity with strangers are two indistinguishable aspects of God’s MO. Jesus is often able to establish intimacy with one individual when other folk weren’t around. Other times, folks coming together is itself what establishes intimacy.

After Jesus did his thing, the work itself bore evidence. When others saw it, they saw change, and were less likely to question Jesus’ methods or motives.

Let’s pray together using first person language, a kind of grown up repeat after me prayer.

At the well, what do you want to know about me, Jesus? What do I need to say out loud in order to help myself by speaking the truth about my circumstances? Jesus, satisfy my longings. As you dwell in the center of my being, speak to me, and those I love. Ask questions and give words of assurance.

 You are the source and end of our deepest desires. You are the ultimate Good that draws us ever closer by coming where we are, no matter where that is and how much we fail to recognize you. Amen.”