The disarming experience of being fully known

Ezekiel 43.27-44.4, John 4.19-29a

When I am not here at the cathedral, I work at my other job as a coach, helping people make good transitions into new jobs. Sometimes in a coaching session, there is a moment when the person gets a particular insight or comes to an understanding that feels both true and slightly uncomfortable. The penny drops for them. It is usually something very specific about themselves. They are learning something significant which is both important but can also make them feel rather exposed or vulnerable. In the process they feel ‘seen’. The coaching relationship within which we are working needs to be a safe space in order for them to feel comfortable to experience this in the first place.

What is it like when someone sees the real you? How much of yourself do you let others see? We keep so much of ourselves under wraps most of the time… Not wanting to share our innermost feelings and fears, the personal details of our lives. it usually takes us a while to build up trust with another person enough to feel that we can share our more private feelings and thoughts with them.

What must it have been like then to be the woman at the well? Being virtually ‘undressed’ by Jesus, all her secrets known to him and there not being any shock or judgement on his part? You would imagine that she would be squirming, but she doesn’t appear to be.

There are many levels that this story can be taken on, including it being symbolic of the gospel being for the Samaritans, the Gentiles, as much as for the Jews, but for these few minutes I want to focus on the conversation between the woman and Jesus and what happens to her. Before we even get to today’s passage, there is the shock of Jesus asking the woman for a drink in the first place – a Jew asking a Samaritan and a woman at that, which was not the done thing. The woman has also discovered that Jesus knows all about her five husbands and that the current man she’s with is not actually her husband at all. Jesus clearly sees her in an unnerving way.

We come into the story today at the part where she’s unsure how to respond to these revelations about herself, and tells Jesus that she sees he is a prophet.

The frankness of Jesus is also disarming. The woman says that she knows that the Messiah is coming and Jesus simply says “I am he, the one who is speaking to you”. On many other occasions when asked who he is, Jesus refers

obliquely to being the Messiah, but here he is unusually direct and open. “Yes, it’s me”, he says. There is no beating about the bush!

You might think that she would run off telling everyone that she’s found the Messiah, but the interesting thing is she goes away telling her friends to come and see a man “who told me everything I have ever done”! It was the personal aspect of the encounter that spoke to her most of all. She’d heard what he’d said about no longer worshipping on mountain but worshipping in spirit and in truth, but what stuck with her most was his personal knowledge of her. What she went to tell her people was that this man knew everything about her, and the unspoken thing perhaps too is that he had not judged her in the process. He had accepted her in love and revealed his true self to her as well.

It's only when we know ourselves to be safe and loved that we can bear being known to that level. If we are not loved at the same time as being known it feels too vulnerable, even potentially abusive.

The other surprising thing is that the woman abandons her water jar at the well and goes to tell her village about him. She leaves the very thing that she came to do. Fetching water no longer seems important now that she has experienced something of the living water Jesus was talking about. This news trumps everything else. It is reminiscent of the time when Jesus calls Simon Peter, James and John, the fishermen, and we are told that they leave their nets immediately and followed him. There is a sense of urgency and purpose, and they are willing to leave behind what was familiar to them.

I wonder what things we are prepared to put down when we recognise Jesus for who he really is? Once we realise that he will tell us everything we have ever done and that we are fully known and deeply loved. What are we holding onto that becomes less important for us in the light of being truly seen like that?

For the Samaritan women, this experience upended her understanding of the world and her place within it. What does this knowledge and love mean for you today?

In closing, I suggest we spend a moment in quiet, and you imagine yourself encountering Jesus somewhere familiar to you. You discover that he knows absolutely everything about you, even the parts that you never tell anyone at all. He knows and sees it all, and he loves you in it. What do you say to him?

Amen