The Weariness at the Well

Hitherto Jesus has been on the heights. Alike in vision and in action His experience has been that of the mountains. His mission has at first presented only the aspect of a ruler. He has stood on the top of the hill and surveyed the kingdoms; He has stood on the pinnacle of the temple and surveyed the multitude. He has manifested His power at Cana; He has given the law to Nicodemus; He has cleansed the courts of the Father’s House. Doubtless he has taken the form of a servant, but as yet it is that of a higher servant; the deeper steps of His humiliation are still to come,

But these steps are now to be taken, Hitherto He has entered mainly into sympathy with the /atker; He has now to descend go THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL

into sympathy with man, Is there any biographical link between the stage on which He is standing and the stage to which He is going? I say ‘any dzographical link.’ I am not speaking of philosophy or theology. What we want to’ know is whether in the records of the actual life of Jesus there can be traced any point of transition between the period of His Divine, and the period of His distinctively human service. There is a great difference between girding one’s self to serve the Father and girding one’s self to serve the creature. The very sense of sonship in the soul of Jesus made the service of the Father an easy thing; there was a sympathetic relation already existing here. But between the human soul of Jesus and the creature the relation of sympathy had yet to be made, The very height of His purity was in the first instance adverse to His sympathy with man, To attempt the salvation of man for the glory of the Father was a natural, a spontaneous act; but to seek the salvation of man through a kindred feeling for the creature was a thing

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which required time, The kindred feeling had first to be established. Where in the record shall we seek the beginning of its development? Where shall we find the narrow line of junction which connects the ministration on the mountain with the ministration on the plain and in the valley?

Now, it is my opinion that in the chronological sequence of the narrative such a point is to be found. I shall place it at Samaria — in the course of that journey which Jesus took from Judea into Galilee. The historian quaintly says that to make the journey ‘He must needs go through Samaria’ — meaning that it was a geographical necessity.) Yet there is a deep spzrztual sense in which the words are equally true. The name of Galilee has become proverbial as the place of human weakness and spiritual destitution. Jesus was going to Galilee — no longer as a mere home of earthly relatives, but as a sphere to be conquered for His Father. Was it not well

1 The route through Samaria was the shortest way from Judea into Galilee that ere He touched this sphere of human waywardness there should intervene something to bind Him to the soul of man? Was it not well that He whose lot it was to grow into human experience should, before entering the scene of deepest degeneracy, acquire a touch of the feeling of our infirmities?

But why is the scene in Samaria this preparatory moment? Where within this narrative lies the transition-point between Judea and Galilee — between the contact with the higher ten and the contact with the lower thousand? At first sight it seems as if the journey to Samaria contributed less to Christ’s mission than any other incident of the Gospel. There is no record of a miracle — beyond a penetration into the secrets of a life. There is no record of a large conversion, of an extensive movement of religious revival. There is certainly a full presentiment of Jesus that He was the destined One; but, as we have seen, He never wished this presentiment to be the basis of His action. Where, then, lies the significance of Samaria as a preparation for human sympathy? Is it that He came into contact with a people even more despised by Judea than the men of Galilee? But He came into that contact by a geographical necessity, not yet by a deliberate choice. All along the line of the narrative there would seem to be no place for the human development of Jesus. But the place lies just where we should never have looked for it — in a little corner to which the expositor is often blind. In our inquiries about the significance of this narrative our eyes are on the wrong track. We are ever asking what Jesus gave to Samaria; has it ever occurred to us to ask what Samaria gave to Jesus? There is one incident in this narrative which is unique, and which, being unique, must be significant. Hitherto, Jesus has appeared before us in the attitude of a king; here He comes before us in the attitude of asuppliant. For the first time in the record He asks for something. At the marriage feast of Cana He had been the distributor; at the well of Samaria He is the one in want. He has come to that well footsore and weary,

Physical fatigue has overmastered Him. Unable to proceed farther, He has sent His disciples to procure bread in the neighbouring village. Solitary and exhausted, He awaits their return. A woman of the district comes to draw water; Jesus says, ‘Give me to drink,’ His first approach to Samaria is in the attitude not of a ruler, but of a dependant. Instead of saying, as He could have said, ‘You have need of me, He introduces Himself with the bold assertion, ‘I have need of you.’ It is indeed pre-eminently bold — the very audacity of humbleness. Even an ordinary Jew would have died ere he had made such a request of a Samaritan; how could it be made by one who had pretensions to be the Messiah!

There are some who would answer the question thus: Jesus was thinking of the water of life. He wanted to lead up to the subject. How could He better lead up to it than by a metaphor — the metaphor actually supplied by the scene before Him! The woman had come to draw the literal water; He was able to give her living water. How better introduce His power than by manifesting an interest in her work, and how better manifest such an interest than by expressing a desire to be recipient of her labours!

Now, all this is too dramatic for me. It is conceived no doubt in a spirit of deep reverence; it is meant to exalt our perception of the Portrait. But to my mind it fails in its intention. To me the exaltation of Jesus must ever lie in His spontaneity. To make Him express a physical want with the object of suggesting a spiritual subject is in my view mechanical and therefore wmspiritual. I hold that Jesus asked water because He wanted it. Any other solution of the problem is weak and misleading. Nor does it to me enhance the reverence for Jesus to say that in every little act of His earthly pilgrimage He is working out the plan of a mosaic. A plan there certainly is, but it is as yet in the hands of the Father alone. Jesus is following the stream of events, in other words, the prompting of the hour. There is to my mind a ring of autobiography in His saying, ‘Take no thought for to-morrow. It was an echo of the time when He walked by the day. His journey to Samaria is a walking by the day. It is constrained by ceographical necessity; it is impeded by physical weariness; it is pursued in bodily want; it culminated by asking a favour at the hands of one who had need to be redeemed, ‘Give me to drink.

It will be more reverent, then, to inquire, What was the plan of the Father? Let us leave Jesus in the possession of His spontaneity. Let us say that the want is a real want. Let us admit the change of attitude between the Man who turned the water into wine at Cana and the Man who asked water at the well of Jacob. Let us concede that the prayer came from really suppliant lips and is to be explained as the cry of any other suppliant. It will still remain to ask if this moment of want has any place in the plan of the Father. Jesus is walking by the day; but the Father is not. Jesus is moving spontaneously; but the Father is not. To the Father belongs the real mosaic, the true development of the life of Jesus. Is there a place in that mosaic for a moment so humiliating? We see a place for the wilderness, a place for Cana, a place for Nicodemus, a place for the cleansing of the temple; in all these attitudes Christ stands before us as a king. But at the well of Jacob He is a man — a weary, lonely, wayfaring man — not the benefactor but the benefited, not the donor but the suppliant, not the pitying but the pitied. He has reversed the promise of His opening mission. At Cana He gives; at Samaria He gets. Has the Father a place for the weariness at the well? He has; nowhere is the chain of development more thoroughly riveted than here. Without this episode of humiliation we should lose the key to all that is to follow. Remember what is to follow. It is Galilee — the meeting with man as man. It is no longer with man on the heights that Jesus is about to deal. It is with human nature itself — human nature on the plain. The wilderness had not revealed that; Cana had not revealed that; the night-meeting with Nicodemus had not revealed that. His experiences, Judean and G

Galilean alike, had been experiences of the mountain; He is now on His road to the plain.

Now, could there be a better preparation for this distinctively human sympathy than the experience of human want? Remember that all the future miracles of Jesus are miracles of sympathy. They are not dramatic scenes planned for a purpose. They are spontaneous outpourings of His heart coming forth because He cannot help it; this is the feature about them with which the Father is well pleased. But if these miracles are to be the product of ‘His sympathy, they must be the product of His sense of want. There can be no helpful sympathy where the want is not common to the benefactor and the beneficiary. If you tell me a sad story about the fairies, I shall probably shed no tears. The reason of the dry eyes will not be that the story is untrue; we shed most tears over untrue stories. The cause will lie in the fact that Fairyland is forergn land, that the wants supposed to be there experienced are not the wants felt by me. Every sympathy isa memory. I feel for you what at one time I felt for myself. The remembrance of my personal want is the measure of my sympathetic power. If I feed a destitute crowd in Galilee, it is because I have myself experienced destitution at the well of Jacob. Jesus is no exception. He too must have His human sympathy lighted at the fire of personal pain. <A very old writer, a writer contemporaneous with our oldest Gospel, says, ‘He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.’ Obedience to what? To the law of human sympathy. It is no peculiar case in Jesus. What the writer wants to emphasise is that He became subject to the law of our being; he says in effect, ‘Read Him in this instance by yourselves, It is not possible that sympathy for my brother man can precede my personal experience. All my compassions are echoes — echoes of the strains of sorrow I have heard in my own ear; omit the strain, and you remove the echo, That is the law of humanity; and the Son of Man became obedient to that law. To Him as to me a personal link was inevitable on the road to human sympathy. To Him as to me the passage from Judea to

Galilee could only be made by a transition through Samaria — a transition in which the individual, personal life was called to experience a wellspring which was dry, and had to rest its weariness upon another human soul. —

THOU, who hast become partaker of my experience, make me partaker of Thine. Thou couldst not sympathise with me without living my life; I cannot sympathise with Thee without living Zhzne. There are sorrows of Thine which are mysteries to me, because I have not lived them. I marvel still before the gates of Thy Gethsemane. It is because sin has not pained me as it pained Thee. If I had Thy horror of sin I would watch with Thee in the garden; it is want of personal memory that makes me sleep. I cannot come into Thy Galilee until I have passed through Thy Samaria. I have not felt Thy Divine hunger, Thy Divine thirst, Thy Divine weariness. I shall blend my griefs with Thine when I have experienced Thy waiting at the well.