L.D. 35, John 4:1-30 "The Image" Scott Hoezee

For the first eight years of my life, I attended church at the Alger Park CRC not far from here. As a boy, I loved the giant stained-glass window of Jesus that faced out toward 28^th Street and Eastern Avenue. Everyone loved that window. So when it was the first window to explode from the heat of the Christmas Day fire at Alger Church in 1971, people's hearts broke along with the glass. Whether or not you ever experienced a church fire, I suspect that many of you just now were able to identify with what I just said. You, too, grew up in a Reformed or Christian Reformed church somewhere that devoted its largest stained-glass window to Jesus, usually Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

Yet that seems to fly in the face of what we read a moment ago from Lord's Day 35. The three questions and answers we read this morning are a very accurate summary of especially the Calvinist wing of the Reformation in which there was a desire to strip churches down to the barest of essentials. Calvin himself was a bit more moderate in his views, but other leaders like Ulrich Zwingli believed that any symbol, piece of fabric, or vestment was not just a distraction from a pure apprehension of God but would all-but certainly lead to idolatry.

Clearly, however, most of Christian history these past 2,000 years long since made peace with the idea that art, images, and the like are not just allowable but even beneficial. Yet the second commandment hangs in there as a clear warning about the peril of creating images. So why do we dare now have some images in the church after all?

The answer is contained in the season we just celebrated as well as in the Epiphany of our Lord that we mark today. The reason is the incarnation. The reason is the Epiphany of God in human form. For thousands of year God had forbidden the making of any images of him by human hands. It was beyond prudent that the Lord God made that rule. As we said last week, all through history right up to this present day, whenever people create their own gods, the gods they create end up looking a lot like the people who did the creating.

By telling the Israelites not to depict him in any way, God was basically telling the people he could never be reduced to a static image nor could they highlight only their favorite features to God's nature, conveniently ignoring other facets to God's character. God knew what we also know: images always distort at least a little. An image is never literally the same as that which it depicts.

Some while ago I told you the anecdote involving the artist Pablo Picasso. Picasso was once commissioned by a man to paint a portrait of the man's wife. Picasso agreed, and so the wife sat for the portrait. When it was finished and the husband came to pick the painting up, he was disappointed. "It doesn't look like my wife," he told the artist. "No?" Picasso replied, "What does she look like?" So the man took a photograph of his wife out of his wallet and handed to Picasso. "She looks like this," the man said. Picasso studied the photo for a few moments and then handed it back to the man saying, "Small, isn't she?"

Any image highlights some features to the person being depicted but not all. Yahweh, the God of Israel, did not want to be put into a box like that. In a sense, by not having a fixed image to stare at and by which to define God, the Israelites were kept in suspense. To know their God, they would have to stay on their toes as God remained free to reveal to his people who he was through his Word.

But then the time finally came when God did something startling: he made a perfect image of himself. The same God who all along had told his people to rely on his Word made that same Word flesh. Suddenly we were able to see what the New Testament calls the express image of God himself. Jesus bore the exact stamp of the divine nature but he did it in human form. That is why ever since, taking a cue from God himself, the church has felt it is permissible to make depictions of God in the form of Jesus. Make no mistake: the danger of idolatry is still real. We can still depict even Jesus in ways that violate the second commandment in case we depict a Jesus who is a little too convenient for us.

Still, God himself has now given us a real flesh-and-blood person to look at and to worship. A wonderful portrait of this Jesus comes to us in John 4. By now you may be wondering what this story has to do with the second commandment. I chose this passage because of that wonderful line that comes in verse 23 when the Samaritan woman is told that the day would come when people all over the place would worship God "in spirit and in truth." All by itself, that sounds like an endorsement of the Reformed idea that worship should be all about doctrines and truth unadorned with and unimpeded by images. And yet even the words "spirit and truth" fell from blood-gorged lips made out of real skin. The one who spoke of spirit and truth was himself a real person you could look at and learn from.

The story in John 4 presents its own kind of image of Jesus, and so it may be instructive to review this portrait of the Savior. The story is simple enough: on their way back to Galilee, Jesus and his disciples take a shortcut through Samaria. That alone was remarkable since most of the Jews in Jesus' day took the long way around Samaria so as to avoid any possible contact with the Samaritan people who were so vile to the Jews. They would add an extra day to a journey and not mind it a bit--better to take some extra time and walk a few extra miles than have to lay eyes on a Samaritan.

But Jesus has no such qualms or prejudices and so he walks through the heart of Samaria and stops for lunch in a Samaritan village named Sychar. It's noon, the heat of the day, when the disciples hunt for a market for some food, leaving Jesus to take his ease at Jacob's well. That's when this anonymous woman comes to the well to fetch water. As we've noted before, however, no one in the ancient world fetched water at the hottest hour of the day. The cool of the morning and of the early evening was the time to do the hard work of pulling up buckets of water from the depths and then lugging the heavy liquid home. Those were also key social times for the community. To this day we sometimes refer to getting together with our friends after work as gathering "at the local watering hole." In the ancient world, that is literally what they did.

But not this woman. She came at an hour when she suspected no one would be at the local watering hole. She came for water but wanted to avoid the community. In other words, this is a lonely figure. Why? Jesus seems to know: she's had multiple marriages and is now with a man to whom she is not formally married. She was looked down on, despised by the townsfolk. A loose woman of questionable morals, they deemed her. A loser. A floozy. The kind of person parents told their children to avoid.

Who knows what all accounted for her multiple failed marriages. Maybe they weren't even all divorces. Maybe some of her husbands up and died on her, not that that would have enhanced her reputation. The woman was bad luck, they said. Marry her and you might end up on a slab at the local mortuary. Even if she had been divorced a few times, however, it's vital to recall that at that time, only a man could institute a divorce. A woman could not divorce a man and could not protest it if a man divorced her. Indeed, all any husband had to do was throw his wife into the street and shout loudly, "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you" that was it. None of this is to suggest this hapless woman didn't have her problems and sins. But for those with eyes to see, she is a lonely, sad person.

For his part, however, Jesus comes across mildly and gently. As it turns out, he knows this woman's story. But knowing this didn't lead Jesus to judgment nor to turning his nose up to her the way the rest of the town had for so long been doing. Instead he strikes up a conversation with her, which was jolting on several levels. First, Jews could barely stand to look at Samaritans, much less converse with them. Second, women were such second-class citizens that it was all-but illegal for a man to address a woman in public--men were supposed to treat women as though they were invisible. Third, even other women did not speak to this particular person. No one did. That's why she had long since given up coming to the well at the usual time. How many times do you have to walk into a crowd of people only to have all conversation die immediately before you get the hint?

But Jesus speaks kindly anyway and ends up offering her something he calls "living water." Initially, of course, she misunderstood. She thought it was some kind of magic water that would bubble up perpetually in her water jar, thus ending the need to do the heavy lifting involved in toting water every day. That's why in verse 15 Jesus says, "Go get your husband." Jesus knew full well she didn't have a husband just then, not really. So did he say this to shame her, to cause her to blush deeply? Did he say it to force her to fall down on her face in abject repentance? No. This woman never does anything in this story that you would deem a penitential act, nor does Jesus require such a thing of her.

Jesus asked her to fetch a husband that he knew she didn't have because that is how he was able to get at her deepest, sorest need. She didn't need magic water so that she wouldn't have to come to the well anymore. She needed spiritual, living water to refresh her spirit, restore her dignity, and make all things new. She didn't need something that would make trips to the well unnecessary. She needed to be able to come to that well as a new person, as one accepted again by her community. That's why before you know it this conversation about water shifts into a discussion of worship. At first glance that looks like changing the subject. But as this woman began to sense who Jesus really was, the idea that God might be present dawned on her. In the end she goes for broke and mentions the Messiah, the Christ who is to come, and Jesus does for this woman what he seldom did anywhere else in the gospels: he directly identifies himself as exactly that Messiah.

What is the result of this divine encounter? She rushes back into town, leaving her water jar behind as a kind of metaphor that, indeed, she had discovered a new source of refreshing water. She leaves her jar behind and makes a beeline to the very people whom she had been avoiding. She came to the well at noon to avoid seeing anyone. Having now seen Jesus, she does not hesitate to approach the people she had avoided so as to tell also them that the One who offered a fresh start was at the village well that very moment.

Before this story is finished, in verse 42, the community speaks kindly to this woman in a way not so very different from how Jesus had likewise addressed her. Something quite amazing had happened in Sychar that day, and it changed everything. The outcast were brought back in. The alienated were reconciled. Hope was kindled in the spirits of all who drank the living water Jesus was dispensing.

This Jesus was and is the exact image of God, bearing the very stamp of the divine nature. As we said last week, we never want to whittle away at God's gloriously inexhaustible nature. We never want to make too tidy, too black-and-white, the Bible's sprawling, colorful presentation of the universe's sovereign Lord. When we make images of God, that is our tendency, and the second commandment is yet another reminder of what we thought about last week: we must never lose our willingness to be surprised by God as he reveals himself to us through the Bible.

Only God could make an authentic image of himself, one that we can trust is not a distortion or a one-sided portrait. And he did make just such an authentic image through Jesus, the Son who is his Father all over again. John 4 is one glimpse into this perfect Image. But as we looked at Jesus this morning, what did we see? If this man is a carbon copy of the holy God of Israel, what does he look like? He looks like love. He looks like compassion, he looks like grace with skin on it.

As a just and righteous and perfect person, Jesus can see all the sin around him. If you possess perfect pitch musically, you can always tell when a piano or a singer is out of tune. Spiritually, Jesus had perfect pitch. He never missed it when the people around him sounded wrong notes. In fact, you would think that the chorus of sin would have been almost deafening to Jesus while he lived here on earth.

But with precious few exceptions, the gospels never show Jesus ranting and raving about people's faults, foibles, and sins. Instead he always cut to the heart. In the case of this Samaritan woman, he saw through to the hurt she had endured, the lonely isolation that had become her lot in life. The very facts about this woman that put others off seem to have drawn Jesus in. He didn't approve of her current situation but he found a way to heal it by applying living water.

If Jesus is the Son who is his Father all over again, then looking at God's own authorized image of himself reveals much to us about the God and Savior whom we worship. He is all-knowing and all-seeing. He discerns and judges right from wrong. He is unhappy about the way things in this world go but seems more unhappy at how this world's sad state of affairs isolates people who were made for community and love. So his first desire is to heal. His first desire is to restore shalom, and shalom cannot happen until those who are afar off are brought near again in community.

Jesus knows that love is what we were made for. And do you know why he knows that? Because he constantly remembers something we too often forget: he remembers that each one of us was created in the image of God. Jesus who is himself the express image of God par excellence always was able to look past the veneers we present to one another, the ways we try to hide from each other. Jesus looked past the layers of sin that build up on our hearts like some kind of waxy residue on a linoleum floor. Jesus, the Image of God, spied the image of God in also every person he met. He knew that a major part of that spark of God-likeness within each of us is a yearning, a deep, deep hankering, to be loved.

In her book The Substance of Things Seen, Robin Jensen tells the story of a devout Baptist young woman who visited a Greek Orthodox church one Sunday and was scandalized by the array of icons and images that filled the sanctuary. After the service, she registered her discomfort with the priest. "I was always taught," she said, "that we may have no images of God." The priest thought for just a moment before gently replying, "But, my dear, you are the image of God, re-made now in Christ."

The second commandment tells us we must not be wiser than God in trying to create images that restrict the nature of God and our understanding of God. But we must also not try to be wiser than God by ignoring the image he himself has given to us in Jesus nor how that very image must shine in all our living every day. When Jesus first spoke to the Samaritan woman, she assumed it was because he didn't know who she was. As it turned out, he spoke to her because he knew exactly who she was. And his divine heart loved her. We may be properly wary about making images of God but we must never hesitate to be the image of God by beaming love and grace to all the lonely we meet. Because then, in all our living, we show that we do indeed worship our God in spirit and in truth. Amen.