The Lord promises
what only He can deliver. He alone can
do a new thing that includes water in the desert and all the other things that
we see as "modern progress." We
can re-direct water courses, bulldoze paths for leveled roads, etc. because we
have the technology to do so, but is that really what the Lord means here? We tend to make a mess of things, to scar the
landscape, when we take such action but the Lord promises supernatural
provision for His people, not based on their effort or technology, if they will
turn to Him. It is the curse of
modernity to take things into our own hands in the belief that we can do things
without ever asking if we should do them.
The Lord sees that His people refuse to believe in Him, they have
forsaken Him, no longer believe that He either can or will act on their
behalf. Ultimately, He says that they
will turn to Him. The final piece of the
reading says there will come a time when one will write on his hand, "The
Lord's." Now that is a tattoo worth having, but what a great prayer, to
look each day, every moment, at every part of our body, including our minds,
and say, "The Lord's."
It is truly amazing
that the Lord revealed Himself to this sinful Samaritan woman. We learn early on that Samaritans have
nothing to do with Jews and in the encounter Jesus tells her that she and her
people worship, "you know not what" and that salvation comes from the
Jews. In spite of all the internecine
strife, the woman and her tribe come to believe in Jesus as Messiah. The nearest analog would be to think of a
Muslim city where this happened, those who believe themselves to be children of
Abraham yet they are wrong, they worship a lie, and then seeing the entire city
converted to Christianity. It is
certainly a new thing that Jesus does here in this Samaritan town. His own people rejected Him and these are
willing to receive Him. Is it any
surprise then that the first place a mission is attempted outside the Jewish
world is in Samaria and is wildly successful (Acts 8)?
The writer of
Hebrews agrees that the Lord is doing a new thing but he reaches back into the
distant past to find an analog for Jesus.
The person he uses as example is the first priest we meet in the entire
Bible, a man named Melchizedek, to whom Abraham pays tribute after returning
from the defeat of the four kings in Genesis 14. Melchizedek is not mentioned in the story
prior to this moment and he comes out to greet the victorious Abram and is
given a tithe. This priest, without
antecedent, without further identification, the king of Salem (later known as
Jeru-Salem), is recognized by Abram, the father of the people, as a priest of the God whom he knows. Jesus has no antecedent either but we
recognize Him as prophet, priest and king.
He is the one to whom we pay tribute but not with the tithe, with all
that we have and all that we are.
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