HOPE! - Eating with Jesus

While Jesus’ disciples are in town looking for food, Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman at the Well of Jacob. And Jesus tells her the story of her life, and offers her “living water.” When His disciples return from the village, the woman goes back to town, and tells people that Jesus knew everything about her, and she wonders if he is the Messiah. And the people decide to go and see for themselves. 

The disciples meanwhile, try to give Jesus some food but he refuses, saying that he has “food they know nothing about.” And the disciples are confused, but Jesus can see that they’re taking his words literally again, and so he spells it out for them, saying that his food "...is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work."

The disciples had forgotten about the mission because they were distracted by food. This happened to them a lot. And it happens to us a lot today as well. We forget to love our neighbor when we’re hungry.

Elsewhere in the Scriptures, we learn that Jesus was like us in that the devil would come to him when he was hungry to tempt him. But Jesus tells the devil, “Man does not live in bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Even when Jesus was in the desert and hadn’t eaten any food for 40 days, he still relied on God’s strength to sustain him. Even when he was crazy hungry, he didn’t let his hunger distract him or to pull him away from God.

Remember that one time that James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven to burn up the Samaritans?

Well, they had a change of heart. In fact, John made sure to include the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well when he wrote his account of the life of Jesus – what we call the Gospel of John.

You see, Jesus changed John’s heart. He replaced the hate with love.

And when John was a very old man, he wrote these words:

“We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”

Jesus changed John’s heart. And Jesus can change our hearts, too. The living water he offers is available to all of us. He is still the Bread of Life, offering himself to us so that we may share in his life.

In the book of Revelation, we see John, still a very old man at this point, delivering the words of Jesus to the seven churches of Asia Minor. This was after John had been arrested and exiled to the Island of Patmos for the sake of spreading the Gospel, the Good News, of Jesus - His life, death, resurrection, and eternal reign.

And through John, Jesus says to the Church, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

And he adds, “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

John finally understood what Jesus was talking about. He had learned to rely on Jesus regardless of his circumstances. And he could finally say, along with Job:

“But he knows the way that I take;

    when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
My feet have closely followed his steps;
    I have kept to his way without turning aside.
I have not departed from the commands of his lips;
    I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.”