“He told me everything I have ever done.”

This week as I was studying the woman at the well from our Gospel lesson—the verse that kept demanding my attention—that kept waving its arms and saying, “ Hey look at me!” was when the Samaritan woman said to her compatriots, “ He told me everything I have ever done.” 

“He told me everything I have ever done.”  

Nobody in our lives, not our spouses, not our parents, not our children, not  even our psycho-therapists knows  every nook and cranny of our lives—there are things that we don’t tell anybody— there are things that that we keep hidden—that we don’t reveal to the world. Sometimes because we are ashamed of them, or sometimes because something is too painful.  Nobody knows everything we have ever done—nobody knows every thought we have ever had—thank God for that—nobody knows everything that we have ever said--- nobody knows everything we have ever experienced.

However, this passage reminds me that God knows-everything— God knows us inside and out, upside down,  backwards and forwards—Scripture tells us that God  ever knows how many hairs are on our heads –for some of us we may know that too—

The prophet Jeremiah speak about God knowing us before we were formed in our mother’s wombs.  

God knows the good the bad and the ugly.  But, what does God do with all that?

At the well- Jesus looks into the eyes of the Samaritan woman—and it all floods in-- he sees everything—every mistake floods in, every failed relationship,  every insecurity he knows, every hurt, every disappointment—every joy—he knows – he knows it all so well that he can feel it in his bones he can feel the sadness of her disappointments,  he knows the pain she has suffered —and no matter how bad this lady has screwed up, no matter how ugly she feels--- no matter worthless she thinks she is—Jesus  extends the invitation for her to drink living water--  he still offers her living water.  

I am certain—that when John put pen to paper and wrote his Gospel—he didn’t tell us the whole of it. I imagine that there was something more to this conversation—that John doesn’t  tell us or that he doesn’t know himself.  I don’t think we have the minute details of the entire conversation.

I would like to share some words that Jesus might have said to the woman that day in the midday sun standing by the well. 

The words come from poem called “Known” by a man named Charles K. Robinson.

As you listen I would invite you to do so with your eyes closed –imagining not that Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well, but that Jesus is speaking these words directly to you.  

We are all just like that woman at the well.  We have disappointments and failures and sin—we have known deep pain and great suffering—just like the woman from Samaria.

Here we go.

I know you. I created you. I have loved you from your mother's womb.

You have fled, as you know, from my love, but I love you never the less, and not the less, however far you flee. It is I who sustains your very power to flee and I will never, finally, let you go. I accept you as you are.

You are forgiven. I know all your sufferings. I have always known them. Far beyond your understanding, when you suffer, I suffer. I also know all the little tricks by which you try to hide the ugliness you have made of your life, from yourself and others.

But, you are beautiful. You are beautiful because you yourself in the unique person that only you are, reflect already something of the beauty of my holiness in a way which shall never end. You are beautiful also because I and I alone, see the beauty you shall become.

Through the transforming power of my love which is made perfect in weakness, you shall become perfectly beautiful. You shall become perfectly beautiful in a uniquely irreplaceable way, which neither you nor I will work out alone, for we shall work it out together.

I know that sometime we think that we are not good enough, that we are not beautiful-  I know we have done some really ugly things that we would in a heartbeat take back if we only could, but we can’t and that is so hard sometimes to live with—but you know what Jesus whispers to us --- you are good enough—you are a capable,  you are beautiful human being.  You are forgiven.  He whispers words like  “I know everything and I love you anyway.

You see God doesn’t see what we see— God doesn’t  first see the warts, the failures, the deficits-  God first sees the beauty that, God sees the potential that we have—God sees our capabilities. When God looks at us  God sees something worthy of love.

The Samaritan woman saw it that day at the well— she saw what Jesus saw—and it is such a powerful moment of conversion that she leaves here bucket, she leaves her water jar at well and goes to tell her compatriots, about this prophet who has a water that will quench their thirst— not their thirst for water, but their thirst for love, their thirst for acceptance.

Jesus invites us today to drink that water again, to see what he sees to look beyond our sin and failures and to see differently.

Lent is a time when the church invites its members to look at the ugliness and the messes of life, the sin, but we are not to get mired down in the muck and failures and sadness, but rather to look at failures to  see just how wide God’s  arms are—wide enough to include us and our failures.

Jesus is holding out the water jar—he’s inviting us to drink living water—he’s inviting us to share living water.

Will we say yes to living water?   Will we share the living water that Jesus gives to us? 

Amen