Lenten Perspective: Bigger, Better Band-aids

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Bigger, Better Band-aids

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9 (NRSV)

I start again

And whatever pain may come

Today this ends

I'm forgiving what I've done

From "What I've Done" by Linkin Park

One day, while Jesus and the Disciples were traveling north, they passed through a Samaritan town called Sychar.  Tired from the journey, Jesus sat down beside a well to rest, while the Disciples went to the market to buy food.  At around noon, a woman came to the well to draw water, and Jesus asked her for a drink.¹

The woman was a bit surprised that Jesus would speak to her, since Jews and Samaritans generally did not associate with each other.  She asked Him, "Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?"

Jesus replied, "If you recognized God's gift and who is saying to you, 'Give me some water to drink,' you would be asking him and he would give you living water."

Thinking that Jesus was talking about literal water, the woman asked Him, "Sir, you don't have a bucket and the well is deep.  Where would you get this living water?"

Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again.  The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life."

Hearing this, the woman was immediately interested.  Enthusiastically, she said, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!"

It is evident that, for some reason, the woman hated going to the well draw water, and it was not because she was lazy.  This woman lived in constant shame because, for reasons that remain unknown, she had been married five times and was currently living with a man to whom she was not married.  Because of her personal history, she was made a social outcast.²  She had strategically come to the well at noon that day in an attempt to avoid the other women in town, who would have drawn water in the morning.³  I'm sure that, despite her best efforts, she would occasionally run into someone she did not want to see.

The woman, because of her shame, would rather not face the townspeople, but the human need for water forced her to return to the well, day after day.  Naturally, she would have been interested in water that would quench her thirst forever.

Jesus, knowing more about the woman than she realized, said to her, "Go, get your husband, and come back here."

A solution that is implemented as a quick fix for a problem which it fails to solve in the long run is sometimes called a band-aid, in reference to a popular brand of adhesive bandages.⁴  Bandages serve an important function: they protect wounds so that they are able to heal properly.  Bandages become problematic when they are used to cover wounds that require treatment beyond the normal healing process.

The Woman at the Well had been doing her best to avoid her problems.  She thought that the elimination of her need for water would be a great solution, but, in reality, it would have been no more than a bigger, better band-aid.  Jesus, who wanted to offer the woman not a bandage but an actual cure, forced her to confront her problems.

As the conversation continued, the woman began to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, whom both the Jews and the Samaritans had been awaiting for many years.  She forgot all about her shame, and she told everyone in her town about Jesus.  This social outcast, of all people, became the very person who introduced her community to their Messiah, and, in the process, she was reconciled to the people she had been trying to avoid.

This season of introspection and repentance we call Lent is a good time to confront the things in our lives we have been trying not to see - the kinds of things we try to cover with proverbial band-aids.  On Ash Wednesday, one of the pastors at the church I attend encouraged us in the congregation to take a good look at ourselves, spiritually speaking.⁵  Since then, every Sunday, the congregation has been praying special prayers of confession.  Such prayers force us face what we typically don't want to see in ourselves.  Confession is not meant to cause us shame: it is meant to help us to confront the sources of our shame so that we may overcome it.

Jesus once said, when criticized about the kind of company He kept, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."⁶  A physician will not do us any good at all unless we can bring ourselves to admit that we are not well.  Author and physician Han Suyin once said, "Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures."  May we not be afraid to remove our bandages so that we may face our problems, work through them, and find healing.


Notes:

1. This perspective is based primarily on John 4.  Quotations are taken from the CEB unless noted otherwise.
2. Maybe the woman was promiscuous, or maybe she was abandoned by five faithless men.  We simply do not know the details.
3. Adam Hamilton.  The Way: Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus.  2012, Abingdon Press.  pp. 127-128
4. Mirriam-Webster: Band-Aid
5. Christine Matthews.  "Take a Good Look."  Travelers Rest United Methodist Church podcast, 03/02/2017.
6. Matthew 9:12 (NRSV)

The painting of Jesus and the Woman at the Well was painted by Carl Heinrich Bloch in the late 1800s.