Riffin' On John 4

“4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.”

I decided to begin today by shooting myself in the foot, strategically/on the most controversial pillar in the internal order of reason guiding this coming work. If we turn to the beginning of John 4, a succinct chapter we’ll explore most lazily (I worked earlier) in its entirety, we see this tidbit of information relayed. Apparently at this juncture in the New Testament Jesus’ ministry is reaching positive repute, and his growing reputation inspires him to relocate “back once more to Galilee”.

Curiously, it is rather overtly communicated to us here that even though Jesus had a reputation of drawing a great number of disciples to the ritual of baptism (which was different before the Church…it was akin to visiting a friend socially and along the way convincing them to make an earnest resolve to dedicate their life entirely in service to the will of God the Father) it wasn’t Jesus who baptized people. We know that he is ministering…teaching about God/the nature of life. But only his disciples, it’s mentioned, are baptizing fellow disciples.

Given what is explored across the remainder of this chapter, I speculate that as much is overtly mentioned because Jesus is giving a teaching which transcends social life…a teaching which touches upon a fundamental truth that all Beings are bound by at all moments, and that civilization itself is but a potential tool to help address; that all is God as God is all, in the sense that no thing truly is inherently any more precious than any other thing, and that it’s God’s will which determines the merit of any particular experience as it intersects with you at a specific place and time. That to everything turn, turn, turn, there is a season…turn, turn, turn… a time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to be born and a time to die, etc.

4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Now he is the nomad. A stranger in a strange land. And yet he lands next to Jacob’s well…a story he was familiar with, intimately, as he was conversing rather plainly with the same God Jacob did day in and day out, in addition to studying holy texts/scriptures and the such.

He asks a woman for a drink. The social etiquette is as such that Jesus just did something incredibly outrageous/taboo. Simultaneously, adults have been adults throughout all of history, and there are taboos we’re aware of in our lives that maybe we shouldn’t feed or that we speculate are just systemic hate getting eroded by the Boddhisatvic tendencies of linear time…or rather, adults know right from wrong and they also are clearly capable of understanding of how far that deviates from prescribed social customs/norms.

You at least know at some level that even though you’re supposed to tell them no water, you’re actually supposed to give them water.

Christ avoids this conversation entirely. Instead he says, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

It’s an easy one to misinterpret somehow. The “gift of God” is…communion. If she had known it, how to do it internally on the spot, she “would have asked” God what to do, and Jesus claims “He would have given you living water”.

Notice, she wasn’t the thirsty one, necessarily. The “living water” is a little bit bigger than charity to your fellow man (which is a HUGE part of it)…it’s mystical communion with the Source, internally. A sense of Being with God…across time…that’s the “living water”. The beggar is but another joyous opportunity to awaken to its infinite sustenance. All experiences are.

Also too, let’s go back. The “gift of God” is…communion. “Who it is that asks you for a drink” isn’t meant to be interpreted as…’this is Jesus, the only son of the Father’. It’s meant to be interpreted as, “the beggar is always God. That’s one of God’s very own children, every time.” So how do you commune with God in this scenario?

Fucking dip that ladle in and get that man a thimble of water or something, Jesus Christ.

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

Now this woman is thirsty, so Jesus tells her to “go, call your husband,” …

Ok, now I’ve gone too far.

This little convenient back and forth concerning the merit/worth of actions construes communion with the Source/Father as paramount. Jacob’s well is an extension of God’s will…our mundane everyday social actions which we perform to survive or to help others survive, these really are important extensions of the very will of the Cosmos. But that which nurtures you thoroughly as you do any particular action, whether it’s charity or consumption… eating a meal… that which actually gives you life is but the spirit, the Father incarnate.

As crazy as it is to say, there’s nothing to food that independently…exists. Food/nutrition is a vehicle for spirit...it’s a form of bondage which shapes our lives/behaviors…and it’s a pleasure.

The simple act of being able to turn inward in live time and reliably commune with God…to achieve Christ consciousness or enlightenment or however it’s framed… that is the only act that in theory keeps you in a place in which you never meaningfully find yourself wanting despite being bound to nutritional needs. This well is only greater than Jacob’s well in the sense that the very idea of the invention of the well was a product of mystical communion in the first place (probably unwitting but then again it’s a convention of myths concerning great inventors that they carried their ideas like cosmic babies, incubating painfully within their laborious life systems, an anomalous situation). Jacob’s well can only exist because of the initial well, and that’s the well you need to overtly go to as you go to Jacob’s well if you want to reliably transcend meaningful thirst/remain satiated.

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus apparently just went to that well and came back with a ladle of information He divined. That’s how prophecy works, and apparently it was more common back then which says something weird about culture.

Also too, while we’re talking about modalities of culture…can we acknowledge how bad this poor woman must have it? We’ve already heard that the talk of the town is that you aren’t to give water to Jews…from the well of Jacob…

AND she’s had five husbands, AND is currently seeing a guy, AND instead of whoring herself out, is out there in the day amongst her daily duties, gathering water. She’s right to be at the point of wanting to transcend thirst so that she no longer has to gather the water…It can be presumed from the provided information that she lives amongst her fair share of asshats. After like husband two, our best from the upper middle class these days start slowly suiciding themselves with xanex and opioids (only to get clean later, but nonetheless).

Can you imagine anyone under 35 in 2023 living in America CONTINUING to date after husband 3? Husband 4? What kind of woman is

this?! THEY DIDN’T HAVE AIR CONDITIONING.

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Earlier the woman had asked if it’s true that people must travel to the temple in Jerusalem to worship appropriately. This is, in my opinion, the definitive “Do I have to really go to church once a week?” of the New Testament. And the answer is, “No, you don’t.”

Or rather, when church is all and all is church and there’s no church to go to which doesn’t see you ripping away from a church to go to church, is when you no longer have to go to church. When God is all and all is God, and in addition to this God’s like “No you’re actually supposed to be here doing…”. Devotion is sublimation to his will and celebration of his effigy. Create the effigy with socialization/interacting with your people. Radiate it. Embody it.

You are to worship the Father “in the Spirit” as well as in “truth” we are told. For the sake of it, but also to as it is to be done and when it is to be done. In the spirit conveys for the very sake of honoring Him…but “in truth” conveys it needs to be done masterfully, as it ought to be done…and mystical communion is the compass.

Notice, what if we could not go to church…like during Covid? We have a framework which helps us to more easily understand how that was totally fine/righteous.

Notice that whether you worship what you don’t know, or you worship what you know, Christ notes that people worship. It’s when they master the methodology…when they reduce it to something concrete and unchanging, like something utterly defined, and then have the grace to still listen when faced with every situation, turning inwardly in sublimation to God and imploring for some sort of guidance that people become “the kind of worshippers the Father seeks”.

I really do think the structure of this passage uses the notion of Jacob's well deep in the subtext to perhaps even outright ridicule the notion of traveling to Jerusalem to worship at the temple...they already have a local landmark of repute... it may even be outright cruel for women to have to travel to the well for the household, I don't know the specifics of this culture but... oh and yeah there's also something going on with Christ not baptizing personally despite having a reputation of doing as much...his style of spirituality goes beyond culture...it's just about people turning to God effectively...the idea that he was somehow a leader instilling ideas in the minds of others by charting the territory of universal law publicly got him killed (Ironically, this was paralleled when the church punished Gallileo.). He had no ideas, no manifestos, He just spoke truth, which is moreso a form of channeling.