I Am He

Read‍

John 4:25-27 "The woman said, 'I know that Messiah' (called Christ) 'is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.' Then Jesus declared, 'I, the one speaking to you—I am he.' Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, 'What do you want?' or 'Why are you talking with her?'"

Think

She says one more thing before Jesus tells her who he is, and it is the most relatable sentence in the entire conversation.

"I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

That is a person setting her questions down for later. She has been talking to a stranger who somehow knows her whole life, they have gone in circles about wells and mountains, and she basically says, look, someday somebody is going to come who can sort all this out. Not today. Someday.

Everybody has a version of that. Someday I will understand why that happened. Someday somebody will explain the parts of the Bible that bother me. Someday it will make sense. In the meantime you just carry the questions around and try not to think about them too hard.

And then Jesus says it.

"I, the one speaking to you, I am he."

You need to understand how unusual that is. Through most of the Gospels, Jesus is careful about this. He tells people not to say anything. He speaks in parables. He lets people work it out slowly.

This is the plainest statement of who he is in the whole book, and he says it to a Samaritan woman at a well in the middle of the afternoon, with no audience, in a town his people avoided.

Not to the religious leaders. Not to a crowd. To her.

And notice what he does with her someday. She had put her questions in the future and he brought them into the present tense. The one who explains everything is not coming eventually. He is sitting on the edge of your well asking you for a drink.

So carry this into your Monday.

He never actually explained everything. Read the rest of the chapter. She does not get a lecture. He does not answer the mountain question in detail, he does not walk her through her past, and there is no section where he clears up every confusion she had.

What she gets is not an explanation. It is a person.

That is a real shift, and it is the thing a lot of students are waiting on without realizing it. You are holding out for the moment when the answers finally line up and the doubts resolve and you can move forward with confidence.

That is not what he offered her, and there is no sign he is planning to offer you something different.

He is not a set of answers. He is somebody who shows up and tells you who he is and then asks you to trust him with the parts you still do not understand. Which is harder, and also much better, because answers do not sit with you at a well.

Then verse 27 gives you one of the funniest details in the Gospels. The disciples come back and find him talking to her and they are visibly thrown. John says they were surprised. And then, "no one asked, 'What do you want?' or 'Why are you talking with her?'"

They wanted to ask. You can feel it in the sentence. They had learned by then that when Jesus was doing something that made no social sense, there was usually a reason.

So what would change today if you stopped waiting to have everything explained and just dealt with the person in front of you?

Apply

Bring him the unresolved thing – Name one question about God, the Bible, or your own life that you have been waiting to have answered before you move forward. Tell God today that you are going to trust him with it while it is still unanswered, and then take the next obedient step anyway.

Pray

God, I have been waiting to understand before I really commit. I keep putting my questions in someday. Thank you that you gave her yourself instead of a full explanation. Help me trust you with the parts I still do not get. In Jesus' name. Amen.