WEEK FIVE INTRODUCTION
TITLE:  THE MIRACULOUS WORKS OF CHRIST
March 14 - March 20

What would it have been like to be a follower of Jesus when he was on earth? This week we travel with Christ and his disciples as he ministers to them and the needy throngs they encounter. Christ’s first recorded miracle, turning water into wine, is described in John 2:11, “This beginning of his signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him.” These wondrous works are central to the Gospel narratives and an essential weapon in Christ’s arsenal to counter forces of darkness while revealing his divinity and the glory of his Father. Thirty-seven miracles are recorded in the first four books of the New Testament. However, at the end of the Gospel of John, the apostle proclaims to his readers, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

The beloved encounters we focus on during the next seven days reveal differing aspects of Christ’s public ministry. On Sunday, Christ demonstrates his power as he confronts and converts the Samaritan woman by his spiritual perception. On Monday and Wednesday, we witness dramatic physical healings that also result in spiritual wholeness. On Tuesday we are in the boat with the disciples as Christ is awakened and commands the raging sea to be still. Thursday we are in the midst of over 5,000 hungry people as Christ multiplies one boy’s lunch into bushels of fish and bread--more than enough food for everyone present. On Friday, a woman about to be stoned to death for committing adultery, is forever transformed by Christ when he challenges her accusers; setting her free. Finally, on Saturday we conclude with the dramatic raising of Lazarus, a miracle where Christ demonstrates his power over the demonic forces of darkness--foreshadowing his own indissoluble victory over death.

Day 26 - Sunday, March 14
Title: “I WHO SPEAK TO YOU AM HE”
Scripture: John 4:5-26, 28-30, 39-42
So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” They went out of the city, and were coming to Him. From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.”

Poetry: 
from An Immigrant Woman
by Anne Winters

Luz told us Pilar had lost husband
and son to the Violence; a machine-gunned
death heap in the center of their village—
“They killed all the men. But when my family
came here, she came with her girl, we helped with
     the
green card, and she’s a hotel maid now
near the UN ...” Much realer, this, than our own
bridge-inflicted, some-day disaster. And who knew
but our bridge might metamorphose,
as the City said (“Global cities draw capital”), into
      a river
of money (“We’ll all sell cuchifritos on the ramp”),

and anyway, mainly, summer
was running out, with its open evenings
and windows. One Saturday, turning onto my block
from the subway, I heard my name, crossed
the street where twin buildings had area-ways.
and saw you waving, the same, Pilar,
from a window below the swag-bellied area railings.
“Come have some coffee—go around in back.”
I walked down the building-side, and turned in a
      trash-littered
airwell by a door with multiple doorbells.
You opened from a wooden hallway, unpainted,
with padlocked doors. “See, the super’s cut up his flat
for illegals. They took out an inside wall, so our room
has a window—we all share the bath.” I entered
a lime-walled room—chairs and table, sofa-bed.
      Your front wall
was the building front, the three others
drywall. On the bureau, a black-shawled
prie-dieu: two photos; two candles in translucent,
      white-waxed sacks,
and a polychrome Madonna with meeting brows.

Through your window, car wheels, railings; and,
      above,
my own second-story windows. “We saw you
reading there,” you said from behind me, “when
      we moved in.”
You sat me on the sofa, and formally presented
      your daughter
(she moved her schoolbooks all to one end.) Near
      her, a shallow,
linoleumed-over trench and a bathroom sink. You
      said:
“I’m a widow from the mountains near Morache,
      very near
the home-town of Señora Luz. My real work is hotel
      maid, and I’ve got
a nice job, at a place called the Tricontinental.”
Then you paused, and I felt how clearly
you’d presented yourself, as Americans do, with
      your job,
your état civil, and I said: “I’m a graduate student

at NYU, where Luz studies, no, not married, no
      children ...”
I tried to add something else at once, to leave this
      less ...
definitive, but nothing came, so we ran through
      bridge-rumors,
and soon we were hardly listening, waiting
for our own next word, and laughing at our gabble. 

LIVING WATER 

You don’t have to go far afield in this world to encounter the demeaning of women of any age and race. Just step outside your front door. Surf the internet. Observe office politics. Check the employment wage stats. Anywhere. The order of things in our world still, yes still, has so much to learn from the attitude of this Jesus toward His own handiwork in creating woman.

The apostle John who is so insightful in his writings about the spirituality of relationship in general, includes this encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman with an eye, a very precise eye, as to what happens when you put together a male, healer-creator type with a witty, and somewhat caustic survivor of many failed relationships, in this case with men. She is very quick on her feet; very vigilant, but I suspect quite unprepared for a person, in spite of being a man, who is even more adept than her at getting at the truth of things behind appearances.

I suspect she also is unprepared to discover that Jesus interacts with her as if she is intelligent and worthy of such verbal jousting.  His probing suggests that he respects her in fact, and most certainly is aware of her experience of brokenness, however misguided it may or may not be. He sets it up and she takes the bait and walks right into it.

Our musicians, (Palmer, Fox, J, and Vice) paint a moving portrait of a woman “that stands alone, but has no home." Our poet today, Anne Winters also portrays the “immigrant woman” very sympathetically having to navigate atrocities in her homeland and the forced adaptation to North American culture, a veritable steeplechase of problem-solving that you just have to stand back and admire, when you get past focusing on them as victims.

What cuts through all this for me is Lettnin’s etching Living Water and Alexis French’s piano tone poem also named Living Water. They compose our framed view to exclude everything but three elements, Jesus, the woman herself, and the aerial view of a sky reflecting, a deep, deep well of clear water.  Everything in this mapped image is positioned relative to that precious resource. Lettnin uses the reflection of Jesus’ arm as a visual punctuation point beckoning us to come in closer and consider who He really is, just as Jesus does with this woman.

And what is that water? Suddenly this woman realizes that the issue is not religious tradition, culture, geography or anything else. It’s that she is known, that she is valued by God’s own son, that He has cut through all the red herrings to connect with her to challenge her to trust Him, and honor Him as Lord. I almost wish Lettnin had shown shimmering movement in the water in that well, so as to match the soaring clarity of movement in French’s shimmering Hildegard-like solo that focuses our attention on the voice and presence of Jesus talking to each of us.

Prayer:
Lord, we need your help to step aside from the clutter of confusing and often hurtful voices we surround ourselves with. Grant us ears and eyes to hear again your voice of grace and healing and the will to settle for nothing less ever again.
Amen

James Tughan
Visual Artist and Educator
Executive Director of The Semaphore Fellowship

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.