As we think about the words Jesus says in John’s gospel to a Samaritan woman at what still today is called “Jacob’s well,” let’s remember this: All words are metaphors.

            That is, words always point beyond themselves to some object, place or idea. Words are road signs, even words in sacred scripture. In fact, they are road signs maybe especially in scripture, given that Jesus spoke in Aramaic, then reports of his words eventually were translated and recorded in Greek and then finally were transmitted to us in one of several dozen English translations, not all of which agree with each other.

            So inevitably words express metaphor, myth and allegory. That’s certainly not to say that words don’t witness to truth. But it is to remind ourselves that in Christianity, truth is not a doctrine or a dogma or any particular confession of faith, whether that means the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed or any of the statements of faith produced at the time of the Protestant Reformation. All such words may contain truth or at least point to truth, but none of them fully embodies truth in the way that Jesus Christ does. So in Christianity, truth is a person: Christ Jesus. And that reality can be very liberating.

            Let’s think about a few of the words Jesus is reported as saying in the long passage we read today from John. And let’s see if we can discern what, some 2,000 years after they were spoken, they might mean for us.

Some context

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