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Limiting God to the Extraordinary

By Juli Nelson

I love hearing stories of epiphanies orchestrated by God—healings, near-death experiences, inexplicable reconciliations. I believe in those possibilities.

But let me tell you about a different kind of God-human encounter. It’s described in

John 4:4-30, the story of the Samaritan woman’s meeting with Jesus. A number of incredibly ordinary factors are in the story. Consider a few with me.

1) Jesus is tired.

How human. The author of John’s Gospel doesn’t usually emphasize Jesus’ humanity, but here He does. Fatigue—who hasn’t experienced that?

2) The Samaritan woman collects water for her household.

That was a daily task for a woman in that culture at that time. It’s like doing that load of laundry or running to the grocery store.

3) Jesus engages the woman in conversation.

Admittedly, for a man to talk publicly to a non family female was unusual in that culture, but look for a moment at the activity. It is communication. What is more universal? From the most primitive to the most technologically advanced societies, communication is a familiar activity.

4) Jesus asks for a drink.

What is more elemental than human thirst, more ordinary than asking for a drink of water?

5) The conversation is characterized by candor.

Honesty is common in ordinary, healthy communication.

Fairly soon the conversation becomes ironic; it becomes “more than it seems.” But please don’t miss the fact that it is grounded in the ordinary.

Irony requires two levels of reality and a gulf between them. In this conversation, one person is talking theologically; the other is talking literally. One is aware of the extraordinary within the ordinary; one is initially aware of only the ordinary. But even the irony is grounded in the ordinary. When Jesus surprises the woman with His awareness of her relationship history, He introduces raw reality into an increasingly theoretical conversation.

So here we have a very ordinary event that housed the ironic/extraordinary. What was the outcome? For the Samaritan woman, it was transformative. It was the context for her insight that Jesus was Messiah. It was the catalyst for her role as preacher, as she proclaimed her insight to the villagers.

The extraordinary occurring in the context of the ordinary—I love the implications of that, because you know as well as I do that the ordinary is where we live. We are going to spend the majority of our lives immersed in the ordinary: attending classes, going to work, caring for children, doing errands, paying bills, sleeping, eating. And when employed, a lot of our work will be familiar and repetitive: teaching, prescribing medicine, administering, counseling, driving a truck. You name it. Ordinary things. And then there are years near the end of one’s life when energy is diminished and life is primarily consumed with basic survival tasks.

Yes, we are going to spend the majority of our lives immersed in the ordinary. So how do we value it—all the days, hours, and minutes when we are not experiencing the overtly spiritual or the spiritually dramatic? I think we look at the story of the Samaritan woman and learn with her that the ordinary can be infused with significance.

Theologically, if we limit God to the dramatic and spectacular, then by implication we devalue the ordinary. But the ordinary is where we inevitably will spend the majority of our lives! Why would we want to devalue (or believe that God devalues) the majority of our lives? Why would we want to believe a theological contradiction in which we feel, on the one hand, that God invests life with value, and on the other hand, that the ordinary is unimportant? To live theologically consistent, “purpose-driven lives,” we must see, with the Samaritan woman, the intrinsic value of the ordinary. That trip she took to the well every single day had value, even on the days before and after her conversation with Jesus. Her daily water collecting quenched thirst, a legitimate human need designed by God.

Theologically, if we limit God to the extraordinary, we will devalue the ordinary. But the other serious consequence theologically is that we will miss seeing God inthe ordinary. As the Samaritan woman would remind us, Jesus may show up there. For her, that day’s ordinary event birthed insight, identified a spiritual thirst, sent her out preaching, and provided vivid memories for all her subsequent trips to the well.

I suspect she would tell us not to limit our perception of God’s work to dramatic healings or praying with someone for salvation, for in the process we will devalue the ordinary and God’s involvement in it. If we limit God to the spectacular, we will miss when God shows up as a stranger at a well, or in the glimmer of hope for an alcoholic friend, or in the courage to pursue collaboration across chasms of difference, or in the laughter of a shared work project. We will miss the God gift of a warm conversation, a hot shower, the taste of great chocolate, or the scent of a lilac.

I love hearing stories of spectacular God-human meetings. I think I always will. I’m in the ministry today partly because of a dramatic God encounter. But I don’t want to forget what the Samaritan woman might want to teach—that the ordinary events of a day have value—and that sometimes Jesus shows up in them.

 

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