Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.2MB)
John Chapter 4:27-34 & 39-42
And on this, His disciples came and marveled that He was speaking with a woman. However, no one said, What do You seek? Or, Why do You speak with her? (28) Then the woman left her waterpot and went away into the city and said to the men, (29) Come, see a Man who told me all things, whatever I did. Is this One not the Christ? (30) Therefore, they went out of the city and came to Him. (31) But in the meantime the disciples asked Him, saying, Rabbi, eat? (32) But He said to them, I have food to eat which you do not know. (33) Then the disciples said to one another, No one brought Him food to eat? (34) Jesus said to them, My food is that I should do the will of Him who sent Me, and that I may finish (mature) His work….And many of the Samaritans out of that city believed into Him, because of the word of the woman testifying, He told me all things, whatever I did. (40) Then as the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to remain with them. And He remained there two days. (41) And many more believed through His Word. (42) And they said to the woman, We no longer believe because of your saying; for we ourselves have heard, and we know that this One is truly the Savior of the world, the Christ.
Apocalypse Explained 808 by Emanuel Swedenborg
Saving faith is to believe that the Lord is the Saviour of the world, and that He is the God of heaven and the God of earth, and that by His coming into the world He put Himself into the power of saving all those who receive truths from Him through the Word, and live according to them. But who those are who are able to receive truths from Him, and live according to them, that is, that they are those who shun evils as sins against the Word, and therefore against God. For by these means man’s internal is purified, and this being purified, he is led of the Lord, and not of himself; and so far as man is led of the Lord, so far he loves truths and receives them, and also wills and does them. This faith is saving faith.
Apocalypse Explained 815 by Emanuel Swedenborg
For the first faith with all is a historical faith, and this afterwards becomes a saving faith when man by his life becomes spiritual; for first of all it is to be believed that the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, and that He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, infinite, and one with the Father. These things must be known; but so far as they are merely known they are historical, and a historical faith presents the Lord as present, because it is a looking to the Lord from His Divine nature. And yet that faith does not save until man lives the life of faith, which is charity; for he then wills and does what he believes, and to will and to do is of the love, and love conjoins to Him whom faith presents as present.
Arcana Coelestia 30 by Emanuel Swedenborg
[2] With people who are being created anew faith develops as follows: First of all they have no life, for life does not exist in anything evil and false but in what is good and true. Then they start to receive life from the Lord by means of faith – first by faith existing in the memory, which is factual faith, then by faith existing in the understanding, which is conceptual faith, and after this by faith existing in the heart, which is loving or saving faith.
The Lord’s encounter with the woman had taken place without His disciples being present, in verse 8 we find that they had gone into the city to buy food (Lit. to buy nurturing). There is an interesting pattern of movement in this story regarding the various people involved in relation to the Lord and the city of Sychar. When the woman is present with the Lord the disciples are absent in the city, then when the disciples return and are in the presence of the Lord so the woman returns to the city. This shift and movement represents the Word working in the two aspects of our mind. When the Lord’s relationship to the disciples takes centre stage we have represented those things to do with the intellectual side of our mind, and when the woman is the focus we have represented those things belonging to the will or affections.
We know now that the Lord on the well represents the Word as to its spirit. This is the Lord in His Divine Human and we have access to this through the teachings for Spiritual Christianity found in the Heavenly Doctrines. These make known to us who it is that sits upon the well and so are able to open our minds to the deeper things in the Word that can minister to what is deeper in us. The particular area of focus here is on how the Lord strengthens those things in us that have to do with loving our neighbour or cultivating a genuine concern for the spiritual well being of others, what the Heavenly Doctrines define as charity. We know this from having looked at the spiritual meaning of Samaria and in the fact that the meaning of the name of Sychar is “strong drink”. Strong drink or wine in the Word corresponds to spiritual truths and the joy they bring when expressed in uses that support the growth of love in others.
Cities in the Word correspond to our various modes of thought. This can be seen in that cities towns and villages are where people like to dwell and so corresponds to the modes of thought we like to dwell in, or feel a home in, internally. We have a home town somewhere we return to after travelling. Similarly we have a state of thought we continually return to after travelling through other modes of thinking we enter into to function in the various relationships and activities of the day. Some cities have walls for defence, some forms of our thinking processes can also take on the appearance of being defensive when we feel under threat. The point is that the Samaritan city of Sychar represents a mode of thought. Specifically it represents our thinking on spiritual matters to do with loving the neighbour, and because it’s in Samaria, whose people were of a mixed race, it represents a state of mixed thinking in spiritual matters.
The process for sorting this out so that we can come into a more complete understanding of what spiritual love is really all about sees the Lord primarily engaged in working with our affection for truth, represented by the woman. The disciples in contrast represent those more fixed ideas about the Lord and spiritual life that we have come to rely on but now need to undergo change if we are to move on. The contrast between the intellectual aspects of faith represented by the disciples and woman, who represents the affectional aspect of faith, is quite marked. Notice that the disciples are focussed on purchasing food, for themselves. This speaks to a state of mind when we are too much in the head as far as our faith is concerned. When intellectual things dominate then our seeking is often for ourselves, in the sense that it is a seeking of spiritual knowledge for its own sake rather than for the sake of uses that can support others.
The disciples in seeking to purchase food speak of a focus on seeking out what can satisfy our intellectual hunger. When this isn’t governed by a goal that looks to uses that can support others we can end up in mode of gathering knowledge and information about the Lord and spiritual life as a substitute for actually living that life. And of course we can justify this approach, for surely there can’t be anything more spiritual than reading books on spiritual subjects, listening to sermons, praying fervently, reading the Bible and the Heavenly Doctrines and any other forms of activity that give us a sense of being spiritual. But these kinds of intellectual activities if not balanced in practical uses can lead to spiritual indigestion.
And this is seen in the disciples response to the situation they find when they return to the well. Here they are indignant at finding the Lord speaking with a woman. Do they question the Lord about this to get a better understanding of the situation? No, in fact they withhold their questions, choosing to say nothing and in doing so harbour ill will. This is a form of spiritual indigestion and it occurs when we lack balance in our spiritual activities. The Lord seeks to maintain us in a balance of learning and doing. The natural man tends to want to settle into what is familiar and is resistant to the spiritual man’s efforts to put spiritual truths into practice. This is because the act of applying truths often requires us to make changes and move out of what is familiar so that new ways of being can come to life in us.
Building our understanding of spiritual principles and knowledge is a vital and important aspect to spiritual practise, but it needs to be done with a view to its application to our life. There comes a point represented in this situation with the disciples where more knowledge and understanding is not required, what’s required is a response from the will. If we want to move into what is represented by Galilee then what’s needed is for the will to be strengthened and this can only happen when we act from the understanding of truth we have now.
In the literal elements of the story we have captured the contrast between a faith which is stuck in knowing and one that is active in doing. In the disciples it’s all about resting in knowing but in the woman we have revealed that side of us that is capable of doing. She was willing to ask the Lord questions and clearly showed openness not evident in the disciples in regard to receiving instruction. She came seeking water for herself, but ends up leaving her water pot behind to take what she has discovered to others. While the disciples represent our more fixed ideas in regard to spiritual matters the woman represents a developing affection for truth, in particular an affection or developing motivation to live from the truths we have.
Spiritual life is about getting the balance right between building our knowledge of spiritual things and putting this knowledge into practice so that it becomes expressed as goodness or love that others are able to receive. The Lord works with the utmost care to keep opportunities before us in which we are able to respond to the truths he has provided for us. His ability to work in our life is directly related to our relationship to the Word and our willingness to act from it. It is through the Word that He provides us with truths and goods from Himself to build our minds into a heavenly form.
As we take truths into our life and use them our affections are purified and it is this process of purification that enables us to perceive the Lord more clearly. This process is seen in the woman coming to the well and engaging with the Lord which represents our own efforts to come to the Word and engage with the Living Truth of the Word. Our affection for truth begins mixed, we have aspects of self seeking in our search for truth, and in the story of this woman’s life we too have had many husbands and the one we are with is not our husband.
As we work to have self seeking removed so we come into contact, in the Word, with the one who can give us living water, in other words through the removal of evils and falsities we enter into a state where we become receptive of, and so are able to perceive the Lord’s presence in the inner sense of the Word. The affection for truth given to us from the Word moves us from self seeking, to seeking for the sake of use and in this process we find our affections purified in that we come into seeking truth simply for the good it can bring into being.
This movement from self seeking to seeking for the sake of uses connected with spiritual life marks a major shift in our relationship to the Word and the degree of impact it can have in our lives. It is significant that in the story it is the woman’s testimony that has a major impact on those who live in the city, not the disciples. This shows us that it is spiritual affection and not the intellect that takes the leading role in the Lord being able to lead us into a fuller understanding of what love or charity is.
Now we shouldn’t think of spiritual affection as being of the emotions. The natural man thinks of loving the Lord and others as something primarily emotional. This is not what spiritual affection is. Spiritual affection is not of the emotions which tend to be more external and somewhat fickle. Spiritual affection it is much deeper than this for it is a deep motivation from the Word itself that enables us to respond to spiritual truths even when we emotionally don’t feel like it.
The power of this woman’s testimony lay in the Lord being able to disclose to her all of her life. In the end it was her personal experience of the Divine truth working in her life that convinced her that, He who sat before her wasn’t just any ordinary prophet but was the Christ Himself. It is the same with us today. If we engage with the Word from an affection for truth, using it to govern the life of our will with its affections, and our understanding with its ideas and concepts and from this our behaviour, we will see the Lord within it, and this experience will transform our thinking as to what it means to truly love our neighbour. Like the woman who entered back into the city where she told all so a strengthened affection for truth can enter into the city of our thinking and bring all its elements into contact with the living water or Word. Here is demonstrated the impact of making truth a matter of life rather than just something of the memory or intellect. It transforms. We read of this in verses 39-42:
Joh 4:39-42 And many of the Samaritans out of that city believed into Him, because of the word of the woman testifying, He told me all things, whatever I did. (40) Then as the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to remain with them. And He remained there two days. (41) And many more believed through His Word. (42) And they said to the woman, We no longer believe because of your saying; for we ourselves have heard, and we know that this One is truly the Savior of the world, the Christ.
Many of the Samaritans believed – the city is brought into contact with the Lord due to this affection for truth and the city is transformed. Similarly when we truly take the Lord into our life we too will undergo a transformation opening the way for the Lord to bring wholeness into every part of our lives as He now makes His way to Galilee.
Amen.
