Manna from Monday

“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8.3, NIV).

Each Monday morning I try to spend a couple of hours reading the Bible and a book about the Bible that is not connected to anything I am teaching or preaching. This discipline (and I am not as disciplined at this as I need to be) is driven by a desire to have my life sustained, not by bread, but by words that come from the mouth of the Lord.

At the moment, I am reading John Frye’s excellent book, Jesus the Pastor. Basically the book imaginatively explores how Jesus shepherded people with a view toward how we as Pastors can lead people like Jesus led people.

In the first chapter, “Watching Him Work,” the author describes in detail how Jesus interacts with Nicodemus in John 3 and the Samaritan Woman at the Well in John 4. Aside from the many aspects that we have noticed our entire lives in these two common stories, John Frye notices something that is quite simple and extraordinarily profound. “Jesus went with the flow.” Notice how Jesus allows both Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman to establish the direction of the conversation. In John 3, everything Jesus teaches is a direct response to a question from Nicodemus. Jesus didn’t have “a planned presentation for religious leaders who come to me at night.” Jesus respected Nicodemus as a person. He is made in the image of God, and Jesus values him as such. Jesus has a similar respect for the woman at the well. Don’t blow over that fact too quickly. Although both situations presented him with unique challenges, Jesus has the same respect for a religious leader that he has for Samaritan woman living an adulterous lifestyle.

Jesus treated her the way our loving God and Father treats everyone: he accepted and respected her as a person. He did not treat her as women were then treated; he treated her as a person. He did not treat her as Jews treated Samaritans; he treated her as a person. He did not treat her as a heretic; he treated her as person…Jesus gave the Samaritan woman her rightful place in his life. Her rightful place was as a human being, a person made in the image of God. She had the right to be treated as a person. That is always the way God in his love treats us. 

May the peaceful example of Jesus shape they way we deal with all the people in our lives today. Treat everyone you encounter today with love because each one of them is a person.