SPRING OF LIVING WATER

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
February 24, 2002
Pastor Laura Gentry

John 4:5-42
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 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” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Once, while I was an interim pastor at a church 70 miles from my home, out in the desert east of Los Angeles, I was contacted by a former member of the church who wanted to talk with me. She had moved another 50 miles south of the church but had some important things to tell me about the church I was serving and somehow convinced me to come down and visit her. I arrived there quite safely and we had a great visit. But she, trying to be helpful, told me about a great short cut I should take on my way back. Without a map in hand and with her rather flimsy directions in my head, I set out on the return voyage. After about and hour of driving on some twisty, empty roads where I didn’t see another car, I came to realize I had not gone a very good way. The sun was baking down on me in my Miata. The temperature was well over 110 degrees and the water bottle I had in the car was empty. I put the top up for shade but I was still severely dehydrated and in great danger. I really wanted to just pull over and wait for someone to help me but there were no other cars on this road and so I knew this was not a good option so I keep driving and driving. It was on this sojourn that I came to appreciate the vital necessity of water.

Needless to say, I eventually got back to the freeway and survived the ordeal and it was also the catalyst to make me spring for adding air conditioning to my car.

And the Middle Eastern desert climate in which Jesus lived, such dryness was a way of life. It was a place of chronic drought. People understood their desperate need for water in this desert environment and they didn’t have the option of getting their car air conditioned. One of the primary tasks of women was to go each day to the well, to draw water for the family. Many women had to walk miles to get to the nearest well, and so retrieving water consumed much of their day.

It is here, at the well, where Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman in our Gospel text for today. Now this is an extremely unlikely place for Jesus to be. He is a foreigner in Samaria, which is located in modern day Turkey. A proper Jew would not have even wandered through this country, but would have traveled around it. Instead, Jesus goes right on into it, and not only that, he goes to the well. This was traditionally a place reserved for women. Seeing Jesus there must have been shocking for the Samaritan woman—perhaps as shocking as a modern day woman finding a man sitting in the lounge of a ladies’ restroom! And to top it off, he begins a conversation with her. Again this was a great social taboo. Men and women who were not married to each other were not to engage in a conversation. This is still the case in some places of the Middle East. Earlier this month in Saudi Arabia, a married woman was having a conversation with a male colleage in the Starbucks of a government building and when authorities recognized that she was not related to the man she was sitting with, she was arrested and jailed. Imagine how much more shocking it was in Jesus’ day for him to engage a woman to whom he was not related in conversation?

And of course, there were religious taboos against a Samaritan and a Jew conversing. This was also forbidden. So here is Jesus breaking two major rules so that he can reach out to this person at the well.

Now it is easy to see how confused the woman was when Jesus just shows up and asks her for a drink. She asks, “How is it that you a Jewish man are asking me, a Samaritan women, to give you a drink?” Ignoring her question, Jesus introduces his metaphor of water. He says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying it to you, you would have asked and been given living water.”

The confused woman, thinking he means fresh water—water which flows from a spring—replies something about Jacob's well not having any such water. Besides (and I always love this random aside) she notes that he has no bucket. Befuddled, she asks where Jesus could find “living water” in the desert.

Jesus continues with his spiritual imagery, saying: “Everyone who drinks of the water from this well will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” Still thinking literally, the woman says she'd certainly like to have some of that water because she is tired of her tedious daily trips to the well.

In saying this, Jesus is not talking about a literal spring in the desert, but he is identifying himself as that spring. Jesus himself is the gift from God, which gives life. He is the “water,” that can quench her spiritual thirst foreverr. So in this first part of their conversation, Jesus establishes that it is he who is the spring of life.

As the story continues, we discover that this woman of Samaria has a deep, deep spiritual thirst. Her life has been difficult. She has been married five times and each time, the marriage ended in divorce or the death of her spouse. We don’t know how these relationships ended but because of the cultural context, we can be sure that each divorce must have been devastating for her. Now she was living in an unmarried relationship—which was a very shameful situation in ancient Samaria.

In her conversation with Jesus, he reveals that he already knows about her marriage history, and she recognizes immediately, that he is a prophet. So, she seeks wisdom from him about which mountain is the proper place for worship: is it Mount Gerizim where the Samaritans worship, or is it Mount Zion in Jerusalem where the Jews worship? Jesus won’t get caught up in this on-going theological debate. He explains that neither is the exclusive place where God will be present in the future, but that true worship must be be done in “spirit and in truth.” Once Jesus is risen from the dead, all will see that he is the Messiah, and to be in his Spirit is to worship in spirit and in truth.

Now the woman is beginning to discover who Jesus is and what he is offering. Her spiritual thirst, which is even greater than her physical thirst, can be met in the life-giving spiritual water that only God can provide! She he known that the Messiah was coming, but now she realizes that Jesus is this Messiah.

Immediately, the woman abandons her water jar. She forsakes her purpose in coming to the well, for she has taken on a new, more important purpose. She runs off to tell the others about Christ. Her zealous evangelism causes many other Samaritans to believe in him also.

Then, along come Jesus’ disciples. They are clueless as to why Jesus is breaking all the rules to talk to this Samaritan woman. They urge him to get something to eat. Again, Jesus takes the element of a physical need—this time it is eating—and uses it as metaphor for spiritual need. Jesus tells them that the food he has that “they do not know about” is “to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” (v. 34-35) This explains why Jesus has come through Samaria—in order to do God’s work, to share the good news with these people as well. Already, he has evangelized one woman who is currently out evangelizing herself! Doing the will of God both drives and sustains Jesus and it must drive and sustain the disciples as well.

And so in this gospel story, we learn quite a bit about Jesus. We see that Jesus is the Messiah and he bestows the “living water” of Holy Spirit, that he is the Son of God, and that he reveals the truth about God—that doing God’s will of proclaiming the good news is the very food with which is soul is nurtured.

As Jesus offered living water to the Samaritan woman, God offers refreshment for our spiritual thirsts as well. There are times when we in thirsty in spirit—more thirsty than I was on my dehydrating desert road trip. There are times when spiritual drought makes us especially desperate for the water that can give life to our spirits. These are the thirsty times when life seems empty, shallow and without purpose, and we just can’t find peace of mind.. I’m sure you know what it’s like to experience a deep dryness of the soul. The good new, my friends, is that Jesus offers us all that he offered the Samaritan woman. We can have it, too—that is, if we share with her a thirst for acceptance, forgiveness, love and healing for our parched lives.

The season of Lent is a time of attending atively to our deep spiritual thirst. Our Lenten disciplines aim to open the door for God's Spirit to become active in our lives. In our thirsty state, the Lord calls to us: “Come to his living water! Come to me, for I know you thirst for acceptance in a desert of rejection, that you thirst for forgiveness in the parched land of your sins, that you thirst for hope in the dry despair of your failures. While you were still sinners, I came to save you. Come to the living water!” For us, as for the Samaritan woman, there comes, into the drought of life, the life-giving water of Christ, the one who pours his love and grace into every crack and crevice of the dried and broken ground of our spirits.

And when we, in turn, come to him in hope of receiving this water, our Jesus not only gives us a drink, he offers us the whole spring of living water that can run deep inside each of us as an ever-refreshing source of life—life that will see us through all the hard times of drought and direct our wandering hearts back to God. And not only that, Jesus offers us food, the sustaining food of doing the will of God. May we come in hope and be filled. Amen.

Now, may the peace of God keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

© 2008 Laura E. Gentry