John 4: 5-42
So he [Jesus] 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."
Water is essential to life.
Water is easy to take for granted.
Every day the woman went to the well, for
daily water for herself and her family. Just like most every woman during that
time. It seems so hard to imagine having to do such a thing, in the time and
place in which we now live. However, this is still the daily requirement for
more people around the world than we can probably even comprehend.
According to the website water.org, every day
women spend a total of 200 million hours collecting water for their families.
Every day.
That is the amount of time it would take to
build 28 Empire State Buildings.
Every day.
It’s greater than the combined number of
hours worked in a week by employees at Wal*Mart, United Parcel Service,
McDonald's,IBM, Target, and Kroger.
Every day.
The water they collect comes from distant,
often polluted sources, which they then carry back in 40 pound cans on their
back.
Every day.
There are 780 million people in the world who
lack access to clean water. That’s more than 2.5 times the number of people
living in the United States. It’s almost one out of every eight people in the
world.
All this is to say that the scene we heard in
the gospel today is not far from current reality for many, many people.
Water is essential for life. And water is not
easily accessible for many people on this planet.
Our youth are donating one third of the
Souper Bowl of Caring proceeds from this congregation to the ongoing well
project in Thika, Kenya, that has been a focus of the Presbytery of Detroit
since the 1990s. Our Presbytery dedicated a well in 2004, and another one just
this year. These are deep water wells which cost around $40,000 each, having to
drill through bedrock to reach the water. These wells are being powered using
solar energy, and they provide water to surrounding communities. But still the women
must come from miles around, to collect clean water from the wells and to carry
it back to their communities, day after day.
The Samaritan woman came to the well in the
heat of the day. This is a contrast from the time of day we heard that
Nicodemus met up with Jesus, in our story from last week.
Nicodemus came in the dark of night. The
woman is at the well at high noon, when the heat is greatest.
Both of them, however, intentionally arrive
at the scene of these stories at a time when nobody else was likely to be
around. Nicodemus came at night so others would not know he was seeking Jesus.
The woman came during the day because, as a Samaritan, she was not welcomed
when the other women would come, usually in the cool of the morning, since she
was not a Jew and was not welcome around other Jews.
Unlike Nicodemus, she did not expect to
encounter Jesus there, or anyone else, for that matter. Unlike Nicodemus, she
knew nothing about Jesus until she found him there, until he spoke to her,
until he began a conversation about getting a drink of water, and moved from
there into words that, like with Nicodemus, were beyond common sense and logic.
But where Nicodemus could not accept Jesus’ explanation
of being born from above, the Samaritan woman seems to accept Jesus’ offer of
living water, at face value. “Sir, give me some of this water, so I will not be
thirsty anymore.”
She is ready for her life to be transformed
from the daily drudgery of gathering water in her jug, only to empty it out for
others and do it again the next day.
Her sense that Jesus is offering something
more is increased as he shows how he knows everything about her. Her trust of Jesus grows as she realizes that
he does not judge or condemn her for what he knows about her life. And she
begins to gain an understanding of the life transforming, life giving water he
offers, as she mentions the Messiah, and he says, I am He.
And as she runs back to her village, leaving
behind her jug intended for daily water, saying to the villagers, “come and
see”, her eyes begin to open, and she begins to recognize him as the Messiah.
And so do the other Samaritans as they follow
her to Jesus, and encourage Jesus to stay, and bear witness that Jesus is,
indeed, the Anointed One, the Savior who is to come.
Living water.
We all need our daily water to survive. What
is living water, and how can it be even more important to our lives than our
daily water? What thirst does it quench? How is it eternal?
The theologian John Calvin, whose writings
during the Reformation became the basis of our Presbyterian doctrine, provides
a beautiful description of the Holy Trinity, the Triune God, that helps to explain
what living water means to us, why it is foundational to our lives.
Many people have tried to explain the Holy
Trinity, God in Three Persons, but words and comparisons and characteristics
all seem inadequate. We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, knowing
even as we say those words, that they only partially describe the unity of God
in three persons. It has its limitations, as does every attempt to describe God.
God is beyond description and comprehension.
Some people use Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer
to describe the Triune God. But this implies that God has three unique and
individual functions.
And that, too, is limiting.
John Calvin uses water to describe the living
God, the Holy Trinity. He also freely admits that this description is limiting,
that God is beyond comprehension. But then he lays out this beautiful explanation
of living water.
He describes God as the wellspring, the
fountain, the source. He describes Jesus as the river, the path, the way. And
he describes the Holy Spirit as the current, the flow.
Thinking of the God as water, as living
water, ever flowing from God the source, through Christ the river, by the
ever-changing power of the Holy Spirit as current and flow, can help us to perceive
the eternal presence of God, the continual relationship between God, Christ,
and the Holy Spirit, and the way in which they are all the same, all living
water, sustaining our lives for all eternity.
We sang this morning, Come thou fount of
every blessing. God the source of all our blessings. God the wellspring of
living water. In a few minutes we will sing I’ve Got Peace Like a River. Jesus
the river that guides our path through life. The river that’s filled with
living water. And in our closing hymn, the Holy Spirit, restless spirit, moving
over the living water, creating its current, the flow, moving around and
through and in us, calming us, exciting us, inspiring us, and bringing us
strength and peace.
The living water of the one God, the
salvation of the triune God, quenching our thirst for the life that truly is
life. This is what Jesus offered the woman that day.
I heard Archbishop Desmond Tutu being
interviewed on a radio show as I drove in this morning.
He told of a time during apartheid in South
Africa when black women were all called Annie, and black men were all called
boy by white South Africans. Their real names were ignored.
From the pulpit he would tell his black
congregation, “when they ask your name, tell them your name is ‘God Bearer’ –
because you all carry God within you. You are a vessel, filled with the living
God. And, he said, those elderly women left the church standing a little bit
taller, their backs straighter, seeing themselves as God Bearers.
We are all God bearers. We are vessels,
carrying living water within us.
The Samaritan woman left her jug and ran back
to the village – she had realized she was a vessel of living water. Hearing
Jesus’ words, recognizing him as the Messiah – she realized that she was a jug
of living water herself.
The apostle Paul tells us that we hold this
treasure in clay jars. We are ordinary vessels, each and every one of us, all
filled to overflowing with an abundance of living water.
Just as the Samaritan woman went to the
village, overflowing with the wonder that she shared with everyone there – so
too are we called and filled and equipped to carry this living water out into
the world with joy, and to share it with everyone who is thirsty.
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