(The Third Sunday in Lent)
Living Water
By
The Very Rev. Terry White,
Dean
Exodus 17:1-7 • Psalm 95 •
Romans 5:1-11 • John 4:5-42
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Bottled water may be the second most popular beverage in the country. Sales have sky-rocketed in the last several years, as consumers have become more health conscious and fearful of tap water. Flavored water is big now. (We used to call that Kool Aid.) So is water with caffeine (that used to be called weak coffee or tea.) Empty water bottles are now creating a landfill crisis, even as designer water rolls of the production line. But there is one problem caused by bottled water that has yet to get much attention. Bottled water may cut down on evangelism. At least today’s Gospel story would sound very different. Jesus asking the Samaritan woman for bottled water just won’t pack the same zing.
Many times over the last months you have heard preachers from this pulpit speak of the scandal of the Samaritans. The most common view held by Jesus’ contemporaries as to the origin of the Samaritans was that they were a mongrel breed resulting from intermarriages between Hebrews of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the Assyrian settlers in Israel following the captivity of the northern kingdom in 722-21 B.C. Other pagans eventually infiltrated the land and mingled with them. Thus, their worship blended Jewish beliefs with the worship of idols.
Now hundreds of years later, Jews and Samaritans still despised one another. It is in this context that John’s Gospel alone tells the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman meeting at Jacob’s Well. The hour is identified as “about noon,” or literally translated, “the sixth hour” which John will use again to describe the hour when Jesus hung on the Cross. In this encounter the redemption of the cross is seen.
In this unusually long conversation Jesus talks of water as the fount of grace. He says that the actions of God are not stagnant and dead like the water at the bottom of a well, but living, flowing, rushing water that quenches every thirst. Jesus brings into the world a “spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” It is water that never ends just as God’s love never ends. Water that quenches our deepest desire to know God loves us. (Canon James Richardson)
And what is drink without food? When the disciples offer Jesus food, he tells them that his food is the food of his work, and there is plenty of work for them and us to do.
The significance of this story and where it is placed in John’s Gospel is this: the first person Jesus reveals the truth about himself to is a woman, a Samaritan woman, a Samaritan woman who has been married five times.
Jesus breaks some big social norms of his day and a couple of religious laws by talking with this Samaritan woman and by drinking water from her ritually impure pail or cup. Such ritual impurity did not override Jesus’ desire to be in relationship with the Samaritan. And further, Our Lord shares the stunning truth that God’s living water is for Samaritans as well.
In the previous chapter of John, the gospel for last Sunday, the Pharisee Nicodemus debated with Jesus about what he meant by being born again. That is the trouble with us religious folks. We can become so sure that we know how God work and how God reveals God’s self, that we miss God when the Holy is right in front of us. Nicodemus had no revelation. No conversion. The encounter was more like an intellectual exercise.
The juxtaposition of the two stories is intentional: a religious leader who failed to recognize God’s Son compared to the infidel Samaritan who sees Jesus first as a prophet, and later as the Messiah.
Jesus offers the woman living water. She in turn shares this living water with other outcasts. And John writes that many Samaritans believed. By her actions, it is clear that the woman drank deeply.
The lesson for the Church is that God’s love knows no social boundaries and the water and bread that gives us life and sustains us are God’s gift not just to us, but to all people. And all of us, like the Samaritan woman, must drink deeply so that we can share this incredible gift of God’s abundant love with everyone, and we are to assume our share of the work God has given us to do.
As a Cathedral whose mission is to be a community of servants we know something of what it means to sharing living water:
- Feeding the hungry, and training students to feed themselves and others.
- Each month helping a few individuals and a families stay in their home and ease the stress and fear caused by not having enough money for basic human needs.
- Reducing infant mortality and supporting pre- and post-natal care in Haiti, the arguably the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere
- And especially in connection to Jesus speaking to a Samaritan woman living with another outside of marriage, we are committed to not merely tolerating diversity, but learning from fellow pilgrims how God is at work in all baptized people regardless of whatever labels they bear.
Sharing living water in these ways, and breaking cultural patterns is hard work. It strains resources and challenges our resolve, but it can also call forth amazing generosity and deepen our commitment. Stopping by other proverbial wells and sharing living water with modern day Samaritans can call for some deep-seated fears, but by pushing through such fears, a right spirit can be renewed within us.
St. John ends with a final clear message. Jesus is to be shared in varied and creative ways. The Samaritan woman did not keep the gift of living water to herself. And neither will we.
