The encounters with God we are exploring this week happen around water.  There are many references and stories about water in the scriptures – in fact doing a simple search for just the mention of water returned results from 49 of the 66 traditional books of the Bible.  That seems significant and yet not really surprising – water is a necessity of our earthly living.  Plants, animals and we as humans thrive through our use of water. Last weekend Becky and I had the opportunity to introduce Simon to his 93 year great-grandfather (my grandfather) at a family gathering in Ohio.  After general oohing and aahing over the first meeting between them I was chatting with Grandpa and asked how he was doing.  He said he felt great and that he had started to drink more water each day than he ever had before and that it was making him feel really good!  He thought this made sense – asking me aren’t most of our human bodies made up of water?  I agreed that they were and we guessed at the percentage of water in the human body – I think we were a little high – estimating around 80% – when I looked it up this week it turns out the average adult is made up of 50-65% water.  With so much of our physical bodies’ actual make-up and dependency on water to sustain life is seems fitting that scripture references it so freely in life giving and life taking ways:

Water is found in the beginning, with the Spirit of God hovering over it

Water is the river bathing place of the daughter of Pharaoh who finds baby Moses’ hidden among the reeds on the bank and spares his life

Water is then later parted by God, through the adult Moses, for the sparing of the Israelites lives in their escape from Egypt and it is the downfall of their pursuing Egyptian captors

Water is a holy tool of the early priests in the tabernacle

Water is desperately absent in many seasons of drought

Water is a metaphor for the movement of justice

Water swaddles around Jonah in the belly of the whale

Water is turned into wine

Water is a vehicle for baptism and repentance

Water cleanses the sick

Water washes the disciples’ feet

Water is an ingredient for a successful harvest after sowing seeds

Water is living – it is Spirit – it is life

Water is quite often the centerpiece of an encounter with God in scripture and we will explore a prime example of this today through the story of the woman at the well found in John 4.  As you may notice we did not hear the John 4 text during our standard scripture reading slot in the service.  This passage is long, and at times a bit confusing, and it is beautiful so I wanted to take the opportunity to intentionally spend some time with it – so I will be reading the text in pieces as part of my sermon today so that we can explore it together – you can call this approach an activity that is part of our 12 scriptures project or you can call it good old fashioned Bible preaching, whatever helps you feel okay about it!   

As a side thought, when I was at the Women Doing Theology conference last month I heard analysis on several stories of women in the scriptures and one of the recurring comments was that many of the stories that were being explored were very brief, yet the names of the women or the seemingly small moments of encounter were captured and retained in the cannon and so there must be significance to explore.  This story is quite the opposite situation – it is pretty long and includes such detail (minus the woman’s name of course) that it gives me pause to wonder that there may be layers of significance in this story.

Let’s hear the story – John chapter 4 starting at verse 5:

Jesus stopped at Sychar, a town in Samaria, near the tract of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph, and Jacob’s Well was there.  Jesus, weary from the journey, came and sat by the well.  It was around noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”  The disciples had gone off to the town to buy provisions.
The Samaritan woman replied, “You’re a Jew.  How can you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?” – since Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans.

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And with these first lines the scene is set. We learn that Jesus is traveling and his human body is tired and thirsting for water and that Jesus, in his true to Jesus way, is not bound up by cultural expectations in his actions.  Alone in public he asks for a drink from a woman (an action not particularly acceptable in the Jewish culture of the day), and not just a woman, a Samaritan woman, a woman of a clashing culture to his own.  We’ve encountered the tensions between the Jewish and Samaritan communities before when working with the Good Samaritan text, and the complexities of the differences between the two communities play just as important a role in this moment as they do in that parable.  Yet, Jesus is not deterred by the separation that should have been implied by their cultural differences – he not only asks her for a drink, but he extends an invitation to life in the Spirit to this outsider.

Picking back up at verse 10:

Jesus answered, “If only you recognized God’s gift, and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him for a drink instead, and he would have given you living water.”
“If you please,” she challenged Jesus, “you don’t have a bucket and this well is deep.  Where do you expect to get this ‘living water’? Surely you don’t pretend to be greater than our ancestors Leah and Rachel and Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it with their descendants and flocks?”
Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give them will never be thirsty; no, the water I give will become fountains within them, springing up to provide eternal life.”
The woman said to Jesus, “Give me this water, so that I won’t grow thirsty and have to keep coming all the way here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband and then come back here.”
“I don’t have a husband,” replied the woman.
“You’re right – you don’t have a husband!” Jesus exclaimed. “The fact is, you’ve had five, and the man you’re living with now is not your husband. So what you’ve said is quite true.”
“I can see you’re a prophet,” answered the woman.

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Living water – this is what Jesus offers – and it is not literally water at all, but is instead a gift of active life in the Spirit, a life that does not fail to satisfy, nor will that Spirit cease to spring forth from the true source of life. It is a life that quenches the dry and reoccurring thirst of meaninglessness and despair that can abound when life is lived with too much focus on the needs of the flesh – a thirst witnessed to in the Exodus 17 scripture read earlier for us.  In that story the Israelites were physically thirsty, so thirsty in fact that they seemed to think that their lives, in slavery, in Egypt were more satisfying than their existence in the wilderness of freedom.  Theirs was a physical thirst, but also a spiritual dryness that prevented them from seeing beyond those physical needs to trust that the source of life was indeed present with them and would provide for them.  This life of living water is a life that continuously provides sustenance and energy of Spirit even in challenging times of the flesh.

Yet this spiritual life that Jesus is offering is not separate from our physical life.  After the woman’s ready acceptance of the offering of this gift, and even though she seems to still be a bit unclear about what this living water truly is (thinking that she will literally not have to come draw water at the well anymore), she clearly knows it is something she wants to partake in, Jesus asks her to go and bring her husband, a request that brings human reality to the forefront, for this woman is not a woman without complication in her human life – she has had five husbands and currently resides with a man who is not legally her own – yet, with integrity, she honestly admits it to this stranger.  This reality of her life is no surprise to Jesus, for in the Spirit she is not a stranger at all to him, there is nothing hidden from the eyes of God and in the exchange of honesty and truth the eyes of both are opened to each other.  

This woman is both amazed at the power and knowledge this prophet seems to possess and yet also takes the opportunity to challenge and test his wisdom.  As the conversation between them continues, theological banter ensues highlighting some of the differences between the Jewish and Samaritan communities and speaking out the vision for the coming Kin-dom of God.

Picking back up at verse 20 the Samaritan woman says:

“Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you people claim that Jerusalem is the place where God ought to be worshiped.”
Jesus told her, “Believe me, the hour is coming when you’ll worship Abba God neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you don’t understand; we worship what we do understand – after all, salvation is from the Jewish people. Yet the hour is coming – and is already here – when real worshipers will worship Abba God in Spirit and truth. Indeed, it is just such worshipers whom Abba God seeks. God is Spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”

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And there is the heart of living water – it is a life lived in active relationship with and worship of God in spirit and truth.  Living water breaks down divisions built up around us by what we think we hold as truth and moves us into an active life in the presence of the Spirit and in the light of God’s truth.

The journey to offer this living water to any who are willing to receive it is what Jesus’ life is all about and we see the power of the offering and the flow of living water once poured out in the remaining verses of this story.

Picking up the story one more time at verse 25:

The woman said to Jesus, “I know that the Messiah – the Anointed One – is coming and will tell us everything.”
Jesus replied, “I who speak to you am the Messiah.”
The disciples, returning at this point, were shocked to find Jesus having a private conversation with a woman. But no one dared to ask, “What do you want of him?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
The woman then left her water jar and went off into the town. She said to the people, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this be the Messiah?” At that everyone set out from the town to meet Jesus.
Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But Jesus told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
At this, the disciples said to one another, “Do you think someone has brought him something to eat?”
Jesus explained to them,
“Doing the will of the One who sent me
and bringing this work to completion
is my food.
Don’t you have a saying,
‘Four months more
and it will be harvest time’?
I tell you,
open your eyes and look at the fields –
they’re ripe and ready for harvest!
Reapers are already collecting their wages;
they’re gathering fruit for eternal life,
and sower and reaper will rejoice together.
So the saying is true:
‘One person sows; another reaps.’
I have sent you to reap
what you haven’t worked for.
Others have done the work,
and you’ve come upon the fruits of their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus on the strength of the woman’s testimony – that “he told me everything I ever did.” The result was that, when these Samaritans came to Jesus, they begged him to stay with them awhile. So Jesus stayed there two days, and through his own spoken word many more came to faith. They told the woman, “No longer does our faith depend on your story. We’ve heard for ourselves, and we know that this really is the savior of the world.”

The work of God is food for the soul, the excitement of tasting living water is contagious, and there is celebration for all whenever living water is drawn.  Life in the living waters of the Spirit does not separate us from the realities of our human existence, but it can carry us through and help us to thrive. May we find the strength to see beyond ourselves and draw the freely given and ever flowing living water.