March 31, 2021 John 4: 10-12
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus
said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The 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.) 10Jesus 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.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no
bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who
gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this
water will be thirsty again, 14but 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.’ 15The 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 cuts to the reality. Her concern is that of appearances. His concern is that of the truth. If she but knew the gift of God and the one
who is saying to you “Give me a drink”, she would have asked for living
water. Once again, the first
interpretation is literal. Cut back to Nicodemus,
getting grossly specific on how one might be ‘born again’.
What interests me while
reading this is that the metaphor of the ‘living water’, at first glance in my eyes, was
more appropriate to the baptisms being conducted by Jesus’ disciples before
they came to Sychar. The idea of being
dipped into the water, dipped into death, and brought up to new life, to
resurrection; linking that to living water. But this is Jesus, who knows far more than me. The metaphor appropriate to baptism is that of spirit and water,
playing off of Jesus’ own baptism.
This water comes out of a
hole in the ground. The only running
water they probably saw in Sychar was during the rainy season when the valleys of
the hill country flooded out.
Notice how he overcomes
the distinction between Jew and Samaritan.
Yes, ‘they have nothing to do with each other’, but they each have the
same God. So we break down and overcome
the hierarchy of culture. And this is
water to drink of, not to be washed in, so this is appropriate to the well, not
to the River.
It is the drink of living
water, a new metaphor describing what Jesus is here to do. Notice how he opens, identifying God, then
commenting on himself-if she knew who he was asking-before moving to the idea
of the living water. He is not leading
with his own identity as the Messiah precisely because that is fundamental to
the faith practice centered in Jerusalem, not centered here.
Her response is
literal. Jesus has no bucket, the well is
deep, he has already had the temerity to ask her for a drink of water. Where is this ‘living’ water supposed to come
from?
Is Jesus challenging her
faith tradition? Jacob gave them the
well and it has kept them alive as their water source, those of this present
generation join with Jacob’s sons and flocks who also drank of it. This is how the Samaritans trace their
connection as the children of Abraham, through his son Jacob. It is how they
trace their legitimacy. The Jews condemn
Samaritans because they do not practice the faith ‘properly’, they are not
centered on Jerusalem-another way of saying they are not under control of the Jewish
leadership.
This was the genius of
Jesus. It is why his parables are so
powerful. He looked to the land and life
of the people around them and he connected the Plan of God to those places and
events. This is a well, thus living
water. The truth of God is by no means
undercut. If anything, the joy is
broadened as we are offered another way to see what Jesus does for us.
Pastor Pete
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