April 5, 2021 John 4: 13-15
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.’
16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and
come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to
her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is
not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
She asked him if Jesus was greater than her ancestor
Jacob, the giver of the well. Jesus says
“Yes” but not so directly. Those who
drink of the well water will be thirsty again.
Fair enough. Jesus offers a
solution to thirst. It is the water He
gives, in distinction to the water of Jacob’s well. This spring of water gushes up to eternal
life.
The promise of eternal life, in Christ, comes through
Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is
powerful we recognize that because this is the first Monday after Easter in
2021. Jesus uses a metaphor that the
woman of Sychar can recognize from what is right in front of her. I like the distinction Jesus makes between
the spring of living water that ‘bubbles up’, easy to drink from and the well
where they are seated. The woman has
identified this well as deep, unusable to Jesus without a bucket.
Unlike Nicodemus, who balked at the birth metaphor, the
woman of Sychar goes all in. She asks
Jesus to give her this water, but for reasons based in reality, so she will
never be thirsty again, nor that she will have to keep coming to the well at
high noon to draw more.
The historic event of Jesus’ death and resurrection
occurred on the cross and then the tomb, Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Water serves as the same dual metaphor for
Jesus. The obvious aspect is life. The well is there, necessary for the survival
of the people of Sychar. Without the
well of Jacob, life would be unsustainable for the City. What is not made obvious in this discussion
but is a part of life especially in the Hill Country of Samaria, is the death
associated with water.
It comes in two associations. The first is the Mediterranean Sea. It is less than a day’s walk from the
City. The pounding of the surf is
ongoing, compared to the arid, desert climate of the land of Israel, it is huge
and overpowering. The second comes during
the rainy season. Around the hills are
wadis, stream beds, that for most of the year are dry and serve as natural
routes of travel. But when the rains
come, these same stream beds can flood to deadly power almost instantaneously.
This kind of flooding was not limited to the Hill
Country, but to the Jordan itself, for the same reasons. This is why the language of baptism is also language
of death and life. Romans 6:3 speaks of
how we are baptized into a death like of Jesus that we may be raised to new
life as Jesus was raised. Such language
is drawn from the conditions found in the land of Israel.
But the piece that the woman at
the well has not yet latched onto is the part about eternal life. We shall see that come to the fore as Jesus
reveals her backstory in our next post.
Peace, Pastor Pete
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