2/24/08                                                                          John 4:5-30, 39-42

“WHAT WE THIRST FOR”

Rev. James Singleton

There is no question that life depends upon water. Our bodies consist of something like 60% water so without it we become dehydrated and shut down. Since we all seek water to quench our thirst it is no wonder that the companies who bottle water have hit the jackpot.

Not to be outdone by the secular culture, Christians have gotten into the bottled water business. Christians recognize that we thirst in more ways than one and so some “Christian Companies” have come out with Christian bottled water that claims that their water, which has been prayed over and blessed, will help the drinker “stay focused, believe in yourself and believe in God.”  

Holy Drinking Water, Spiritual Water and Formula J are just three of the Christian bottled water labels on the market. Imagine bottled water that not only quenches you physically but also quenches you spiritually!

But I can hear Jesus say to us the same thing he said to the woman at the well, “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.”

Jesus offers us a different kind of water from blessed and prayed over bottled water. Jesus offers us what he labels, “Living Water.” To understand what living water is and why we thirst for it, we have to understand the dynamics of what took place one day when Jesus sat by a well and a Samaritan woman came to fetch a pail of water.

Jesus talks longer to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in all the Gospels—longer than he talks to any of his disciples, longer than he talks to any of his accusers, longer than he talks to any of his own family. She is the first person he reveals himself to in the Gospel of John. She is the first non-disciple to guess who he is and tell others. 

So what was so special about this woman whom he met at a well one day at noon in Samaria? That’s the curious thing—there was nothing special about her at all. In fact, there were a number of things about her that should have, by all standards of the day, repulsed Jesus from even talking to her.

Even though baseball wasn’t invented yet, John wants us to know that this woman at the well has three strikes against her that should have counted her out in God’s eyes.

First of all, she is a she. In Jesus’ time women were not what you would call liberated. They were not even allowed to worship with men, whose morning devotions included the prayer, “Thank God I am not a woman.”

Women had no place in public life. They were not to be seen or heard, especially not by holy men, who did not speak to their own wives in public. One group of pious men was known as “the bruised and bleeding Pharisees” because they closed their eyes when they saw a woman coming down the street, even if it meant walking into a wall and breaking their noses! I doubt that Hillary would be their candidate of choice. The woman at the well was—a woman. Strike one.

Strike two—she was a Samaritan woman! To understand why Jews hated the Samaritans you would have to go back thousands of years to understand the origins. It would be like trying to understand why Shi’a and Sunni Muslims hate each other. Suffice it to say that Jews regarded Samaritans as inferior racially, religiously and socially. There was bitter hostility and rivalry between these two peoples. They didn’t agree on where to worship God or how to worship God. One thing for certain, a Jew would rather die of thirst than drink from a Samaritan cup. Jesus asked for a drink from a Samaritan woman!

And then John tells us that this woman had one more strike against her—she was the town scandal. The fact that Jesus encountered her at high noon, in the heat of the day, is our first clue that something about this woman is suspect. Women came to the wells to draw water in the cool of the early morning or early evening, not in the heat of the day. This woman didn’t draw water with the other women because, as we soon learn, she is the topic of the other women’s gossip.

As Jesus soon deduced this woman had more marriages than a Hollywood movie star—five to be exact and she was currently living with her potential sixth. This woman at the well was nameless, but you can bet that everyone in town knew who she was. Her reputation preceded her. Surely a holy man, let alone the Holy God, would have nothing to do with this brazen sinner. Strike three—she’s out.

What can we deduce about her from her three strikes? She has been an outsider her whole life. She has been judged and shunned and rejected. She tried to find acceptance among the people, but that well came up empty. She had tried to find salvation in the love of men, but they left her parched and polluted. She didn’t dare believe that God could love her or care for her so her religion had become a desert.

She knew what she was and she was tired of it. She thirsted for something that no bottled water, no matter how much it was prayed over and blessed, could give her.

John records that the disciples were astounded that their master was speaking to this foreign woman of the night. Had he lost his mind? What would people think if they saw him talking to her and even asking her for water?

But Jesus knew what he was doing. He asked her for water in order to open a conversation about a different kind of water. He was thirsty, but not as thirsty as he saw she was. His thirst could be taken care of with a dip from the well, but her thirst could only be taken care of with living water.

Jesus reveals that he knows all about her many sins, her rejections, her loneliness, and her longings. Suddenly she realizes that she is seen. To be seen is a powerful thing. To know that someone else truly sees you for who you are and does not reject you is a powerful thing.

Few of us are what we appear to be. Most of us display a false outer shell, a persona that allows us to be accepted, a respectable façade that allows us to fit in and not become the church gossip. But on the inside we are not what we portray on the outside. What would happen if people really knew our secret sins, our mental and spiritual struggles? Would we be accepted then?

For the first time in her life the Samaritan woman encounters pure grace and miraculous love. Suddenly life is bubbling up from within her like never before. Jesus made her feel that:

·        She is not just a woman—she is a creation of the living God.

·        She is not just a Samaritan—she is being called to be among the chosen people of God.

·        She is not just a sinner, she is a sinner redeemed by grace and love.

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well is for all who are spiritually tired and thirsty.

·        It is for all who are tired of not living up to expectations; tired of not being perfect; tired of not being good enough; tired of not being the right this or the right that.

·        It is for people who are tired of being judged; tired of being talked about; tired of being made to feel unworthy.

·        It is for all who feel left out, not chosen, not among the in group.

·        It is for all who know they have failed to live up to their own hopes and dreams, disappointed God, let down others.

·        It is for people who are counted not good enough, not religious enough, not successful enough.

We, too, have come with our water jar under our arms trying to draw thirst quenching water from the wells of this world. We try to draw life giving water from the wells of people pleasing, personal success, status, wealth, health, youth or whatever else we think will give us the illusion that we are somebody special, we are accepted, we are worthy.

But all of the wells of this world leave us thirsty. Not bottled water, not money, not titles, not exercise, not accolades take away our feeling of being broken, scared, unloved and unworthy. There is only one place for such thirst quenching water—the love and acceptance of Jesus Christ who sees us completely, knows us intimately and still is willing to die for us because that’s how much God cares for us. If God accepts us, then what others think about us no longer defines us.

Anne Lamott is just about the most unlikely Christian convert since the Samaritan woman at the well. She wrote about her Christian conversion in her book Traveling Mercies and in several books subsequently.

Anne writes about when her life was at it driest and how she tried to quench her thirst through alcohol, drugs, and sex. She writes, “One afternoon in my dark bedroom, the crack webbed all the way through me. I believed that I would die soon, from a fall or an overdose. I knew there was an afterlife, but felt that the odds of my living long enough to get into heaven were almost nil. They couldn’t possibly take you into heaven in the shape I was in. I could no longer imagine how God could love me.”

Out of desperation, she was driven to talk to a minister. “I let it all tumble out—the X-rated motels, my father’s death, a hint that maybe I drank too much. I don’t remember much of his response, except that when I said I didn’t think God could love me, he said, ‘God has to love you. That’s God’s job.’

“Then the minister said, ‘I guess it’s like discovering you’re on the shelf of a pawnshop, dusty and forgotten and maybe not worth very much. But Jesus comes in and tells the pawnbroker, ‘I’ll take her place on the shelf. Let her go outside again.’”

Anne eventually accepted the fact that she was fully known, yet fully loved and forgiven and so she decided to be baptized. Only then did her thirst become quenched.

Jesus received the Samaritan woman with such love and grace that she was profoundly transformed. After her meeting at the well, she leaves her water jar behind and rushes into the very center of the village, demanding to be heard by those who were once her judges.

And she is heard. As it turns out, even her judges, even those who portrayed themselves as good, upstanding citizens had a need to be accepted, loved and forgiven!

Leave behind your water jar and all the shallow, stale ways you have been trying to quench your thirst for acceptance, love and life. Come to the bubbling spring of living water found only through faith in Jesus Christ and discover that you are fully known, fully loved and fully forgiven.

Then go and tell others what you have discovered about yourself and let your newfound joy lead them to the source of living water for which they, too, so desperately thirst.   

AMEN