Text:
John 4:5-26 “My
Soul Thirsts … for the Living God” In the name of him
who loved us and gave himself for us, dear friends in Christ: During his earthly ministry the Lord Jesus
didn’t show any favoritism. He never
seemed particularly interested in a person’s social standing or station in
life, or their history, sex, race, age, marital status, or what have you. When he dealt with people, none of these
things seemed to make much difference to him.
And perhaps nowhere is that truth presented to us more clearly that in
this morning’s Gospel lesson, and especially when taken in contrast to the
story that immediately precedes it John’s Gospel. Right before the account we just
heard, with Jesus talking to the woman at the well, John tells us about his
conversation with Nicodemus. He was a
wealthy and influential Jew, a very godly man, and a prominent member of the
Sanhedrin, which was the ruling council of the Jews (to us he’d be like a
Senator or a Congressman). So in one
scene we’ve got Jesus talking patiently to one of the most respected,
honorable, and powerful men in Judah, and then in the next scene we’ve got him
expending the same amount of compassion and patience when dealing with a
Samaritan woman of doubtful virtue—a woman who from a Jewish perspective would
have been viewed as hanging precariously from the absolute bottom rung of the
social ladder. But they are both the
same to Jesus: lost souls to whom he
reaches out in love. It’s actually quite remarkable that
Jesus even had this meeting with the Samaritan woman. That’s because Jews considered the Samaritans
the very scum of the earth, much worse than just your standard godless pagans
who occupied the rest of the world. The
Jews didn’t want to defile themselves by contact with
Samaritans. They saw them as a cursed
people. Why? Well, it’s because the Samaritans were a
mixed race descended (in part) from some of the tribes of Well, over the centuries, these
imported foreigners intermarried with the left-behind, unfaithful Israelites,
which itself was bad enough from a Jewish perspective—because if you are of the
chosen race you just don’t marry Gentiles.
But even worse was that these imports brought with them their own pagan
gods and religions which then got all mixed up with the already corrupt form of
true faith practiced by the original inhabitants. The final result was that the Samaritans
practiced a really messed up religion:
a little of this and a little of that (not unlike some of the cafeteria
style Christianity some people practice today).
But what really bugged the Jews was that the Samaritans still thought of
themselves as faithful to the covenant, and they were quite proud of their
being descended from the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So it made the Jews furious that they had the
nerve to speak of the true God and the Promised Land as their own. The Jews called them “dogs”, but they
actually thought a whole lot less of them.
And in return, the Samaritans despised the Jews and their uppity “we’re
better than you” attitudes. So, like I said, it’s rather strange
that we find Jesus here in Her checkered past includes five broken
marriages – five broken homes, with who knows how many children, and by
whom, and who in the world is taking care of them now. And who knows how many relationships short of
marriage she’s been involved in? She
presently has a live-in relationship with a fellow who is not her husband – and
the account strongly suggests that he’s not single. And that’s the problem: not only has she left a trail of her own
broken marriages, in her quest to find the right man to make herself happy
she’s played a part in breaking up a number of other marriages. That’s why we find her at Jacob’s well at She is here seeking water, one of the most
basic necessities of life, way outside of the town. She can’t get what she needs to live back
there. But today she’s going to find a whole
lot more than she hoped for. She comes
to the well looking for water to quench her thirst, but she will find something
to satisfy her deepest and most basic needs. She must be more than just a little
discouraged as she approaches the well.
She knows that she has only herself to blame for the way things have
turned out in her life – and that only makes the misery of it worse. She’s really not happy with her current
arrangement—she knows what she’s doing is wrong, and you can be sure that
boyfriend number six is not the pick of the litter; but it’s better than being
alone. It’s strange: all she ever wanted was to be happy. Somehow that goal always eludes her. Now she’s a virtual outcast: hated by the women and the subject of many
jokes among the men. And right now she’s
hot, she’s tired and sweaty, and she knows it will be a long walk back to town
with her heavy jar where she has nothing to look forward to but the joyless
existence she’s endured for so long. And
now to make matters even worse, there’s someone sitting on the side of the
well. Even from a distance she can tell
by his clothes that he’s a Jew. “Great”,
she thinks to herself, “here’s someone else who thinks it’s his duty to make me
feel bad about myself.” “Oh well, I must have water to live. I’ll just go about my business. I won’t say anything. Worst he can do is insult
me for being what I was born – though he’ll probably guess why I’m fetching
water at this time of day.” At length
she arrives at the well. Ignoring Jesus
completely, she takes the ceramic jar from her shoulder. With a sturdy cord tied to the jar, she
lowers it some sixty feet down the narrow shaft to the water. The jar is ingeniously designed to fill
floating on its side, and as it’s just about full, the bottom swings down
giving the cord a noticeable tug. Now
she begins the long hand over hand pull upward.
It’s heavy. There’s about five
gallons of water in it. And the whole
time, she is mentally bracing herself for the demeaning comment she is sure
will soon come from this Jew. She’s even
got a snappy reply ready. But now, as
she gets the jar to the top and sets it on the edge of the well, she’s a little
disappointed that she may not get to use it.
She thinks about saying it anyway.
She decides to take his measure. For the first time she looks up and steals a glance at him. She is surprised to see that he’s looking
right at her—probably been watching her the whole time – and he’s smiling. And it’s not that smug, Jewish,
I’m-laughing-at-you smile; he appears genuinely warm and friendly. She looks away quickly; her internal defenses
are in total disarray. She wasn’t
prepared for kindness. She hastily coils
the cord so she can leave. But then she
is taken completely off guard when she hears him speak. “May I have a drink, please?” What’s this, some kind of joke? She knows very well that a Jew would never be
caught dead drinking from a container used by a Samaritan – they’re so holy that
they think it defiles them. But he seems
serious. She’s stymied, so she asks
incredulously, “What kind of Jew are you, anyway, asking a Samaritan woman for
a drink?” “You have water there, and I’m
thirsty. But if you knew the gift of God
here available to you, and who it is that’s asking, you’d be asking me for the
water of life, and I would give it to you.”
It’s a wonderful offer, but just like Nicodemus in the preceding
chapter, the spiritual impact of his words misses her. She’s caught up in the physical and worldly –
that’s all she can see. “C’mon. You’ve got nothing to draw water with, and
the shaft is very deep. Where are you
going to get this water you’re talking about?
Besides, our great ancestor Jacob gave us this well to drink from. It’s good water. You think you can out do him?” Do you see how she takes her stand on a
matter of Samaritan pride – one she knows will rub a Jew the wrong way? And do you see how ironic her really question
is? Jesus, are you greater than Jacob? But Jesus is very gentle with her: “I’m not talking about this water. This water will satisfy your thirst for a
little while, but you’ll need to keep coming back for more. My water is different. If you drink my water you’ll never thirst
again. In fact, you’ll have water
welling up inside you for all eternity.”
Again, it’s a wonderful offer. But
she still isn’t catching on to the spiritual meaning of his words. On the surface it sounds pretty good. If she never got thirsty, if she had water to
spare, she wouldn’t have to come out here in the hot sun every day and lug it
back into town. Why, she could sit at
home and laugh at all those other women who still had to do this thankless
chore day after day – those women who had said such cruel things to her. Oh, that would be sweet. “Sure, give me some of this water you’re
talking about.” “Alright, first go get your husband
and come back.” And you see what Jesus
has done is put his finger right on her sorest spot. This is her real thirst, her deepest and most
basic need: to be loved, to belong to
someone, to be valued … it’s the need to have security and companionship that
is not tied to what someone thinks they can get out of her. It’s the need to be loved and accepted and
forgiven and trusted by another in spite of all past failures and current
shortcomings. This is what she has been
seeking in her relationships with men.
She knows that her approach to the problem has been all wrong, but she’s
justified herself all along by thinking, “if I only had the right guy, all my
problems would be over”. But though
she’s drunk from many such wells, they have all failed to satisfy her. Each one in turn looked good for a while (or
so she told herself at the time); but she always found out the truth the hard
way. They all turned out to be selfish,
unkind, manipulative, unfaithful … some of them were
even abusive. Not one has ever trusted
her; and it’s funny how that problem seems to get worse each time she
changes partners. At this point she
knows full well that she is trying to draw clean water from the murky bottom of
a polluted well – but still she keeps trying.
With each failed effort she just gets thirstier for what she really
wants. A while back one of the fast food
chains was running a television ad for a spicy sandwich they were selling. A guy is shown eating one and sweat is
breaking out on his forehead. He reaches
for his drink and takes a slurp on the straw, but all he gets is that sucking
sound that says the cup is empty. No
relief there; his mouth is still burning.
Then his eye falls on a bottle of red pepper sauce sitting on the table
in front of him. He thinks about it for
a few seconds, and then takes the bottle, tilts it back and drains it,
apparently quenching his thirst. The
indication is that the sandwich is so spicy, that even the hot pepper sauce
gives him some relief. Now, everybody
gets this joke – it’s obvious that no one is going to find relief drinking hot
pepper sauce; and yet, that’s exactly what this woman has been doing. She’s been turning to various behaviors that
destroy relationships in order to build what she hopes will be a stable
one. It can’t work. But she can’t help it—her thirst is killing
her. And every time she drinks something
that looks like it might give her relief, her burning thirst increases all the
more. She’s involved in a self-destructive
spiral that can only end in sorrow, misery, and lonely isolation for her – and
at this point, she’s just about at the bottom of the well. And
it’s funny: we can see it so clearly in
her. I wonder if we realize that at
times we all do exactly the same thing.
Just think how often you find your own human relationships dry and
unfulfilling, and you find yourself convinced that if whomever it is you’re
having trouble with were different, then you would be satisfied. Or maybe you’re trying to satisfy your thirst
for belonging, purpose, and security through your career, or in material
wealth, or in some other form of personal achievement or entertainment. These and many other things are wells that
seem to give temporary relief but ultimately leave you even more parched and
dry. And so in the end, in desperation,
we end up turning on each other, like so many competing vampires trying to draw
from one another the moisture we all want for ourselves. And when each attempt fails, when we run out
of options, we are forced to go looking elsewhere for what we need. That’s what drove this Samaritan woman to
Jacob’s well: her thirst that could not
be quenched with natural water. But what
she found there was a supernatural Spring:
the water of life, which is Jesus Christ and his Word. Recognizing her great need, and even her
inability to understand it, Jesus revealed himself to her as her Savior and
Lord. He intervened to break the
self-destructive cycle of failed relationships by giving her himself: his love, his forgiveness, his friendship,
and a restored relationship with his Father – which is fallen mankind’s most
desperate thirst. And in the process he
changed her from a consumer of water to a source of it. As the stories continues, she leaves behind
her water jar and hurries to go share what she has found with her neighbors in
town – the very people who had driven her out and made her feel so bad. In the end they too are filled to overflowing
with the water of life to which she leads them. And the same is true
for each of us. For all your deepest and
most heartfelt thirsts, only Jesus Christ has the water that can truly quench
them. Nowhere else will you ever find
lasting contentment. But I’ll warn you
that to do it, he has to put his finger right where it hurts the most: right on top of your sin. He doesn’t do it to hurt you; he does it to
heal you. He must show you where your
deepest thirst is so that he can relieve it with his forgiveness and love. That’s what he wants to do for you every day
through his Word. And in so doing, he
will enable you to forgive and love others the same way – because then he
will be the water of life springing up within you. May God grant it to each of us for Jesus’
sake. Amen. Soli Deo
Gloria! |