As an ex-school teacher, let me paint you a picture; It is in
the heat of summer and you’ve just been teaching dancing in the hall – no
air-conditioning. You need to get the
class back to their teacher, but they all want to have a drink of water and
there is only one bubbler. I would try
to have them go in small groups to have a quick drink, but inevitably there
would be some students who would stay for ages having more than just a sip or
two.
It is a bit hard to imagine what it must have been like for
Moses with what is estimated to be 2 to 3 million thirsty Israelites, grumbling
that they wanted water. It is no wonder
that this great miracle is recorded.
Not only did water come from the rock, but it was no tiny trickle. It was enough to quench the thirst of all
those people. Fast forward over 1000
years to our New Testament reading and we are still talking about water and
being thirsty.
Who is she? She is
said to have baptised the daughter of Nero.
She is said to have spat in Nero’s face after he tortured her and her
sons and then told her to renounce her faith in Jesus. She is known in Russia as Saint Svetlana. In Greek she is Photinia…. Or something close
to that. She is said to be the first
apostle to the Gentiles…. There I was thinking that it was saint Paul, but this
lady was spreading the Good News about Jesus being the Messiah way before Paul
came along. For us, she is the unnamed
woman at the well.
Jesus had been with his
disciples who were baptising people, in the land of Judah, but he withdrew from
there as word had gotten out to the Pharisees that he was doing more baptising
than John. After travelling, Jesus is
thirsty and tired. He sits by a well and
asks this lady for a drink. Jesus breaks
protocols. Don’t you just love it? Jesus was a Jew and they don’t share things
with the Samaritans… usually… but this is not any concern for Jesus.
Now, just to clarify, the
Samaritans are actually related to the Jews.
Back when there was a untied nation of Israel, there was King David,
then Solomon…. Then the nation of Israel split and a couple of tribes stayed true
to the line of David and the kings of Judah, where as the other ten tribes were
known as the nation of Israel. Over
time, all were taken into exile and then semi-freed… It is a long and
complicated story, but long story short, the Samaritans were interbred
Israelites and non-Israelites. Those who
belonged to Israel worshiped God, loosely.
The Jews worshiped God in Jerusalem where the temple had been
built. The Jews looked down on the
Samaritans as they saw them as a people who compromised in their worship of
God.
Last week we read about the
call of Abraham. He was called to leave
his country and family. In this call to
up and leave, was the understanding that his country and family were living in
the place where worship to idols was “king”.
Abraham’s home-town was a place that worshiped many gods and was THE
central worship town of the Moon God. Abraham
made a choice to worship the LORD God almighty only. The call of God came with a promise to make
Abraham a great nation. He was to be
blessed by God and through him every nation on earth would be blessed. This is always important to remember, because
it means that God is always concerned with reaching everyone. Yes, Israel was the chosen nation, and the
Jews were the chosen people who stayed true to the law of God, but sometimes
they forgot the reason that God called them…. So that every family on earth
could be blessed. Ultimately, Jesus would be born from
that line of Judah. Jesus is the
ultimate reason that all families on earth are blessed.
Something that is important to understand for our story that
we read today, is that in traditional Biblical culture, water is synonymous
with blessing. Rain, is seen as a great
spiritual blessing. The phrase, “Living
Water” is used to describe rivers, springs and rain. It is water that is connected to a natural,
flowing source. The sacred baths, known
as Mikveh’s, in the Jewish faith require that they be filled with “Living
Water”.
When Jesus asks for the water from the well and then starts
speaking about living water, there is a difference in the two types of water. The water from a well is not “Living
water”. "Living Water" (Mayim Chayim) represents active, life-giving
blessings. What it was that had happened
in this woman’s life to have had her in a position that she had five husbands,
we can only guess, and much has been made about her being at the well at noon
when other women were not there. For
certain, she was a woman aware that she was in need of life-giving
blessings. I’m not sure what was in the
woman’s mind when she asked Jesus about this living water, but the discourse
drew out her own thirsty condition – her emotional and spiritual thirst.
In the desert when Moses
struck the rock and water gushed out, that water was living water. The incident in the desert is a prophetic
picture of Jesus. The rock was struck –
Jesus was struck (crucified). You might
recall that when Jesus died a spear was thrust into his side and water flowed
from the wound. The spiritual reality is
that from Jesus being struck, living waters gush out…. The blessings flow. We are saved from sin and blessed with
eternal life through the gift that Jesus gives.
The blessings that Jesus gives us are not a simple trickle. The blessings gush. The living water is also a way of describing
the Holy Spirit that Jesus sends.
Our letter to the Romans
tries to explain the gushing blessings that we receive when it says; ‘much more
surely, having been reconciled (to God), will we be saved by his life.” The blessings are so, so abundant. They are not something we earn or
deserve. We learnt this from our
readings last week when we learnt about the faith of Abraham and how, God
declared him righteous simply because he believed God and chose God.
From Jesus comes living,
life-giving, life-bringing water. The
blessing of that living water is saturating, permeating and permanently life-altering. Those who were saved by the water from the
rock in the desert didn’t deserve it – they were blessed anyway. The woman at the well had a past and she was
not from the chosen line – she was blessed anyway – and so were the people of
her town as they asked Jesus to stay with them and do you recall their
conclusion? “They said to the woman,
"It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have
heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the
world."”
This conclusion was made
long before Jesus was crucified and had risen from the dead. These people who were pretty much outsiders,
“got it”.
Do we “get it”? The outsiders, those considered undeserving, the
thirsty and the desperate – they “got it”.
They sensed the enormity of the gift that Jesus offered. Anyone who turns to Jesus, he offers them the
living water. Jesus says, “The water that I will give will
become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
Jesus
brings the living water blessing that gushes up to eternal life. When he gives us this, it then gushes up in
us. Eternal life is in us when we tap
into Jesus. His Holy Spirit bubbles up
in us and over-flows. Here is a thought;
if that living water is an abundant flowing blessing, it ought to be easy and
natural for us to answer God’s call to bring His blessing to all the earth.
Today
this talk of water reminds us of our baptism.
Baptism uses the image of water and traditionally baptism was to be
fully immersed in water…. To show that
we are completely immersed in Jesus… his blessings he soaks us in and fills us
with. Today, may we know that our lives
are soaked and filled, and with the knowledge of the abundance of His blessing,
may we be a blessing to our world.
