Sermons for the Month
Our Thirst-Quenching Lord
DATE: February 27th, 2005
SERVICE: Third Sunday In Lent
TEXT: John 4:5-30; 39-42“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Have you ever been thirsty and not really realized that was the case? I was once close to heat stroke while hiking in the Arizona desert and I did not feel thirsty, but I was dizzy, weak, shaky and my skin was oddly clammy. My system was out of balance, and I desperately needed hydration. It's strange, isn't it, that I do not recall feeling thirsty, but I was.
Perhaps that was the problem for the woman at the well. She was thirsty, but she did not realize it. Or, perhaps she was like the people of Israel who the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah chastised with these words, "…for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water." (Jeremiah 2:13)
Perhaps she knows she needs something - her system is out of balance - but she keeps trying to fill that need herself and it's hopeless, like trying to hold water in a cracked cistern. One thing is clear, Jesus knows she's thirsty, and he violates every rule of proper conduct to quench her thirst. What do I mean by that?
Well, this woman has three strikes against her, at least from the perspective of a Jewish man. First, she was a Samaritan, and there had been a long-term rift between the Jews and Samaritans. They both are Hebrews, related peoples, but to really simplify the matter, the Samaritans had intermarried with non-Jewish peoples, and lost much of their ethnic identity, while the Jews maintained theirs. They viewed the Samaritans as pagans, unclean. Each group had their own temple in different locations. Jews normally avoided Samaritans, and their territory, like the plague.
Second, (to state the obvious) this woman was a woman. Remember, women in Jesus' time were second-class citizens at best. They were not allowed to worship with men, whose morning devotions included the prayer, "Thank God I am not a woman." Husbands did not even speak to their wives in public, so it certainly was not considered proper for a rabbi to initiate public conversation with any woman. So, for Jesus, a Jewish teacher, to speak to a Samaritan who is a woman is beyond what could even be imagined.
Then, there's the third strike. There is something about this woman that is unacceptable, even to other women. She comes to the well in the heat of the day rather than in the morning when the respectable women came for water and for friendship. No doubt she was not welcome then. As one writer put it, she has a disorderly life.
Yet, Jesus had the longest recorded conversation in the Gospels with this woman. Why? I think there are a couple reasons. One is that she needs him, even if she does not realize it. And the second is that Jesus has some points to make about his ministry and he uses this setting to make them.
I know this because of one of the many, many fascinating details in this account (you know how much I love the "little" details). Verse 4 says that Jesus HAD TO go through Samaria. It's interesting phrasing because although the direct route from Judea to Galilee passes through Samaria, it was routine for Jews to bypass Samaria by taking another established route.
Since there is no reference to a geographical reason that Jesus "had to" go through Samaria, it must have been something else that led him to do so. Professor Fred Craddock writes that the reason is of divine origin, that in what follows next God will be revealed. (1)
I see three specific ways that God - or the will of God - is revealed in this interaction; there may be more. First, the fact that she is SO unacceptable - as a Samaritan, as a woman, as a person with a disorderly life - is significant. The message is that she, and people like her, are the very ones to whom Jesus came to give living water.
By the way, it's helpful to know that the Bible often uses water as a metaphor for the satisfaction of spiritual needs. She has needs - for acceptance, for forgiveness, for strength to change her life. (I imagine the list could go on and on.) Jesus meets those needs, or to put it another way, Jesus quenches her thirst.
The second way that God's will is made known in this interaction is seen in Jesus' response to her question about the proper location of worship. It's a radical answer. Worship of God is not confined by geography; in other words God transcends place and tradition; God even transcends race and sex. (2)
It's all about Spirit and truth, and the truth is - as Nicodemus of last week's Gospel learned in his conversation with Jesus - that one must be born of the Spirit. How does that happen? How is one reborn? Remember … it's in God's hands … God loves us; God sent Jesus to die for us; God gives us faith to believe and through Jesus we are reborn into the Kingdom of God. True worship is not defined by where or how it happens, or who participates, but by whether or not the worshipper is born of the Spirit.
And, finally, God's will is done on that day in Samaria when the woman becomes a witness for Jesus. Now, don't put her too far up on a pedestal. She's not a best witness in the world. After all, what she says about Jesus is, in essence, "This cannot be the Christ, can it?"
But, Fred Craddock gives her credit for three things. Her witness is an invitation; she tells others to come and see. Her witness is based on her experience; she sticks to what she knows. And, her witness is honest in its uncertainty. (3) She does not preach, make threats, and claim that she knows this or that is absolutely true. She just says what happened to her and invites others to check it out for themselves. When they do, they too become followers of Jesus.
WOW … that's a lot of information offered in short amount of time; this account contains the very bedrock - the very foundation - of what we believe as followers of Jesus. All this information is vital, but in the midst of it sits the woman who may not realize just how thirsty she is, or at least does not know how to quench the thirst she does feel. I want to get back to her for a moment.
Jesus had to go to Samaria for all the reasons I just stated, but he also had to go specifically for her. To him she was more than a way to make some important points. She was a hurting person, someone who had been digging her own cisterns, looking for water (for something) to fill her up, but her efforts were cracked, broken and she always found herself standing in a dried up well. She could not quench her own spiritual thirst no matter how many men she acquired in an attempt to do so. Only Jesus could give her what she needed.
For her, and for us, Jesus is living water. He is the one who mends the cracks and fills us up. He alone quenches our thirst, renewing us from within. I imagine that most of the time we do not realize how much we need him, just like I did not realize I was putting myself in danger the time I flirted with heat stroke in the desert. But Jesus knows and he comes to us just as he came to her.
Jesus told 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." Well, we do know who Jesus, God's gift, is. Why wait until we are so spiritually "dried up" that we are laid low by the thirst that the imbalance can no longer be ignored? He is here for us, offering to meet our spiritual needs? So, every day let us ask him, "Give me living water, Lord." He will fill us up, and only then will our thirst be truly quenched. (1) "The Witness at the Well" by Fred B. Craddock, Christian Century, March 7, 1990, p. 243.
(2) Same as above
(3) same as aboveAMEN