Romans 5.1-11; John 4.5-42
Today’s long and meandering gospel is filled with misunderstanding, double-meaning, and surprise. There are questions about worship and where the proper place to worship might be. There are misunderstandings about food. Jesus is not interested in the disciples’ DoorDash; his hunger is satisfied by doing God’s will. There is confusion and double meaning around water, living water, and who will give water to whom. And each time this story takes a turn, there is a surprise for the woman at the well, for the disciples, and for the crowd that hears about Jesus. We are meant to be drawn into the story, too.
You perhaps noticed that nowhere in today’s reading is the woman named. Don’t take that as a sign that she is somehow unimportant; this isn’t a social slight against her. In the Gospel of John, nameless people are regularly encountered by Jesus and cared for by him. We don’t, for example, know the name of the bride and groom at the Wedding at Cana, or the official’s son healed, the man born blind, not even one of the most significant characters in all of John’s gospel: the Beloved Disciple.
Biblical scholar Sandra Schneiders suggests that these characters are nameless by design, not out of neglect. By being nameless they serve as symbolic characters, doorways and openings for us to enter the story with our lives. They represent us so that we can add our name and experience to the events in the gospel and come to believe that Jesus is for us, too; so that we can add our voice to the crowd at the end of the reading and say, “We have heard for ourselves and know that Jesus is truly the Savior of the world.” Today’s gospel, then, is not only about Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, but also about Jesus’ encounter with each of us.
Underneath the current of today’s winding, meandering gospel is the question of water, thirst, and a thirst that will be satisfied in a way that a cold drink on a hot day could never manage. Jesus, pointing to the well for water where he has met the woman, says, “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.” Now the woman, as you heard, initially misunderstands Jesus, thinks only of a convenience that might save her a daily trip to the well. “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” But as Jesus stirs up the woman’s curiosity, we discover that he is speaking about spiritual transformation. This is not H2O but the inward, life-giving work of God that satisfies our deepest human needs. Ordinary water quenches thirst temporarily. The water that Jesus offers is an everlasting spring within the soul. “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.”
But is this spiritual transformation with headwaters in the life of God enough to satisfy us? There are so many ways that ‘thirst’ can describe desire beyond a glass of water. We talk about the ‘thirst for knowledge,’ a ‘thirst for adventure,’ even a ‘thirst for revenge.’ Are any of those thirsts ever truly satisfied?
Regarding knowledge, there is always more to learn, even about the subjects you know best; in fact, the more you know about something, the more you realize how much you don’t.
As for the thirst for success, you may find yourself constantly comparing your life to others. You might say, ‘If I make $100k, I will be successful;’ but the moment you do, you shift your focus to those making $200k. The phrase ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ is a cliché because it is true as it describes ongoing, unsatisfied desire. That is the very thing that once led the prophet Isaiah to ask people to reconsider their lives and their thirsts in the abundance of God’s life and grace. “All you who are thirsty, come to the waters…come without money and without cost.”
As for the thirst for revenge, is that ever satisfied? In Herman Melville’s, Moby Dick, Captain Ahab is obsessed with hunting down the whale that hurt him, both physically wounded his pride; perhaps that’s the most distressing pain of all—wounded pride. Ahab’s thirst for revenge pushes him to reckless extremes. And in the end, when he finally confronts Moby Dick, the whale destroys the ship, nearly everyone aboard (revenge always seems to include collateral damage and the suffering of the innocent) and Ahab himself is killed. It is all so unnecessary, though not unexpected; it’s the natural outcome of the unending thirst for revenge. No wonder Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, rejects revenge and the thirst for it. Instead, he calls his followers to actively pursue the well-being of others. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’…But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus says of both H2O and all our other thirsts. But speaking of his own life for us he says, “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” Yet is this spiritual transformation with its headwaters in the life of God enough to satisfy? The answer, according to St Augustine, is yes.
Augustine lived in the mid-300s to the early 400s. His father was a pagan; his mother, a devout Christian. As for Augustine? His early life was marked by restless desires, ’thirsts’ you could call them, though ones never satisfied. In his biography, Augustine says that, as a teen, he once stole pears from a neighbor’s tree not because he was hungry but for the thrill of wrongdoing. Later, his thirsts became what you might call more ‘complicated.’ He was torn between spiritual ideals and bodily passions. He once prayed, “Lord, make me chaste. But not yet.” His heart was restless, seeking fulfillment. He was, as the old country song puts it, “Looking for love in all the wrong places.”
Pleasure, status, knowledge, and possessions all do provide enjoyment, but they ultimately cannot fulfill the deepest longings of the human heart. After his conversion to Christianity, Augustine came to see that only God could satisfy that desire. He wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Like the living water that Jesus offers, God quenched Augustine’s thirst and brought peace to the depths of his life.
Beyond H2O to the deepest longing in life, we come to meet the Samaritan woman in today’s gospel. When she says to Jesus, “I don’t have a husband,” his response, loosely translated, is, ‘I’m aware.’ But he says nothing else about what she has lived through with her five husbands plus one—no blame, no shame, no exposure.
We don’t know the exact details of her life. In the history of biblical interpretation, this woman’s life story has, unfortunately, been the subject of trivialization, marginalization, and even demonization. But the Gospel of John never tells us if she was responsible for the break-up of those five marriages or if she simply outlived all her husbands and now carries the profound grief of being widowed five times. Maybe this woman suffered at the hands of those husbands and left each marriage for safety’s sake yet still wants companionship again only can’t risk another marriage.
We don’t know. We don’t know if she was an extraordinary sinner or had been sinned against in extraordinary ways. All we know is that there is a story. She knows it, Jesus knows it, and she is thirsty for something else.
Yet because we don’t know the precise details of her life, she becomes doorway for us to enter the gospel with our lives and thirsts, our unquenchable desires and unsatisfied longings. Maybe the thirst she longs to have quenched at the depth of her being is simply a thirst for acceptance, not to be defined by her past mistakes or present challenges, but to be receive a new beginning and fresh start, life from God that satisfies the most basic need.
When Jesus offers water that will quench the unnamed Samaritan woman’s thirst forever, she wants it even if she is not quite what ‘living water’ might mean. Living water, in a basic sense, is the ancient way to describe running water rather than still, water in a stream not a well, water that is clean and fresh rather than stagnant.
But Jesus gives the image new depth and meaning. “The water I give will be a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Here, he isn’t referring to natural water, still or moving. He is the living water, the life-giving gift of God that satisfies our deepest needs. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” When the woman says in astonishment, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” you don’t get the sense that she is embarrassed or ashamed. Instead, a thirst at the very depths of her life has been satisfied. “Could this be the Messiah?” Yes. In Jesus, she is a new person with God’s life welling up inside her. This is Jesus’ gift for you, too. His overflowing grace and life are for you.
To everyone, no matter their nationality or geography, their race or their reputation, their status or their sins, Jesus offers himself as living water. To all of us with secret guilt and personal pain, of sinning and being sinned against, Jesus offers living water. This is what St Paul is saying in today’s second reading from Romans. “While all humanity was helpless, Christ died for the ungodly…God shows love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Jesus is overflowing grace and life for you. In his presence, we stand face to face with the Messiah of God. Everything we have ever done is open to him and we can see how stagnant our lives are without him. Yet when you drink his living water, he changes everything—not so that you can return to old ways and habits of sinning (that is like preferring nasty water when fresh is at hand) but to renew your life so that you can begin again today and each day. And maybe that, in today’s gospel, is the greatest surprise of all. When you are encountered by Jesus—the one person who can tell you everything you have ever done, the one who would say of you and your life, ‘I’m aware’—this same Son of God offers his life for you.
Jesus is the living water for the thirsts at the depth of your being so that you can say with the crowd in the gospel, ‘I have heard for myself and know that Jesus is truly the Savior of the world. I am deeply satisfied.’
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