A Taste of the Living Water – February 9, 2025, Super Bowl Sunday!!!

Old Testament, John 4:1-26
February 9, 2025

So, do you remember last week when I was talking about the Gospel of John?  I reminded you how different it was in comparison to Matthew, Mark, and Luke – sometimes called the “synoptic” gospels.  Do you remember that?  Those are the ones that “look alike.”  I said that John told stories of Jesus that the others didn’t.  Well, this is one of them.  This is the story that has come to be known as “The Woman at the Well.

The first thing to consider about this story is that it takes place in Samaria.  And you probably know how the Jews felt about the Samaritans.  But maybe not why.  Let me give you a little history here.

Their feelings came from the time in 722BC when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel.  They were one of what seemed like an endless progression of countries who conquered Israel.  Well, the Assyrians took many of the people away into exile.  But they left some of the people there.  And then they also brought their own people in, who eventually intermarried with them.  So the people of Israel came to look down on the Samaritans, because they had “impurified” their race.

That was one thing.  There were also a number of religious differences between them.  The main one was that the Samaritans accepted the Torah as holy scripture, but none of the other books of what we now call the Old Testament.  So they just had the five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy.  And they also believed that the proper place to worship God was on their mountain, not in Jerusalem.  And we hear a little bit of that controversy in this conversation.

So Jesus was in Samaria.  And that was part of the dispute he had with the religious authorities.  You know what they felt about him.  He hung around with the wrong people!  He reached out to the outcast and the downtrodden, and he dined with sinners and tax collectors.  And again, you gotta love how tax collectors had their own category – their own level – of sinfulness!  (Keep that in mind around the middle of April!)

Well, another strike Jesus had against him, was that he often went outside of the “holy land” with his message.  That’s why this woman asked the first question here.  “Why do you ask me for a drink?” she said.  “Why are you even speaking to me?”  “You know that the Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans!”  And the same might have been said about the other regions Jesus visited.

So that’s one part of this.  That’s one part of how Jesus went “outside of the box” in his ministry.  And he made people uncomfortable!  The other part is the fact that Jesus was even talking to this woman.  Now, it’s hard for us to put ourselves into their social structure.  Because they had different views about the relationships between men and women.  One of them was that Jewish men, especially rabbis, did not have private conversations with women in public.  That’s the way it was.  It didn’t look right.  And that’s why we’re told in verse 27 that “His disciples marveled that he was talking with a woman.”  And I think the word translated “marveled” might be a bit tame.  I think it’d be more accurate to say they were “shocked.”  And notice the indefinite article here.  It was “a woman.”  They were shocked that he was talking with any woman!

But it was worse than that.  This was not just “any woman.”  She was at the well “at the sixth hour,” which was noon.  That was the hottest part of the day.  And it’s thought that she was there at that hour because she was an outcast.  We get that picture of her from Jesus saying, “go and call your husband.” When she said, “But I have no husband,” he then gives his “supernatural” knowledge of her, as we might call it.  He said that she has had five husbands, not including the one she was with now.”  And then we have what seems almost a humorous response, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet!”  This was an awkward moment!

But it may not have been humorous!  She may actually have seen Jesus as a prophet, or we might say a “soothsayer,”  To her, he was one who knew hidden things about people.  We might call them psychics.  And we have them around today.  They’re even advertised on the radio.  I heard a joke the other day about a man who went to see a psychic.  He said, “I knocked on the door, and the man said, ‘Who’s there?’”  “So I left.”

Well, whatever this woman thought about Jesus at that point seems to have made her uncomfortable.  Because that’s when she changes the subject.  And quite abruptly!  She brings back the old controversy between the Jews and the Samaritans.  Where was the proper place to worship God?  And Jesus gives this great answer.  He says it’s not the place that’s important, but how we worship.  “And ‘true worshippers’ worship the Father in Spirit and in truth.”  I’ve always loved that response.  It’s always been part of my understanding about worship!  It’s not a matter of where we are or what we do.  It’s not a matter of ritual.  It’s about Spirit!  And ritual is only important to the extent that it points us to the spirit!

As I said last week, the spirit was very important to Jesus.  That’s part of what he meant at the beginning of this conversation.  And here at the end, I want to go back to that.  He said, “If you knew who was asking you for a drink, you would have asked and he would have given you living water.”  Now again, we know who this Jesus was!  And we know what he meant by that!  But this woman was hearing it for the first time.  So she asked, “How will you get this living water?  This is a deep well!”  And that’s when he tells her that the water he gives is that which leads to eternal life.

We know what that means by that, too.  It is part of idea of worshipping the Father in Spirit and in truth.  It’s that spiritual orientation of life he was trying to get Nicodemus to understand in the story from last week.  In that story, he said that one needed to be “born of the Spirit.”  And if you remember, the way he said it was that a person needs to be “born of water and the Spirit.”  There’s that idea of water again.

I think that’s a great connection for today, as we’re thinking about that “living water.”  Water is the symbol of cleansing.  It is the symbol of our sins being “washed away.”  (As we sing in the song “Grace like rain.”)  We use water as a symbol in our sacrament of Baptism, which we talked about the first of the year.  And here, he speaks of living water that this woman could drink.  I think that symbolizes the drinking in of the Spirit, as the living water cleanses a person.  And maybe it’s just a little bit reminiscent of the cup we drink in communion.  Perhaps when we partake of that in just a few minutes, we can think of it as “a taste of the living water.”

I believe Jesus was telling this woman, and us, that to drink of the living water, is symbolic of the spirit that is part of us because we are spiritual beings.  And it reminds us that God himself has chosen to dwell within us, by his Holy Spirit.  That’s part of what it means to taste of the living water!

I want you to notice one more thing here.  As Jesus was telling this woman these things, something was happening.  Because she turns to the subject of the Messiah.  Now some have said that was just another question she had.  And here was one who could answer questions!  But I think it was more.  I think there was something spiritual happening here.  I think she sensed some of what Jesus was about to tell her.  She asked about the Messiah, and he said, “I who speak to you am he!”

That is such an important thing!  Because this is the first time Jesus revealed to anyone that he was the Messiah!  Yes, Andrew said it when he first told his brother Simon about Jesus.  He said, “We have found the Messiah.”  But this is the first time Jesus himself revealed it.  As I reminded you a couple of weeks ago, Jesus had a certain sense of timing in how he would reveal to the world who he was.  He often said, “My time has not yet come.”  Well here, the first time he gave anyone that news in public, it was given, not to a religious leader, or even to a disciple, but to this Samaritan woman, this outcast at the well!

Isn’t that just like God?  The greatest of truths are often given to the least of people.  That’s just the way he works.  And we are the least of people – all of us!  And the wonder of his kingdom is that all of us, are made to taste of the living water!

Prayer

Eternal God, we thank you that you have called even us into your kingdom.  We thank you that you have given us a taste of the living water.  Help us to know that we are spiritual beings, and help us to be “in tune” with your Spirit, so that we can see more clearly your kingdom in our midst.  For we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.