Drink Living Water.
Lent 3
March 12, 2023
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Jesus answered 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.’ (John 4:10)
Living water. What does Jesus mean by “living water?” The phrase was commonly used to refer to running water, like a stream or river, as opposed to a pond or lake. That is what this woman thinks he is talking about at first. That would be in line with our Old Testament passage this morning from Exodus. The water God loosed from the rock in the wilderness was running/living water, clear and good to drink.
Jesus means more. To understand the fullness of what he means, we need to look at a passage from Ezekiel, chapter 47:
Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple; there, water was flowing from below the threshold of the temple towards the east (for the temple faced east); and the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate, and led me round on the outside to the outer gate that faces towards the east; and the water was coming out on the south side. (Ezekiel 47:1-2)
This water flowing out of the temple will go down to the Kidron Valley, which runs on the east side of the Temple Mount. (You may recall that to go from the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane to the Temple, Jesus had to cross the Kidron Valley.) The Kidron Valley runs all the way down to the Dead Sea. It is bone dry.
In this vision, the water flowing from the Temple gets deeper and deeper until it reaches the Dead Sea, which was also known as the Sea or Arabah or the Salt Sea. They call it the Dead Sea because nothing except a few microbes can live in it. It’s almost 10 times saltier than the ocean. It has been that way for all of human history. But hear what happens when this living water gets to it:
He said to me, ‘This water flows towards the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes. (Ezekiel 47:8-9)
Do you see the vision? This living, flowing water will come out of God’s house and bring new life to a sea that has been dead longer than anyone who ever lived remember. This is a huge vision, enormous, massive, beyond even the wildest imagination, “…and everything will live where the river goes.”
It doesn’t dilute the salt water, the dead water. It transforms it. This is the metaphor Jesus shares by Jacob’s well. It isn’t about physical running water. In chapter 7 of John’s gospel, Jesus again refers to living waters and John explains that is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus is talking to this woman about receiving the Holy Spirit and that Holy Spirit bringing new life to everything that is dead in her.
Let’s talk about her. She’s a Samaritan. As you may have heard in a sermon about the Good Samaritan, she’s of a people who have been at odds with the Jews for centuries. For time’s sake, I’ll save that for my next Good Samaritan sermon. Or you can Google it later. Not now! Later. She’s a Samaritan; strike one.
She has come alone to the well about noon. That’s unusual. Getting water from a manual well is hard work. People, especially women, tend to do it early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when it’s cooler. It’s also a community gathering time. We are left to wonder why she came at noon. Was it to avoid other people? Something isn’t right. Strike two.
When Jesus tells her to call her husband, she confesses she has no husband and Jesus tells her she has had five husbands and is working on number six. We don’t know what happened with or to the other five, but it sounds sketchy. Strike three – but she’s not out. We don’t know her story so we mustn’t assume too much, but that doesn’t matter anyway because she is about to be saved by Jesus.
She is about to receive those living waters, pouring not out of the Temple but out of the grace of Jesus Christ himself. Where she is from, her tribe, doesn’t matter. Her reputation, her status within her community doesn’t matter. Her past sins and the sins committed against her don’t matter. All that matters is that she receives the gift that Jesus is offering her.
She does. And what happens? At just her first sip of accepting Jesus for who he is, that spring of living water bubbles up in her, such that she starts gushing about Jesus to everyone. “Come and see!” she says, “This guy told me everything I have ever done. Did he just save me?” There are still Samaritan Christians in that region to this day.
This brings us back to you and to me. All of us have dry patches inside, places within us, parts of our being that are dry, parts that have been salted by our experiences, the sins we’ve committed and the sins that have been committed against us, some parts of us may be incomplete or faulty in the ways we are wired or conditioned to live. Some parts of us may feel dead. Identifying those parts within us is part of the discipline of Lent.
But don’t think that’s all there is. When we receive Jesus as our savior, we get him, we get the Father and we get the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t tell her to go work on herself. He offered her living water.
Jesus wants us to come and drink from those living waters. He doesn’t want you to achieve a certain level of holiness before you receive him. You don’t have to earn any merit badges. You just have to drink. I am leading you to water but I cannot make you drink. Receive the Holy Spirit afresh and anew. Let us pray.
May it bubble up in you as a gushing spring.
AMEN