Lent III – Drenching and Quenching with the Water of Life

John 4.5-42 The Woman at the Well

Water is one of the gifts for which we remain culpably ungrateful. We neither recognise what a source of untold wealth it is to have even one cold tap bringing clean water to our homes, nor do we value it for a moment until, as the saying goes, the well runs dry.

The scriptures emerged at a time and in a place of greater awareness of the importance and worth of water. Jeremiah speaks of God as the fountain of life; Isaiah describes the word of God as a shower of rain that brings forth the fruits of the earth; and Ezekiel 47 speaks famously of the river of life flowing from the Temple, irrigating nourishing crops, and filling the trees with leaves that are for the healing of the nations. The woman of Samaria, whom Jesus meets at Jacob’s well in Sychar one day at high noon, is unaware of this rich biblical heritage: Samaritans confined themselves to the first five books of the Jewish Bible, no doubt a cause, as well as a symptom, of their hostile relationship with the Judeans. Indeed, it is this regional rivalry which the woman latches on to at once when Jesus utters that most basic request: ‘Give me a drink of water!’ She is a feisty character and doesn’t accede to his request (if she does: we aren’t told) without first giving him, a Judean, a hard time about asking her, a Samaritan, even for a cup of cold water. And as he tries to raise her eyes to the bigger picture of who he is and what he is doing, she gets more and more bogged down in practicalities: how can he hope to give her ‘living water’ (whatever that means) when he hasn’t even brought a bucket?

It’s time to move the conversation on. ‘Go and get your husband!’ he tells her, knowing well enough that she has none. Then her tale of unsatisfactory love tumbles out. Like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, she’s had five husbands; and although we are not told whether these marriages ended in death or divorce, we can infer that she has not had an easy or fulfilling time. Neither do we know whether her current relationship is with a man she isn’t married to, or whether she is alone in the world, lodging with a male relative. Either way, she is more than ready for the attention this perceptive stranger at the well lavishes upon her, refreshing her with such levels of insight, and indicating her value to him, that she identifies him as a prophet.

Conversation turns to religion and the old divisions between Judean and Samaritan. This is, in Jesus’ account, not simply a historic litany of difference and disagreement all brought about by military manoeuvres 700 years before. It is rather an opportunity to offer resolution of the antagonism, through his own identity as Saviour and Messiah, which she also deduces from all that he has said. ‘I am he!’ he assures her, uttering the revolutionary formula that names him as the divine Son of God, the walking, talking expression of the one God of all humanity, in whose own flesh the salvation of the world will be effected.

She leaves her water-jug, just as in the other gospels the fishermen-followers called by Jesus cast aside their nets; and makes her way into the city, to tell all her friends about this man (Judean, Prophet, Messiah, Lord) who is able to tell her everything she has ever done. And while his existing disciples are miffed because he doesn’t seem interested in the food they’ve brought him, having found (figuratively at least) other fish to fry, new disciples now flock to his side; initially drawn by the report of the woman, they now come to see and hear him for themselves. And so the first Samaritan Christians (by St John’s time of writing, a distinctive community) come into existence, first attracted by the promise that Jesus would be a fountain of living water, welling up within them, and raising them to new and eternal life with the Father.

It is a wonderful transformation: the well where Jacob first watered his family and his flock, thus helping to establish the Twelve Tribes of Israel, is now the place of encounter between each of us in our need (with our disappointments and frustrations) and Jesus the Living Water, who offers to fill us with new life, and brings to birth a new Israel, built on the Twelve Apostles.

As the woman left her water-jug, we are encouraged to lay down our own burdens, and to trust that the One we have found by the well will be our own source of strength and lifelong love, whose living water we shall drink and never thirst again.

Come, Lord Jesus, Living Water: refresh us, renew us, and bring us to new birth, today and every day. Amen.