Living Water

February 22 Living Water John 4:1-26

“And so the Lord invites to eat and drink not those who have drunk enough but the thirsty, not those who are full but the hungry. And why should Christ be sent to us with the fullness of the Spirit unless we are empty?” John Calvin “Commentary on John” Vol. 4:91

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well is an example of how we should share the Good News. He did not have a fixed formula; neither did He employ a rigid technique. He did not answer questions that she had not asked. Jesus met her at her point of greatest need, and He helped her.

Jews were not supposed to travel through Samaria, if they could avoid doing so. Some did, for convenience’s sake, since it was the shortest route from Jerusalem to Galilee. Others crossed the Jordan in order to avoid contamination. That’s not too harsh a word. For centuries the Jews and their cousins the Samaritans had been at each other’s throats. It all began when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. They deported many of the most influential local people and imported settlers from other parts of the empire. It was an effective method, employed by dictatorial regimes throughout history, to subjugate people by separating them from their homeland. Both Hitler and Stalin did exactly the same thing. Eventually, the Israelites intermarried with the settlers. As they did so, they assimilated non-Jewish beliefs and practices. The Jews from the Southern Kingdom, Judea, who were not conquered until much later, regarded the northerners, now called Samaritans, as apostates. In response, the Samaritans established their own temple on Mount Gerizim.

So, it came as a surprise to a Samaritan woman, drawing water from Jacob’s Well, at an unusual hour, when a tired Jewish rabbi stopped her and asked for a drink. It surprised her even more when He seemed to know all about her. Despite her evasiveness, she seems to have been fascinated by this man. He appeared to be unafraid to break with tradition. He had a frankness and a freshness that unsettled her. And, He cut through her defensiveness to get to the heart of the matter: she was thirsty.

They were both thirsty, but whereas Jesus was merely parched after walking in the mid-day sun, the Samaritan woman was thirsty in her soul. Her life was not what it ought to have been. She had been through multiple relationships and was now living with a man who was not her husband. She was shunned by the other women in the village; her reputation was in shreds. She was deeply dissatisfied with her religious experience; she knew a great deal about the conflict between Samaria and Jerusalem, but she knew very little about how to develop a relationship with God. For her, there were too many barriers. She wanted to know God, but she didn’t know how.

Then, Jesus came, and He offered her a gift beyond price, a gift of far greater value than the water that she had drawn from the well. He offered her “living water,” the presence of the Holy Spirit in her life, giving the assurance of salvation and the promise of life eternal. That offer is still good today. We must not think to package it in ways that will only appeal to people just like us. Like Jesus, we must make every effort to meet them at the point of their greatest need, then point them, unerringly, to Him.

For further reading: Psalm 23