Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on 12 March 2023, by Hope Antone. The scripture readings that day were Exodus 17:1-7, John 4:5-42.

To Thirst

Have you ever found yourself in a situation of deep thirsting for water? Hiking is probably one activity that makes one thirst for water. I remember drinking my bottled water during hiking because I was sweating a lot. Drinking water was also a way to lighten the load off my backpack. 

 

I have also experienced being dehydrated while working in my air conditioned office. It happened when I buried myself in work that I forgot to replenish myself with water.  Headache was my biggest warning to stop and drink some precious water. And that physical water was like a healing and soothing drink.  

 

In our time and context, water is so accessible that we probably take its value for granted. But there are communities in certain parts of the world that have no access to clean water. I don’t think Jesus would dismiss their need for clean water in order to push for a more “important” option, i.e., the “living water.” 

 

Some scholars explained that the reference to living water could be a play on words in Greek. ‘Living water’ was often used to refer to fresh and flowing water, as opposed to stagnant water like the Dead Sea. ‘Living water’ is often shown to be synonymous to a spiritual well that never runs dry. It was a clear contrast to Jacob’s well which was known to run dry during the months with no rain.  

 

The Old Testament reading (Exodus 17:1-7) described how God provided water to the Israelites who complained against Moses for taking them out of Egypt where they had water all year round. Water is God’s important provision to sustain life. 

 

Our dualistic mindsets may make us want to choose between the physical water, represented by Jacob’s well, and the living water, symbolized by Jesus’ offer. But in fact, both are important for life to thrive. I therefore propose that Jesus’ encounter with the woman from Samaria is an affirmation of the importance of both the sustaining physical water and the living spiritual water. 

 

Human as he was, Jesus was thirsty for physical water when he sat by Jacob’s well and asked the woman from Samaria for a drink. And that was a big No No. No Jewish male would speak to a woman in public space. No Jew would ask for a drink from a Samaritan. But Jesus was thirsty, and there was a well, and a woman with a jar. Later at his crucifixion Jesus uttered, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28), for which he was given not water but sour wine.   

 

What did Jesus mean when he shifted the topic from physical drinking water to spiritual living water? 

“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)

 

“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. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)

 

I think the person and communal contexts of the Samaritan woman could help us find the answer. 

 

As a woman of her time, she was not only nameless, but her identity was reduced through markers of exclusion and marginality. Her gender was a painful reminder that her legal status in society depended on having a male person in her life. Her condition – i.e., having five husbands and being with someone who was not her husband – could mean her being trapped in a levirate marriage. The levirate practice provided the duty of a man to marry the sonless widow of his deceased brother. It was to ensure the widow’s access to legal status in society. But it’s possible that some men did not even wish to fulfill the marriage obligation. That Jesus did not say to her, “Go and sin no more,” may indicate that he did not find her marital status an issue. Perhaps he understood her being a victim of the social system that commodified woman by having to belong to a man.

 

As a woman from Samaria, she knew the boundaries that kept her community separate from the Jewish people. She knew the history that kept them at odds with each other. Every day she drew water from Jacob’s well, which may have been beloved by some in her community but was also a painful reminder of their outcast status as a mixed ethnicity. It is not clear why the name was changed from Shechem in the Old Testament to Sychar in the gospel, but according to some Bible scholars, Sychar may derive from the Hebrew word for ‘drunkard.’ 

 

Given the rich symbolisms in the fourth gospel, some Bible scholars have suggested that the Samaritan woman’s “five husbands” might be a reference to people from the five foreign nations who were brought as colonists by the Assyrians when they conquered the region in 721 B.C.E. (2 Kings 17:24). If that was so, then Jesus brought up the issue to highlight imperialism and colonization as the cause of the Samaritans’ mixed race and culture through no fault of their own. 

   

What all this means is that Jesus knew the woman had much deeper needs, greater thirsting or longing than just for the drinking water from the well. Could Jesus’ offer of the living water then be a way of disturbing the woman’s acceptance of or resignation to her situation? Could it be an offer of a way out of such a situation that rendered her a non-person?  

 

Realizing that he must be a prophet, she ventured into a theological discussion on worship in view of the claims by the two communities on their so-called places of worship. The Samaritans focused their worship on Mt. Gerizim while the Jews focused their worship in Jerusalem. Jesus then described true worship as transcending geographical locations and ethnic differences: “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Indeed, true worship transcends any exclusionary zones such as gender, ethnicity, geography, religion, and conventional morality often contained in traditions, beliefs and practices. 

 

Jesus’ offer of the living water restored the Samaritan woman’s sense of value as a human being. The living water which she received from Jesus began to quench her deepest thirst for affirmation, dignity and security as a child of God. As that living water became a spring gushing to eternal life, she left behind her water jar to go into the city, to testify to others about Jesus as the Messiah, and to invite them to come and encounter Jesus personally. The physical water sustained her life but the living water gave her a new purpose in living.

 

In his book, Thirsting for Living Water (published in 2021), Michael J. Mantel narrates his journey as a young executive who left a promising job/position to pursue the adventure in faith of providing both clean drinking water and the living water of Jesus in various parts of the world. I just came across a review of this book and it’s heartwarming to know that some people felt the need to provide both drinking water and the living water of Jesus in places of great need.   

 

During this Lenten journey of “reclaiming wilderness,” let us be grateful for both the physical drinking water and the spiritual living water which we need and have access to. To thirst for physical water is necessary in order to sustain human life. To thirst for the spiritual living water is needed to sustain a deeper meaning and a higher purpose in living. 

 

Like the Samaritan woman, may we be ready to testify to the source of sustaining and life-giving water.  

 

Living Water, fill our cup, quench our thirst, nourish our roots, and help us grow. Amen.