The Living Water that Refreshes
a sermon based on John 4:5-42
by Richard Gehring

            The surface of the Dead Sea is some 1300 feet below sea level, making its shoreline the lowest dry land on the face of the earth.  And it is indeed very dry land.  The average rainfall in the area immediately surrounding the Dead Sea is less than four inches per year.  The Jordan River flows into the north end of the sea; and during the rainy season there are streams that flow down from the hills on either side of the sea as well.  There is, however, no outlet.  Everything that is washed into the Dead Sea remains in the Dead Sea.  This, along with an extremely high evaporation rate, accounts for the fact that the water of that sea is some seven times saltier than the ocean--so salty that virtually nothing can live in it.

            I had the opportunity to visit the Dead Sea on a tour of Israel some years ago.  It is indeed a very strange sensation to be in water so salty that one cannot sink.  I actually had to struggle to keep my hands and feet underwater because they wanted to float up to the top.  When I got out of the water, my skin felt rather slimy and dirty from all the salt and other minerals that are present in the water.

            From the beach, our tour group then hiked about a mile or so up a very steep trail.  We carried canteens to keep from getting dehydrated and wore hats to protect ourselves from the blazing sun that beat down on us without mercy.  It was early afternoon in the middle of June, and the temperature was well over a hundred degrees.

            Then, at the end of our hike, we arrived at a beautiful spring known as En Gedi.  Waterfalls gushed out of the hillside and cascaded down into a large pool.  Here, in the middle of one of the most barren and desolate regions on the planet was a small oasis of beautiful and lush greenery.  It was very refreshing to wade into the pool and to sit under the water pouring out of the rocks above.  The fresh, cool water of En Gedi washed away the slime and residue from the Dead Sea.  It bathed our sweaty bodies and made us forget, for at least a moment, the scorching temperatures.  It revived us, cleansed us and renewed us in both body and spirit.

            I think of that experience of water in the desert when I read the story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.  Samaria certainly is not as barren as the Dead Sea, but water is still very much of an issue there, even today.  This spring we have witnessed the devastation that can be caused by too much water, but the people of Palestine have always struggled with the chronic problem of not having enough water.  During the rainy season, there is usually plenty of water to be had.  But during the dry season, which lasts for almost half the year, the only water available is from springs similar to En Gedi or from wells dug deep into the rocky earth.

            One such well, reportedly dug by Jacob himself, was found near the village of Sychar in the heart of Samaria.  Overlooking the town was also a hill, Mt. Gerazim.  The Samaritans would come to this mountain to offer their sacrifices and praise to Yahweh.  And although this was the same God worshiped by the Jews at the temple in Jerusalem, the two peoples were bitter enemies.

            More than 700 years before Jesus was born, the mighty Assyrian Empire had invaded Samaria.  The Assyrians deported many of the people who lived there, including virtually all of the members of the royal family and all the priests.  Then they resettled people in that area from other lands which they had conquered. 

            Samaria thus became a sort of "melting pot" of various cultures and religions.  And even though the Samaritans continued to worship the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and although they accepted the Law of Moses as their scripture, the Jews refused to recognize the Samaritan religion as legitimate.  They thought the Samaritans were half-breeds with a watered down religion.  The Samaritans, according to the Jews, were an impure people who rejected much of scripture and failed to recognize the true worship of Yahweh in Jerusalem.

            This is the backdrop to our story this morning.  The unnamed woman comes to the well in the middle of the day.  That is a very unusual time to fetch water.  Normally, the women of the village would have all come to the well first thing in the morning.  They would have gathered not only to get the water they needed for the days' work of cooking and cleaning, but also to socialize.  The village well was a place to greet one's friends and neighbors, to catch up with the latest news, and to share each other's thoughts and concerns.  But the woman in our story comes alone at a time when all of her peers would be at home, busily finishing up their preparations for the noon meal.

            We discover later on in the story that this woman has been married five times and lives now with a man to whom she is not married.  Because of this the church, over the centuries, has regarded her as a rather promiscuous or "fallen" woman.  We need to keep in mind, however, the situation that women faced in her time.  The fact is that she probably had very little choice in any of her relationships.  Women in her society had very little social standing.  They were not much more than the property of their fathers or husbands.  A single woman had almost no means of supporting herself.

            Her marriages, for all we know, could have each been arranged by her father or brothers with little or no input from her.  Each of her husbands could have died.  Or they could have simply divorced her for no reason.  For the Law of Moses, to which the Samaritans adhered, allowed a man to divorce his wife simply by writing a bill of divorce, giving it to her and sending her out of his house without any alimony, child support or other financial settlement.  Women, on the other hand, were not allowed to divorce their husbands.  They had little or no choice regarding whom they married, or if they stayed married.

            It is entirely possible, then, that this woman was simply passed from one man to another, each using her as long as he felt like it and then divorcing her.  As for the man she lives with, it is again possible that she would like to marry him.  He, however, may not want to marry her because she is considered "damaged goods."  Again, the choice is not hers to make.

            Now, I'm certainly not trying to condone this woman's living situation or make excuses for her behavior.  I merely want to point out that, in all likelihood, this woman at the well is probably more of a victim of her male-dominated society than she is the woman of ill repute as we usually think of her.  But whether we regard her as a harlot or as a victim, there is little doubt that she is regarded with scorn by her fellow villagers, much as those who are divorced and remarried are regarded in many churches today.  That probably is why she chooses to come to the well by herself in the heat of the day when she is least likely to meet someone else there.  But, of course, she does meet someone else there.

            Jesus is on his way with his disciples from Jerusalem, where they have been celebrating the Passover, back to his home region of Galilee.  And unlike many of his fellow Jews who would have skirted around Samaria in order to minimize the possibility of contact with the hated Samaritans, Jesus has chosen the direct route which takes him right through the heart of "enemy territory."  And as he is sitting at the well at Sychar, waiting for his disciples to return with lunch, the woman comes to draw water from the well.

            She is probably very surprised to see him there.  And she is no doubt even more shocked when he actually speaks to her.  Men don't speak to women in public.  Jews don't speak to Samaritans.  And yet this strange man who, judging by his accent, must be a Galilean speaks to her.  And not only does he speak to her, he asks her for a drink.  This is perhaps the most amazing thing of all.  For one thing that Jews and Samaritans certainly do not do is eat from the same dishes or drink from the same cups.  That would be a very clear violation of Jewish Law, and perhaps Samaritan Law as well.  

            "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman," she says.  "How can you ask me for a drink?"  Jesus responds by saying that, if she knew who he was, she would ask him for living water and he would give it to her.   When she inquires what this "living water" is that he's talking about, Jesus replies, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

      Then the woman says to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."  And in the conversation that ensues, Jesus reveals to her that he knows about her past--all the failed relationships that she has been a part of.  She doesn't seem to want to talk about this painful subject, however, and tries to redirect the conversation by asking a theological question about where one should properly worship God--here on Mt. Gerazim or in Jerusalem where Jesus has just been.  Jesus answers that where one worships is not the issue.  It is rather how one worships.

            All of this talk about "living water" and "worshiping in spirit and in truth" is probably very confusing to the woman,just as it is to many people today.  I hear a tone of resignation in her voice as she sighs and says, "Someday the Messiah will come and then he will explain it all to us."  And that is when Jesus utters two very important words, "I am.  I, the one speaking to you, am he."

            The significance of those words is somewhat lost in their translation from the Aramaic in which Jesus probably first spoke them into the Greek with which John recorded them and then into the English in which we read them.  But those two words "I am" are extremely important in the Jewish understanding of God and, therefore, in understanding just who Jesus was.

            You may recall that, centuries earlier, God had spoken those words to Moses.  When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, calling him to return to Egypt and lead his people out of slavery, Moses first responds by asking, "Who are you?  Who should I tell the people has sent me to be their leader?"  God's response to Moses is simple, yet perplexing:  "I am who I am.  Tell them that I AM has sent you."(Exodus 3:14)  Refusing to be reduced to a simple name or title or label, God chooses instead to be revealed simply as the one who is.  And now Jesus, by speaking those same two words to the Samaritan woman, "I am," reveals his true identity as the Messiah.

            It is at that climactic moment that the disciples return.  They are just as surprised and perplexed as the woman initially was to see Jesus talking with her.  But now, suddenly, things have begun to make sense to the woman.  She runs back into town,leaving behind her water jar, so that she can tell all her neighbors about the amazing thing that has happened to her.  And as she rushes back to Sychar, she returns as a woman transformed.

            She had gone to the well alone in the heat of the day.  She was thirsty and needed a drink.  And although her water jar remains empty back at the well, she now feels renewed and refreshed.  Jesus has been able to relate to her on a level far deeper than she has been used to.  He has cut through all the social boundaries and all of her defenses.  He has let her know that he knows and understands her deeply, and that he still accepts her.

            She had gone to the well that day feeling that her life was as barren and lifeless as the Dead Sea.  Five marriages had ended in the grief and pain of either death or divorce.  She was living with a man without a marriage covenant between them--perhaps because he didn't want to claim her as his wife; or perhaps because she didn't want to risk losing yet another husband.  So she went to the well alone, seeking refuge from the prying eyes and loose tongues of the village.  She trudged along in the heat of the day with her water jar, just doing what she needed to do for survival.

            And suddenly, in the midst of the desert of her life, Jesus comes along like a lush oasis.  He reaches out to her in a way that is refreshing.  His openness and honesty, without a trace of judgment, provide her with an opportunity to be cleansed and renewed.  His presence at the well that day and his willingness to reach out to her in her need is as surprising and as welcome as the springs of En Gedi are after swimming in the tepid and stagnant waters of the Dead Sea.  The living water which he offers is from the pure and unpolluted stream of grace that flows directly from the throne of God.

            So the woman runs back to town, refreshed and renewed, in order to share with everyone the amazing and wonderful thing that has happened to her.  All of a sudden, the one who had sought solitude now seeks out others.  The one who was ashamed to even acknowledge her difficult past now freely exclaims, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!"  The one who went to the well feeling dry and thirsty has been filled with living water, and her water jar is still sitting empty at the well.

            All of us find ourselves thirsting at times.  We feel as though our lives are dry and barren, with no oasis in sight.  The thirsting can take on many different forms.  We thirst for more fulfilling relationships.  We thirst for a sense of meaning and purpose.  We thirst for greater understanding of God and of God's will for us.  We thirst for healing and hope in the midst of our brokenness and doubt.  These are the sorts of thirsts that can be quenched by the living waters which cleanse and revive us like an oasis in the desert, like the springs of En Gedi after a swim in the Dead Sea.

            In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promised the crowds, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."  In his encounter with the woman at the well, Jesus demonstrates what he means by that.  There are all sorts of reasons that the conversation between these two people never should have happened.  He was a man; she was a woman.  He was a Jew; she was a Samaritan.  They never should have spoken to each other, never acknowledged each other's existence, never even been in the same place at the same time.  But Jesus crosses all of those cultural and societal and legal barriers to offer her living water.  He knows exactly who she is and exactly why he shouldn't speak to her, and he speaks to her anyway.

            And when she leaves him, she is no longer thirsty even though she never does drink from Jacob's well that that afternoon.  After her encounter with Jesus, her physical thirst doesn't seem to matter much.  Her psychological and emotional and spiritual thirst has been quenched.  She may not have drunk from Jacob's well, but for the first time in her life she has drawn a long, cool sip from the living water of Christ--the water that wells up into eternity.

            What Jesus did for that woman he is able to do for each of us as well.  Just as he broke down all the barriers that existed in order to reach out to her, so he seeks to break through the barriers that we put up in order to reach us.  The living water that Jesus offered her is still available to all who are seeking to quench their thirst for righteousness and wholeness.  To all those whose lives may be parched, whose relationships may seem dry, whose spiritual quest seems to have taken them into the desert to all of these and all others who thirst for healing and hope, Jesus still says, "Come.  Come and sip the living water which I offer, and you will no longer be thirsty.  Come.  Come and drink."