The Lord of Living Water

 

Jesu Juva

St. John 4:5-26                                                                

March 12, 2023

Lent 3A                                   

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          She had three strikes against her.  First, (and most obviously) she was a woman; and according to the rules of Jesus’ day, men didn’t talk with women in public.  Second, she was a Samaritan; and according to the rules of Jesus’ day, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans.  And third, she was a five-time loser in the game of love and marriage, now living with number six who was not her husband; and according to the rules of Jesus’ day, no one would want anything to do with a woman like that.  No one, that is, except Jesus.

          Welcome to Jacob’s well, just outside the village of Sychar.  It’s high noon—the sixth hour.  Jesus is hot, tired, and thirsty.  The disciples had gone into town to buy some food.  The only one there with Jesus is a single, solitary, Samaritan woman.  “Give me a drink,” Jesus tells her—orders her, rather rudely, actually.  And thus begins another conversation with the Christ—another round of verbal chess, as Jesus leads this woman out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

          By the way, before I forget to mention it, Jesus never does get His drink of water.  Did you notice that?  In all the twists and turns of His conversation with the woman at the well, it’s easy to lose sight of what started it all.  Jesus was thirsty.  He asks for a drink.  It wasn’t a lot to ask from the lady.  Yet even at the end of the account, Jesus is still parched.  The Savior’s whistle is still not wet.  But that’s okay because Jesus is always more interested in giving than receiving.

          And what Jesus gives here is simply Himself.  “I know that Messiah is coming,” she says, “and when He comes, He will tell us all things.”  Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you, am he.”  Or, in other words:  “I’m the Messiah.”  Jesus never does that in the New Testament—never just gives away His true identity.  Yet, here, He spills all the beans on Himself with a Samaritan woman with a shady past and dozens of skeletons in her closet.  He hides Himself—cloaks Himself in secrecy—from the religious elite in Jerusalem; but He reveals Himself to a Samaritan woman at a well.  Well, well, well.

          It’s hard not to get distracted by all the subtle details of this account and go down some rabbit holes that lead nowhere:  Jewish/Samaritan relations, the role of men and women in society, marriage/divorce/cohabitation (was she divorced or widowed or both?), religion and the proper place and way to worship.  Those are all interesting topics; but they pull us away from the focal point of this account—which is water, or living water, and the Giver of living water, Jesus Himself.

          John’s Gospel is a very wet gospel.  In chapter one we have Jesus and John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan River.  In chapter two Jesus changes water into wine at Cana. In chapter three Jesus discusses “water and the spirit” with Nicodemus—and, now in chapter four, Jacob’s well and a request for water from a sassy Samaritan woman. 

          This conversation boils down to the contrast between Jacob’s water and Jesus’ water—the water one gets from Jacob’s well and the water that comes from Jesus.  Well water and living water.  Water that doesn’t quench your thirst forever and water that does.  Water you work for versus water that works for you.  And if you’re starting to sense a slight baptismal undertow in all this water-talk, then you are on the right track.

          Jacob’s water is well water.  You work for it.  You earn it.  Well water is like the Law of God.  The work for this water is never done.  Every day you lug your empty vessel (or possibly two vessels balanced across your shoulders), you walk across the field that Jacob gave to Joseph, lower your vessels into the well, then draw them up and start the long trek back home—this time hauling perhaps thirty or forty extra pounds of water—all so that your family can cook and clean.  Really makes you appreciate tap water, doesn’t it?

          It’s hard work—thirsty work.  By the time you make it home, you need a drink of water and, perhaps that evening or certainly the next morning, you have to do it all over again.  There’s no end to the work or the thirst.  And so it is with the law of God.  It’s all work and it never ends.  It promises life but never quite delivers it.  It quenches your spiritual thirst for a while; but your thirst for righteousness returns the moment you realize how great a sinner you are even in your best moments.  You can work and work at commandment-keeping, but there’s always more to do—and you never do it very well.  Those commandments run deeper than Jacob’s well—death deep—going right the sinful heart from which flow all sorts of evil, sinful desires.

          The thirst for righteousness—the quest for holiness—is a thirst the Law cannot quite quench.  Commandment-keeping leaves you parched and dry.  Well water alone can’t slake that thirst.  You need living water—water that flows to you freely—water gushing and gurgling with grace.  Not the water of Jacob and Moses; but the water of Jesus.  Jesus gives a water that quenches the eternal thirst for righteousness.  It’s not a water you work for; but a water of grace that wells up in you to a spring of eternal life.

          In the wilderness there was no well and the Israelites were thirsty.  They were dying of thirst.  And God instructed Moses to strike a rock, and from that rock came fresh spring water for the Israelites to drink.  And that rock was Christ—it was Jesus—Paul says in 1 Corinthians.  Stricken rock with streaming side.  Rock of Ages cleft for me.  Jesus needs no bucket because He Himself is the source—the wellspring.  From His wounded side flows the stream of living water that quenches our thirst for righteousness and holiness and forgiveness.  It isn’t water you work for, but water that flows from Jesus’ wounded side to the font of your baptism.

          You and I are a lot like that Samaritan woman.  We are born outcasts—outsiders to the kingdom of God.  We are sinners to the core, rebels against God’s authority.  What we need first is the Law.  And in today’s text Jesus initially comes with the Law.  He tells the woman:  Give me a drink.  Sounds kind of harsh and demanding.  And then He holds up the mirror of the Law which reflects back to us just how broken and flawed we are:  You’ve had five husbands and the one you’re currently living with is not your husband.  Ouch!  He reflects that truth back into our faces and, frankly, it’s a truth we can’t handle.  It’s embarrassing to be with someone who knows you that well, that deeply—who can expose the wounds of your sin-stained soul.

          But Jesus—He doesn’t come to shame you or condemn you.  He doesn’t come to rub your nose in your past.  He wants to redeem your past, present, and future.  He wants to cover you with His righteousness and holiness.  He wants to rescue you from the riptide of sin and death that threatens to pull you out into a sea of darkness and misery.  He wants to rescue you from yourself and give you a whole new life that you could never achieve on your own.

          Through all the twists and turns of this wet conversation, Jesus drew the Samaritan woman to Himself.  He wants her to see Him.  He wants her to know that she wasn’t defined by her commandment-breaking, nor by her commandment-keeping.  She wasn’t defined by her nationality or by her pedigree.  She wasn’t defined by her sex or by her ethnicity.  Her life was now in the hands of Jesus.  The Messiah had come calling for her.

          The Messiah has come calling for you too.  He bled and died for you to rid your closets of all the skeletons you could never get rid of on your own.  He is the Christ—the Messiah.  And this morning He is speaking to you—in the words of absolution, in the words of this sermon.  He speaks through the living water of your baptism and in His holy Supper.  There He makes it clear that you are His.

          So don’t define yourself by your past, by your actions, by your ethnic origins, by your race or your sex or your politics—or by any of those divisive labels which our culture thinks are the most important things of all.  You belong to Jesus.  In Him you will live forever.

          Jesus never did get His drink of water.  But that’s how it goes for the Savior of sinners.  Jesus knows what it means to thirst.  Hanging from the cross, Jesus would say it for all to hear:  I thirst.  On that day the Man who brought living water to the world was dehydrating on Calvary’s cross.  He suffered thirst so that you might be hydrated with His healing—cleansed and washed from all the wounds of your sins.  Jesus never got His drink; but today you can drink deeply of His forgiveness and enjoy the sacred splash of living water.

Come to Calvary’s holy mountain,

Sinners ruined by the fall;

Here a pure and healing fountain

Flows for you, for me, for all,

In a full, perpetual tide,

Opened when our Savior died.

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.