"Where Do You Get That Living Water?"

John 4:5-42

5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)[a] 10 Jesus answered her, “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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you[b] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he,[c] the one who is speaking to you.” 27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah,[d] can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him. 31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receiving[e] wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” 39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

“Where Do You Get That Living Water?”

This story of Jesus and the woman at the well is a beautiful one in so many ways. For so many reasons, it is one of my favorites from the Gospels, if not my favorite. This story says so much to us about how Jesus treats those around him—to him, there are no boundaries when there are people who need to be healed, need to be forgiven, and given living water. Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well is the longest in the gospels. This is significant because Jesus is meeting with a woman, one who has been battered and torn by life, one who has been judged by the people of her time and the people of ours. She has been married five times, leading folks over time to think that she is sinful and whorish, that she uses men. But Jesus reminds us that we shouldn’t judge because we don’t know anyone’s story until we ask them—perhaps she has lost husbands one at a time to death and obeyed the marriage laws that she marry their brothers. Maybe she has been abused by her husbands or left by them. We don’t know her story, and as much as we would like to know it, what we ultimately need to know is that her brokenness has brought her to the well in the heat of the day, not normally when the women come to draw water. Perhaps she has sensed that something special might happen while she is there, that she might be noticed, that there might some relief and forgiveness and welcome.

That the woman at the well is from Samaria is also a significant part of this story. According to tradition and history, Samaritans and Jews are not to be seen together talking or interacting. This story reminds us of Luke’s story of the man who is beaten and left on the side of the road to die—while the people who we think should be the ones to help him pass by him and do nothing, the Samaritan, the outcast, the person we would never expect to do so is the one who helps him. So, for Jesus to be seen spending time with this woman who is from the wrong side of the tracks, who has been judged for what she has done, for what her circumstances have been, judged simply for where she was born—this is telling. This says something to the people gathered around the well, and it says something to us today as we struggle and discuss and fight about how we treat the refugees in our midst, the people who are born in different places, the people whom we have judged without ever taking the time to listen to their stories or learn about their lives.

The baptismal imagery in the story is stunning. When we baptize a child or an adult in this place, we talk about living water, the living water that comes from God, water that cleanses and refreshes us, water that washes us and makes us ready for a new life as a claimed child of God. Jesus, in our story today, approaches the woman at the well, asking her for a drink, asking for water that that is new, that is refreshing. “Sir, you have no bucket,” she says, “and the well is so deep. Where do you get that living water?”

Jesus offers her living water—the water that can refresh and heal what is broken in her. Jesus offers her new life, proclaiming to all who are there that the woman is claimed by him, loved by him through the gift of living water: “Everyone who drinks of this water [from the well] 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.”

Her response is simple, and beautiful in its telling: Where do you get that living water? Please give it to me, so that I may never be thirsty again.

In her commentary on this passage. Anna Carter Florence, a preaching professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, writes this:

If I were asked to pick one story that shows us the most about who Jesus is, it would be this one. Here is a passage for a preaching life and a lifetime of preaching. Here too is a text with its own bucket, ready for the filling. Let it down again and again, and each time it comes up with another sermon of living water, another deep drink from the well that will not go dry.

I love Anna’s recognition of how deep and filling this text is. As she goes on to suggest several different ways for us preachers to preach this text, she offers this:

Notice that it is Jesus who is thirsty. The walk through Samaria is long and tiring. Jesus sits down by the well…this is where he and the woman meet. It ought to be easy for a thirsty man to get a drink at a well, but notice that Jesus cannot do this by himself. He asks the woman to give him a drink, gives her the chance to recognize the face of Christ in a stranger. There is something beautifully simple in the staging of this scene as well as its premise: Jesus is thirsty at the well, and we are the ones with the bucket. The deeper metaphorical conversation that follows makes no sense until we really take this in. Can a little thing like a cup of cool water, offered in love, be the beginning of a salvation journey? Yes; and we will never know until we meet the stranger and tend to the human need first.

Wow. Every time I’ve preached and read this text, I’ve always been narrow in the approach: Jesus offers the woman and the well the living water, offering to all of us at the same time. But I’ve never stopped to think that maybe he needs living water, too—that he is thirsty for conversation and relief and a different kind of recognition than he is used to receiving. Surely he can draw the water from the well himself, but he opens himself up to this Samaritan, this woman, this sister who is desperate for some healing. We are all on our own journey to salvation, but maybe we need to stop and recognize that Jesus is on his own journey, too. It can’t be easy for him to walk from town to town, place to place, knowing that he is walking toward his death, but he is. Maybe Jesus needs a little bit of living water of his own. Perhaps he needs someone to draw it for him, someone to tend to him, too. This story does tell us so much about Jesus—that he welcomes the stranger and loves her, that he forgives and accepts, that he offers living water. And the story tells us what we either can’t see or tend to forget—that Jesus needs to be welcomed and loved, too. It reminds us that we never know when Jesus will show up in the face of a stranger. The woman doesn’t know who Jesus is. But that doesn’t matter. She talks with him and spends time with him and welcomes him. She is who we all should be—someone who welcomes the refugee, the stranger in our midst—no matter what.

On our UKirk mission trip a few weeks ago, it was a delight to see our crew interact with so many new people, strangers who became friends, friends who will always now hold a place in our hearts. These folks are etched in our memories—people with whom we served at the food bank, folks who came seeking the free food that was donated to anyone who could use it, food that we were fortunate enough to be able to give away. We played with lots of kids—kids who were poor, kids for whom English was not their first language, kids who were food insecure.  We were amazed by a feisty woman who, despite her own health problems, gave every hour she had to make sure these kids had food and a safe place to hang out after school. We were hosted by an amazing man who started the Asheville Youth Mission with his wife who passed away several years later, a man who is now rejoicing that he has found love again and will be married later this month. All of these folks are folks who need to be given the grace of living water, while at the same time giving it to so many others.

On our favorite day, we served lunch at the Haywood Street Congregation to anyone who wanted to come. One of our UKirk alums, Emily Bentley, is the companion coordinator there, and she organizes lunch twice a week for 300 guests. There was a volunteer orientation where the pastor read the story of the woman at the well and we all acknowledged that we are broken in some way and need living water, while being called at the same time to offer it to others. We prayed together and the pastor and Emily offered us living water as we came and washed our hands in a bowl of living water.

During our worship experience with the community after lunch, we cried with a young man who is transitioning into a woman—a woman who had just spent the previous weekend with her family, listening to them say that she wasn’t a child of God, that she was sinful, that she was no longer welcome in their family. And then we listened to her sing praise to Jesus through a church that accepted and loved her and called her to sing. We, along with everyone else gathered in worship, laid hands on her and prayed for her along her journey to find living water. In many ways, we were the ones who gave living water to those who were broken, damaged, and thirsty. We were the ones who went and drew the water for others as we played and sang and sorted and welcomed guests to the table. And in so many other ways, we were the ones who were coming to the well thirsty and in need, coming to the well looking for relief from the ways we have been damaged, and from the ways we have broken the world and ourselves. We needed someone to draw the water for us.

I will let the rest of our group share their own stories because the stories are theirs to tell, but I want to end by sharing my own living water experience from our trip. As we were each serving at different tables to get food and drinks and seconds for the guests who had been welcomed to the table that day, Steve Hickok asked one of our students to come get me so I could talk to a woman he had met. Steve had gently listened to her story, and he knew she needed to hear my story and I needed to hear hers. She was a beautiful woman with gorgeous dark skin and long braids, a little too skinny, very weary looking. We asked each other’s names: “I’m Kim, she said.” “I’m Rachel, I replied.”

I told her that she was beautiful, but that also looked sad and tired. I asked her what was happening. As tears started to stream down her cheeks, she said, “I’m married, but my husband is not kind, so I’m living off and on with my daughters and other friends. In the last few months, I’ve had several seizures and have been in the hospital several times. I’m 41 and have never had seizures. Since I’m close to being homeless, people don’t believe that I’m having seizures. They think it’s because I’m on drugs and I’m not. I’ve woken up not knowing what has happened to me. I’ve woken up in the hospital not knowing how I got there. I have a black eye since I fell when I had one last week. I’m scared about what’s going to happen every day, and I’m scared about how my medicine makes me feel. I’m scared to keep my grandchildren alone because I don’t want to hurt one of them if I’m holding them and they fall. My brain doesn’t work well and I don’t know why and it scares me.” And then she said, “No one understands what I’m going through.”

I put my hand on her knee and said, “Oh, Kim, I actually do understand, at least most of what’s happening, anyway. I had my first seizure at 40 and have had 5 more since. I have woken up with paramedics standing above me, and woken up in an ambulance.” I showed her the scar on my forehead and the ones on my hands from falling and hurting myself. Even though I cannot imagine being close to homeless as I’ve experienced this and acknowledged that to her, I said to her, “I know what it’s like to be scared every day. To not know if your brain is going to go insane. I’m scared that something is going to happen while I’m alone with my niece and nephew. I know what it’s like to feel alone when you are scared, to not know what will happen the next minute.”

We both knew that I had more advantages than she did because of a steady job, good health insurance, and a home to live in, but those things didn’t matter then. What mattered is that we both understood each other, understood what not many others could. In that moment, Kim and I became living water for each other. We held hands and hugged each other. We both said to each other that is was so life-giving to hear from someone who understood what it was like to be scared each day, what it was like to wonder where God was in the midst of this. As she left to go home, we hugged each other. I said, “Kim, I say a little prayer every morning and I will include you in it from here on out.” We hugged and I told her I loved her. She kissed me on the cheek and gently said to me, “I love you more.”

Friends, Jesus Christ meets us at the well in the face of strangers, meets us in our brokenness, and gives us the living water that will last. But in asking for it himself, he reminds us that all of us—even he, himself, needs living water, too. Christ reminds us that we all have living water to give, living water with which to forgive, no matter if we know it or not. Thanks be to God.