Living water

John 4:5-42

5 He stopped at Sychar, a town in Samaria, near the tract of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph, 6 and Jacob’s Well was there. Jesus, weary from the journey, came and sat by the well. It was around noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 The disciples had gone off to the town to buy provisions. 9 The Samaritan woman replied, “You’re a Jew. How can you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?”—since Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans. 10 Jesus answered, “If only you recognized God’s gift, and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him for a drink instead, and he would have given you living water.” 11 “If you please,” she challenged Jesus, “you don’t have a bucket and this well is deep. Where do you expect to get this ‘living water’? 12 Surely you don’t pretend to be greater than our ancestors Leah and Rachel and Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it with their descendants and flocks?” 13 Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. 14 But those who drink the water I give them will never be thirsty; no, the water I give will become fountains within them, springing up to provide eternal life.” 15 The woman said to Jesus, “Give me this water, so that I won’t grow thirsty and have to keep coming all the way here to draw water.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband and then come back here.” 17 “I don’t have a husband,” replied the woman. “You’re right—you don’t have a husband!” Jesus exclaimed. 18 “The fact is, you’ve had five, and the man you’re living with now is not your husband. So what you’ve said is quite true.” 19 “I can see you’re a prophet,” answered the woman. 20 “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you people claim that Jerusalem is the place where God ought to be worshiped.” 21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, the hour is coming when you’ll worship Abba God neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you don’t understand; we worship what we do understand—after all, salvation is from the Jewish people. 23 Yet the hour is coming—and is already here—when real worshipers will worship Abba God in Spirit and truth. Indeed, it is just such worshipers whom Abba God seeks. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to Jesus, “I know that the Messiah—the Anointed One—is coming and will tell us everything.” 26 Jesus replied, “I who speak to you am the Messiah.” 27 The disciples, returning at this point, were shocked to find Jesus having a private conversation with a woman. But no one dared to ask, “What do you want of him?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 The woman then left her water jar and went off into the town. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this be the Messiah?” 30 At that, everyone set out from town to meet Jesus. 31 Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But Jesus told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” 33 At this, the disciples said to one another, “Do you think someone has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus explained to them, “Doing the will of the One who sent me

and bringing this work to completion

is my food. 35 Don’t you have a saying,

‘Four months more

and it will be harvest time’?

I tell you,

open your eyes and look at the fields—

they’re ripe and ready for harvest! 36 Reapers are already collecting their wages;

they’re gathering fruit for eternal life,

and sower and reaper will rejoice together. 37 So the saying is true:

‘One person sows; another reaps.’ 38 I have sent you to reap

what you haven’t worked for.

Others have done the work,

and you’ve come upon the fruits of their labor.” 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus on the strength of the woman’s testimony—that “he told me everything I ever did.” 40 The result was that, when these Samaritans came to Jesus, they begged him to stay with them awhile. So Jesus stayed there two days, 41 and through his own spoken word many more came to faith. 42 They told the woman, “No longer does our faith depend on your story. We’ve heard for ourselves, and we know that this really is the savior of the world.”

Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (pp. 2286-2288). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.

I went on a retreat in Albuquerque last year where about 20 people from all over the continent gathered in a circle time and time again over 3 days. In that circle we sang together, we talked and grieved and laughed together, but especially sang together.

In between songs, I heard a story told, about a person in the desert who encountered a well with no rope or bucket. After the story, the first reflection question the storyteller asked the group was, “where do you see yourself in the story?” “Are you this person who encountered the well? Or a later person who comes by after the well has been restored?”

And I thought, “I feel more like the well.”

Do you ever feel like an untapped well?

Like you know there’s so much life and potential and desire and possibility inside,

Like there’s something alive and flowing deep beneath the chaos and demands of the external world

But you aren’t quite sure how to drink from it?

Like you’re just hoping someone might come along and drop a bucket down and see what comes up?

I think that’s what love does.

I think that’s what Jesus does.

You see this woman sitting at the well in the heat of the afternoon in the desert

is alone for a reason.

Probably because she didn’t want to see anybody else

Or because nobody else wanted to see her.

Or maybe because the rhythm of her life set her apart from the rest of society

Whatever the reason—she was alone

And when Jesus approached her with his demands

she was not having it.

I love it.

I love this woman and I love this version of Jesus.

These two sparring at the well—

How very human, right?

She’s like “how you gonna ask me for water when Jews don’t talk to Samaritans?”

And he goes “if you knew you were talking to God’s gift to the world, you’d be askin me for a drink, and I’d give you living water.”

“oh really? Where do you get this living water with no bucket?”

That’s when Jesus gets real weird—

“this isn’t the kind of water you drink and it moves right through you. This is the kind of water that sticks around—forever, actually. This water I’m talking about is eternal life”

And she’s like “please, give me this water so I don’t ever have to come back here again!”

Sidenote: let this woman be proof to you that Jesus can handle your doubts, your criticism, and all your attitude.

And then you know what Jesus does?

He gives it to her.

He gives her what she asked for.

He taps down deep into her heart by showing her that he sees her.

He knows her.

And he knows something in her, something deep within

That springs up to eternal life.

And just like that, she becomes the bearer of eternal life.

She is the well who becomes a fountain of Living Water,

Sharing life with her whole city.

Do you ever feel like an untapped well?

Like there’s something alive and flowing deep beneath the chaos and demands of the external world

But you aren’t quite sure how to drink from it?

In this brief interaction, Jesus shows us how to access it:

Drop down deep—beneath the surface,

beneath your right answers and your religion and the rest of your self-protection,

Down to what you think you’re hiding.

Down into the truth.

Bring it into the light of day and drink deeply.

Because beneath all of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how the world is,

Beneath all of the parts we play and the

Beneath the personality,

There is a truth—that you are pure love,

and that love is bursting forth in you.

When we drop deep into the well of every person, every being—we find the same flow of life.

We find Living Water.

We are vessels of this Living Water.

It’s not even that far-fetched—our physical bodies are 65% water!

Our bodies are formed in water in the womb in amniotic fluid.

All life on Earth emerged from the oceans—all life began in the water!

We’re basically just little extensions of the ocean, water bags walking around on legs.

Water is life.

In reading botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s brilliant book Braiding Sweetgrass, she reflects on learning Potawatomi, an endangered language of the Anishinaabe people—her people—

A language that was strategically and violently silenced in Native children by Christian missionaries, as they were forced to speak English instead.

She says one of the starkest differences between English and Potawatomi is that English is a noun-based language, with only 30% of our vocabulary being verbs.

But Potawatomi is verb-based, with 70% of its words as verbs.

This changes the way this language and the people who speak it describe the world.

Words for bodies of water are not nouns, like “bay” or “ocean.”

Instead, these are verbs, “to be a bay,” or, “to be a river,” or, “to be a long sandy stretch of beach.”

Because to the Anishinaabe people, the water is alive. Wall Kimmerer writes,

“A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word…

But the verb “to be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores. The verb releases the water from bondage and lets it live.”

Not only is there a well of eternal life flowing in you,

but the same living water that flows as bays and rivers and oceans, lives in you, lives as you.

Jesus stirs the sacred waters within us to life, and gives us a community to do the same for one another.

I close with a song I learned on that retreat in Albuquerque, it’s a song we sang after sharing that story, and it’s a song that stirs the living waters within me.

“Where do we get that living water? Where do we get that living water? Where do we get that living water?

Together at the well.” (Song written and shared by Winona Poole)