A Local Sighting, Part Two

September 10, 2017 Leave a comment

 

Part One: Local Sighting

Part Two

 

You’ve just left the pool of Siloam. Your face is washed. Your eyes sparkle. And this time you are leading you mother. You find your way back to your neighborhood with familiar sounds and smells and now with fresh sights connecting the dots through firing synapses. You are almost there and you detect hubbub at the corner of Market St. And Way St.

Your neighbors, gathered, buzzing, are waiting for you. They want to see if you can see. But, they can’t believe their own eyes when you approach leading your mother and you are not hesitating with each step.

There’s a shout. “Isn’t this the man who used to sit here and beg? This is the corner Market St. and Way St., isn’t it?”

“Yes, and yes, it’s sure looks like him,” someone shouts.

“No, it isn’t!” another man shouts back. It’s got to be somebody else. These kinds of things don’t happen, not where I’m from anyway.”

As you approach the crowd you motion with your hand and say, “Yes, it’s me. Here’s my cup.”

“Well, then,” the one from out of town asks you, “how did your eyes get opened?”

“Those around me told me it was the man called Jesus! He made some mud. Then he spread it on my eyes. Then he sent me off to the pool of Siloam to wash. So, I went, and washed, and now I can see! I can see you.”

“And, we see you, but where is Jesus?” several ask you.

“I don’t know. I don’t know where to look. I’m new at this.”

Some men, eyewitnesses in fact, who were scandalized by the fact that Jesus may have broken some particular law on the sabbath, took you to the Pharisees for some jot and tittle questioning. The Pharisees had you start again:

“He put mud on my eyes and I washed, and now I can see!” You looked at them and saw their disbelief. Under your breath you said, “Ignoring reality will not go well for you.”

But they did and it did not go well.

Some of the Pharisees could no longer keep silent. “This man can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the sabbath!”

Others said, “Yes, but, how can a sinner do signs like these?”

And so, the fact that you could now see had partys of Pharisees seeing things differently.

So, they questioned you again. This time they questioned the genesis of your sight.

“What have you got to say about him? they asked. He opened your eyes after all.”

“He’s a prophet,” you replied. You say Jesus is a prophet because unquestionable good is sent from God.

Doubting Judeans in the kangaroo court didn’t believe that you really had been blind from birth and now could see. So, they called your parents and grilled them.

“Is this man really your son,” they asked, “the one you say was born blind? How is it that he now sees?”

“Well, “replied your parents, who were very concerned about their synagogue status, “we know this he is indeed our son, and that he was born blind, but we don’t know how it is that he can now see, and we don’t know who it was who opened his eyes. Ask him! He’s a grown up. He can speak for himself.”

You knew that your parents knew how you came to see. You knew why they were holding back. They were afraid of what the leaders of the community would think of this yet inexplicable event. You also knew that you were blind from birth and that you were no longer sightless and that someone sent from God applied mud to your utter darkness. Reality would have to be dealt with at some point.

So, perhaps hoping to trip you up, you were called in for a second time of questioning. Some said the sabbath had been broken by Jesus-he did the unthinkable!

“Give God the glory!” they said. “We know that this man is a sinner.”

“I don’t know whether he’s a sinner or not,” you replied. (You never claimed to be able to see into a man’s motives.) “All I know is this: I used to be blind, and now I can see.”

Incredulous, they prodded you again, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

(At this point you recalled the story of Elisha’s servant: Elisha had prayed, “Open my servant’s eyes, LORD, so that he may see.” The LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and the servant looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. “Don’t be afraid,” Elisha told his servant. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”)

Unafraid, you respond, “I told you already and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again?” With a new-found gleam in your eye you decide to throw a hot coal into the inquiry. “You don’t want to become his disciples too, do you?”

“You’re his disciple,” they scoffed, “but we are Moses’s disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we don’t know where this man comes from.”

“Well, here’s a fine thing!” you replied. “You don’t know where he’s from, and he opened my eyes! We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners; but if anyone is devout, and does his will, he listens to them. It’s never, ever been heard of before that someone should open the eyes of a person born blind. If this man isn’t sent from God, he couldn’t do anything.”

Rattled to the core, the Pharisees denounced you: “You were born in sin from top to toe. You are going to start teaching us?” They threw you out so as to not to be defiled in the sight of God or man. Jesus did the opposite.

Jesus heard that you had been thrown out. He found you at the corner of Market and Way streets talking to your neighbors. He walked up to you and asked,” Do you believe in the son of man?”

Scanning the face of Jesus, you reply, “Who is he, sir, so that I can believe in him?”

 

“You have seen him. In fact, it is the person who is talking to you.”

Now it seemed that all of your brain synapses were firing at once. And this came out of your mouth, “Yes, sir, I do believe.”

You fall to your knees and give God the glory. No one demanded it from you, you wanted to worship the son of man, the one sent from God, the giver of light.

Jesus looked down at you and then around at your neighbors and spectators and said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who can’t see would see, and that those who can see would become blind.”

Some of the spectators were Pharisees, the self-styled purveyors of “a light to the Gentiles”. They heard what Jesus said to the crowd. Indignant, they retorted, “So! We’re blind too, are we?” They weren’t expecting a Kingdom of God inversion, one that would turn their world upside down.

“If you were blind,” replied Jesus, “you wouldn’t be guilty of sin. But now, because you say, ‘We can see,’ your sin remains.

The Pharisees walked off in a huff. The crowd, in wonder, remained around you until sunset.

 

The next morning your father wakes you up. “C’mon. Get up. Now that Jesus has put things right for you there is work to be done. But first, come and see the sunrise.”

 

~~~

The above account is found in the Gospel of John chapter nine. My retelling of the account has been embellished. The scripture passages are referenced from, “The Kingdom New Testament, A Contemporary Translation”, N.T. Wright (I highly recommend this NT translation over the NIV or any other translation.)

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A Local Sighting, Part One

September 3, 2017 Leave a comment

 

You were born the same year as Jesus. Thirty-one years later you are a beggar, a blind beggar at the corner of Market St. and Way St.

When you were born cataracts covered your little dark eyes. No one knew how to remove them. No one dared. “God has ordained this”, the neighbors whispered.

The neural construction of your visual cortex at the back of your brain did not develop.  You received no visual inputs. You could not see your mother’s face during the first nine months of your life. Photons came and went unnoticed. You would not see “the heavens declare the glory of God”.

By twenty-six weeks you could perceive sound within your mother’s womb. By thirty weeks you could respond to the sound of tambourines at a wedding. While neurons were still migrating to their assigned location you could differentiate sounds. You began to learn through sound and touch.

After you were born, in the absence of visual stimulation, your brain reorganized the almost one-quarter of your brain devoted to visual image processing toward high-level cognitive functions:  language processing, memory function and auditory abilities greater than those of sighted persons. You were born blind but now your hearing is acute, able to hear the slightest echo off a nearby object.

You heard feet shuffling by. You heard whispering and gossip. You heard people talking about a man called Jesus who does great wonders in the name of God and yet the Judeans wanted to stone him. You wondered what sight would be. You had felt your mother’s face and a donkey’s snout. Texture and sound. His mother’s voice, a donkey’s bray and his father’s exhausted return home at the end of the day.

On the Sabbath you sing the words of a Psalm:

“Search for the Lord and his strength; continually seek his face.”

The synagogue leader asks you, one of ten men required for public worship, to hold the scrolls open, one for the law and one for the prophets, as he reads them to the gathered.

You hear the prophet Isaiah read:

“In the time of my favor I will answer you,     and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you     to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land     and to reassign its desolate inheritances,  to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’     and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!

Then the scrolls are closed. There is prayer and then synagogue leader speaks. “The time of the Messiah’s appearance must be very near. When he comes he will throw off the shackles these Roman tyrants have placed on us and set his people free. Then, and only then, can we be a light to the Gentiles.” One of the men bestows a blessing on the gathered and they leave.

At festival time, as you travel along the road to Jerusalem, you are told about the Roman crucifixions. But the telling is nothing compared to the sounds you hear. Women are wailing, whips crack and anguished voices cry out for mercy. The repetitious hammering brings jolting screams and then moans and then almost utter silence as you walk past cross after cross. Your mother is crying inside her shawl and your father says “We must take comfort in the hope of the Messiah”.

 

One day the weight of a drachma hits the bottom of your cup. You are about to say “thank you” when you smell fish and hear a brusque Galilean accent.

“Teacher, whose sin was it that caused this man to be born blind? Did he sin, or did his parents?

The sounds of crucifixion come rushing back. You say to yourself, “They are talking about me and my family. What do they see that I don’t? And, who is this Teacher?”

“He didn’t sin, “replied another Galilean voice, “nor did his parents. It happened so that God’s works could be seen in him. We must work the works of the one who sent me as long as it’s still daytime. The night is coming, and nobody can work then! As long as I am in the world, I’m the light of the world.”

You tell yourself, “Night is when our family sleeps.” You scrunch up against the wall, hoping all this talk will pass you by.

But then someone spits. You hear the crowd murmur. Suddenly you realize that someone is touching your eyes and you put your hand up feel. There is a hand applying wet dirt to your eyes.

“Off you go”, says the Galilean. “I am sending you to wash in the pool of Siloam.”

You struggle to your feet. You reach for your walking stick and your cup. Your eyes, and now your head, feel weird.  “This is like a dream. Could this be night? Could I be sleeping?”, you ask yourself.

Your mother grabs your arm and tells you that Jesus has done this. Almost running she pulls you toward the pool of Siloam. You stumble along wondering what is going on in your head. You don’t understand that resources are being reallocated from sound processing to sight processing.

You stop. Your mother, out of breath, tells you to wash your face. You feel for the water and begin to splash your face. You splash more and more water on your face. Each time you do there is a change: as mud comes off it is replaced by a glow and then by a brightness that hurts your eyes. The glare of the sun’s reflection in the pool blinds you for a moment but you welcome it. You turn toward your mother’s voice and then you trace her wide-eyed smile for the first time with your eyes. You tell her that you can see her. She screams with delight. “We must go back,” she says. And so, you return to the corner of Market St. and Way St. where your neighbors are waiting.

 

To be continued…

 

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“All who are thirsty come”

March 22, 2014 Leave a comment

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” Isaiah 55:1

The eye-witness account by the apostle John (and also of a disciple named Philip) relates the true narrative of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. jacobs-well

 The well and the field surrounding it were gifts from Jacob to Joseph.  (And you will remember Joseph. He is the one who received good gifts from his father ~a coat ~ and bad treatment from his brothers.) I have no doubt that the well was, pun intended, well-known to many who traveled though the area. 

This oasis would be on the minds of those seeking to quench their thirst, thirst brought about by the day’s relentless heat.  John’s Gospel account tells us that as Jesus was traveling from one place to another he became tired and thirsty. He stopped outside the town of Sychar in the region of Samaria to rest at the well.

 As Jesus sat down on the edge of the well he told his disciples to go and get some food in the nearby town. Being midday the sun was directly overhead and the heat was stifling. The group was thirsty and hungry from their long walk.

Jesus had no means of retrieving the water from the well. Imagine someone being even thirstier when they know that water is just out of reach.

 As Jesus sits resting a woman from the town of Sychar approaches the well carrying her clay jar (I am assuming some things here.).  The woman comes to the well in the middle of the day because, I suspect, no one else will be there during the hottest part of the day. She has her reasons for not wanting to be around the other women of the town:  she sleeps around.

From John’s Gospel account Chapter 4:

 Jesus spoke to her.

“Give me a drink,” he said (The disciples had gone off into town to buy food.)

“What!” said the Samaritan woman.  “You, a Jew, asking for a drink from me, a woman, and a Samaritan at that?” (Jews, you see, don’t have dealing with Samaritans.)

“If only you’d known God’s gift, “replied Jesus, “and who it is that’s saying to you give me a drink,” you’d have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

“But sir, replied the woman, “you haven’t got a bucket! And the well’s deep! So how are you thinking of getting living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, with his sons and animals?”

“Everyone who drinks this water, Jesus replied, “will get thirsty again. But anyone who drinks the water I’ll give them won’t ever be thirsty again. No: the water will become a spring of water welling up to the life of God’s new age.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “give me this water!  Then I won’t be thirsty anymore, and I won’t have to come here to draw from the well.”

“Well, then, said Jesus to the woman, “go and call your husband and come here.”

“I haven’t got a husband,” replied the woman.

“You’re telling me you haven’t got a husband!” replied Jesus.  The fact is, you’ve had five husbands, and the one you’ve got now isn’t your husband.  You were speaking the truth!”

“Well, sir, replied the woman, “I can see that you’re a prophet…Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain.  And you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

“Believe me, woman, replied Jesus, “the time is coming when you won’t worship the father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You worship what you don’t know.  We worship what we do know; Salvation, you see, is indeed from the Jews.  But the time is coming ~ indeed, it’s here already! ~ when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth.  Yes:  that’s the kind of worshippers the father is looking for.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.”

“I know that Messiah is coming,” said the woman, “the one they call ‘the anointed.’  When he comes, he’ll tell us everything.”

“I’m the one ~ the one speaking to you right now, “said Jesus.

Just then Jesus’ disciples came up. They were astonished that he was talking with a woman; but nobody said, “What did you want?” or “Why were you talking with her?”  So the woman left her water-jar, went into town, and spoke to the people.

“Come on! She said. “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did!  You don’t think he can be the Messiah do you?”

So they left the town and were coming out to him.

Meanwhile,, the disciples were nagging him, “Come on, Rabbi!” they were saying. “You must have something to eat!”

“I’ve got food to eat that you know nothing about, he said.

“Nobody’s brought him anything to eat, have they?” said the disciples to one another.

“My food,” replied Jesus, “is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to finish his work!  Don’t you have a saying, ‘Another four months, then comes harvest?” Well, let me tell you raise your eyes and see!  The fields are white!  It’s harvest time already!  The reaper earns his pay, and gather crops for the life of God’s coming age, so that sower and reaper can celebrate together.  This is where that saying comes true. ‘One sows, another reaps,’ I sent you to reap what you didn’t work for.  Others did the hard work, and you’ve come into the results.”

Several Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus because of what the woman sad in evidence about him: “He told me everything I did.”  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked to stay with them.  And he stayed there two days.

Many more believed because of what he said.

“We believe, too,” they said to the woman, “but it’s no longer because of what you told us.  We’ve hear him ourselves!  We know that he really is the one! He’s the savior of the world!”

 This passage from John’s account thrills me every time I read it.  The passage overflows with Kingdom of God thirst quenchers.

Is it me or is there a bit of snark in the woman’s reply to Jesus’ request for a drink?

“But sir, replied the woman, “you haven’t got a bucket! And the well’s deep! So how are you thinking of getting living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, with his sons and animals?”

Jesus doesn’t respond to the snark or try to pull rank.  He speaks directly to the Samaritan woman who is at the well, thirsty herself:

“Everyone who drinks this water, Jesus replied, “will get thirsty again. But anyone who drinks the water I’ll give them won’t ever be thirsty again. No: the water will become a spring of water welling up to the life of God’s new age.”

The woman, maybe with a little more snark, says, “OK, give me some of that! water and I won’t have to come back in the middle of the day (to avoid the gossiping women).”  (my unauthorized color commentary)

Now Jesus pulls rank:  “Go get your husband(s).”

 “Oops, I’ve pushed this guy too far!” the woman thought. (more unauthorized color commentary from the bleachers)

The woman, like most of us, wanted to deflect any accounting of her sinful life.  She became polemical and quickly changed the subject.  She pressed Jesus about a heated religious and geopolitical issue of the day – our mountain or yours, our religion or yours.

Jesus poured out some fresh Kingdom of God water:

“Believe me, woman, replied Jesus, “the time is coming when you won’t worship the father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You worship what you don’t know.  We worship what we do know; Salvation, you see, is indeed from the Jews.  But the time is coming ~ indeed, it’s here already! ~ when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth.  Yes:  that’s the kind of worshippers the father is looking for.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.”

Here Jesus reminds the woman of the “truth” (the non-denial) she spoke about herself earlier and about the spirit who is to come so that all who believe can worship the One True God in Spirit and in Truth.  The rivers of living water are beginning to flow freely.  The extremely costly water bill will be paid in full by Jesus.

Now, what did the disciples think when they returned to the well and found Jesus talking to a woman, A Samaritan woman, a well-known (pun intended again) harlot Samaritan woman?  Nobody asked.  “Zip your lip, Peter!”

Jesus begins to talk about harvest time as he sees the Samaritans come running out to see what the woman was talking about.  The fact that the woman, a harlot, told them that Jesus told her everything she had done, made a impression on the town gossipers and on the wives whose husbands had betrayed them with her. It was no easy thing to tell the people of the town her ‘secrets’ but Jesus was like no other.  “Come and see” she told them.

Jesus:  “Well, let me tell you raise your eyes and see!  The fields are white!  It’s harvest time already!  The reaper earns his pay, and gather crops for the life of God’s coming age, so that sower and reaper can celebrate together.  This is where that saying comes true. ‘One sows, another reaps,’ I sent you to reap what you didn’t work for.  Others did the hard work, and you’ve come into the results.””

Fast forward:  the ‘anointed one’ has been crucified.  The resurrection has occurred.  Jesus meets with his disciples and at least 120 people have seen him.  Jesus breathes on the assembled disciples and they receive the Holy Spirit.  Jesus ascends to the Father. The Spirit, in the form of wind and fire, descends upon the praying assembly of eye witnesses.

 All of Jerusalem is now afire with the good news of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God come to earth. Thousands believe the words of the apostles, of Peter and John and the others. The response:   “Brothers, what must we do?”   Peter: “Turn back ~ Be baptized every single one of you ~ in the name of Jesus the Messiah, so that your sins can be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the holy spirit.  The promise for you and your children, and for everyone who is far away, as many as the Lord our God will call.”

At this point the religious SuperPac of Pharisees did NOT like the media message:  Jesus, the Messiah-King, the “King of the Jews”, whom they had crucified, was raised from the dead!  This had to be stopped or they would lose their powerful standing. (sounds familiar ~ today’s political world)

Persecutions began in full fury.  And, a different unequivocal message had to be sent out to counter the Truth. 

The message was sent via Stephen. Stephen, a man said to be full of the grace and power had testified to the Facts of Jesus before the Super Pac. He held nothing back. So, he was quickly shut up by being stoned to death.  His last words:  “Lord, don’t let this sin stand against them.” Saul, the soon-to-be Paul of missionary fame, was the eyewitness of Stephen’s martyrdom.

Immediately after Stephen’s death a Christian Diaspora began.  Christians, except for most of the apostles, fled Jerusalem. Philip goes to Samaria (see The Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 8).

The word and the living water gets around. Remember Samaria?

“Philip went off to a town in Samaria and announced the Messiah to them.  The crowds, acting as one, clung to what Philip was saying, as they heard him and saw the signs he performed.  For unclean spirits came out of many of them and several who were paralyzed or lame were cured. So there was great joy in that town.”

“Rivers of living water” began streaming throughout the world ~ God’s Kingdom on earth.  Souls are being replenished with waters from the deep well cut out of the Solid Rock . Do you see why I find this Samaritan woman’s story so brimful of Kingdom Thirst quenchers?

“Well, let me tell you raise your eyes and see!  The fields are white!  It’s harvest time already!  The reaper earns his pay, and gather crops for the life of God’s coming age, so that sower and reaper can celebrate together.  This is where that saying comes true. ‘One sows, another reaps,’ I sent you to reap what you didn’t work for.  Others did the hard work, and you’ve come into the results.””

As Christians we must “Come into the results!” The message of the Kingdom of God is inclusive:  it is for Jews and Greeks, men, and women ~ for anyone who receives him.

“On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”  (John 7:37)

One last thought:  Jesus was poor.  As the above story reveals, his poverty, his hunger did not overcome him or preoccupy him.  He, instead, before all else, willed to do the will of the One who sent him.  That was his food and drink.  That was enough.

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“I Am Thirsty”

April 6, 2012 Leave a comment

“I am thirsty.” These words spoken just before Jesus gave up His spirit on the cross reveal the need for life’s most basic requirement:  life-sustaining water for the body and the soul.

 The crucifixion’s slow and agonizing death with its depletion of bodily fluids would cause a human body to dehydrate to the point of suffocation.  The blood pouring from the Lord’s hands and feet and from His lash wounds would deprive His body of its normal blood flow, blood flow which carried necessary oxygen to all of the body’s organs. Water was desperately needed. Instead, Jesus was mockingly offered a sponge soaked with wine which had turned. After tasting it he rejected the old wine and its numbing effects.

 “I am thirsty” indicates the Lord’s need for water but more importantly these words also reveal that the Living Water, God the Holy Spirit, was also leaving the Lord at this point in time.  Because Jesus bore the sins of the world He could not have fellowship with His Father and the Holy Spirit until His work of atonement was complete.  Until then The Trinitarian Well of eternal fellowship was cut off from the Son of God.  In place of this Well, Jesus chose to drink from the bitter cup of God’s will.

 King David prophesied about the relational and physical torment that the Messiah was to suffer on the cross.  From Psalm 22:

 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
   Why are you so far from saving me,
   so far from my cries of anguish?
 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
   by night, but I find no rest….

I am poured out like water,
   and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
   it has melted within me.
 My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
   and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
   you lay me in the dust of death.

 In this act of substitutionary atonement the Lord’s body bore all the sin of all men for all time.  On the cross Jesus rapidly became depleted from loss of fluid and, as Psalm 22 tells us, from the loss of Living Water –  Jesus was forsaken by the Father and the Spirit.  “Because he poured out Himself to death” Jesus became as a barren desert, a desolate place with no water.  He was made sin for us. 

John’s Gospel account offers the Creator’s context for the words “I am thirsty.”

 In the gospel narrative the apostle John relates the true story of Jesus meeting a woman of Samaria at Jacob’s well. 

 The well and the field surrounding it were gifts from Jacob to Joseph.  And you will remember Joseph. He is the one who received good gifts from his father (the coat) and bad treatment from his brothers. I have no doubt that the well was, well, well-known to many who traveled though the area.  I’m sure it was on the map of those seeking to quench their thirst, thirst brought about by the day’s relentless heat.  John’s account tells us that as Jesus was traveling from one place to another he became tired and thirsty. He stopped outside the town of Sychar at the well to rest.

 As Jesus sat down near the edge of the well he told his disciples to go and get some food in the nearby town. It is midday. The sun is directly overhead and the heat is stifling. Jesus had no means of retrieving the water from the well. You can imagine someone being thirstier when they know that water is just out of reach.

 As Jesus sits resting a woman from the town of Sychar approaches the well carrying her clay jar (I am assuming some things here.).  The woman comes to the well in the middle of the day because, I believe, no one else will be there during the hottest part of the day. She has her reasons for not wanting to be around the other women of the town:  she sleeps around.

 Jesus, thirsty, asks the woman for a drink:  “Will you give me a drink?”

 The woman was at a loss as to what to think:

 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

From the gospel account:

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

  Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (emphasis mine)

  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

  He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

  “I have no husband,” she replied.

   Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

  “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.  Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

(Note:  The woman, like most of us, wanted to deflect the accounting of her sinful life.  Becoming polemical the woman quickly changed the subject and pressed Jesus about a heated religious and geopolitical issue of the day.)

Jesus, having already gotten the woman’s attention by recounting intimate details of her life, responded to her question about true and valid worship as the Source, the well-spring of Truth.

    “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

  The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

  Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Water flows through John’s gospel.  John the Baptist baptized “with water so that He (Jesus) might be revealed by Israel.  In the above passage we learn about Jesus chatting with a woman as he sits next to a well. There He talks about the everlasting living water which wells up inside you if you accept it.  In a previous passage John recorded Jesus’s first sign:  turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana.  In the passage after the Jacob’s well story John tells us about a lame man who had been trying for thirty years to enter the healing pool in Bethesda.  The water of the pool would bubble up with curative power whenever the Spirit stirred it. But the man had his excuses for not being well. In a later passage John recounts Jesus walking on the water to meet the disciples in the middle of a lake.

Then one time …

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (emphasis mine)

Are you thirsty? Are you trying to quench your deepest thirst with the things of this world, things that quickly run ‘dry’ from everyday use?  Do more clothes, more electronic gadgets, more Facebook friends, more entertainments, more tattoos, more tipping points, more of anything this world has to offer satisfy your deepest thirst?

The woman at the well had her life of men.  She had her connections.  She also had her water bucket.  She brought this bucket to the well everyday to get the water she needed to survive.  The woman could argue religion and politics with the best of them but she was thirsting for something more.  She may have wondered “is that all there is?”  Is that all that life has to offer someone like me, a woman of Samaria marginalized by my own community and holding on to an unsure belief in an object of worship others are telling me to believe in.

Unknowingly, it was of the True Well of Life that she made her request:  “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus responded:  If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

We know that drinking water is necessary for life.  We listen closely to health programs that tell us to drink several glasses of water a day to sustain our bodies, to help them function properly and to replenish the oxygen our systems need. As you would imagine the quality of water that you drink is critical.  Undoubtedly, water that contains filth would do more harm than good.  Is the well water you are drinking clean and pure, refreshing and restorative?  Or, is it filthy with parasites making you weak and sick?

The water that Jesus offers to you and me is greater and purer than the most abundant compound found on earth:  H2O.  It is the Living Water of the Holy Spirit.  This water teems with Abundant Life, the very oxygen of heaven. Once received its Spirit-life effervescence bubbles up within a person.  It then overflows your spirit and converges with the rivers of Living Water that have never stopped flowing throughout all of eternity except for that dark hour when the Gift of God Himself was poured out as a drink offering and He cried, “I am thirsty.”

*****

Shechem’s Archaeology

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