Returning to the Well -- FPC sermon excerpt

John 4 begins with Jesus walking into a Samaritan city called Sychar, and taking a seat by the town well. This is a surprising thing for a good Jew such as Jesus to do, because the Samaritans are considered outsiders and enemies. It’s true that the Jews and Samaritans share Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as common ancestors, but the two groups split apart when the Samaritans built a shrine on Mount Gerizim, setting it up as a rival to the temple in Jerusalem. For at least 200 years, Jews have looked down on Samaritans and considered them to be unclean and unfaithful to God.

So Jesus makes a bold move when he sits down by Jacob’s well. Then a Samaritan woman comes to draw water, and Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink” (John 4:7). This request shocks the Samaritan woman — shocks her for several reasons. First, Jews are not supposed to have contact with Samaritans, and second, Jewish men are not supposed to have public conversations with women. According to Jewish wise men, “He that talks much with womankind brings evil upon himself.”

Now, men … I’m not suggesting that you stop talking with your wives or daughters or sisters. These words are from the ancient world, and Jesus clearly doesn’t endorse them. But we need to understand what is going on in this passage, so that it makes sense when the Samaritan woman asks, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (v. 9).

She simply doesn’t understand why Jesus is talking to her, a Samaritan and a woman.

But Jesus is on a mission from God, and he is not one to allow social or cultural barriers to keep him from doing the will of the Lord. “If you knew the gift of God,” says Jesus to the woman, 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” (v. 10). Jesus is hinting at his own identity as the Messiah, the gift of God, and he is suggesting that he can give her something special — something called “living water.”

But what is this special water? The Greek of the New Testament says hydōr zōn, which can be translated either “fresh, running water,” or “life-giving water.” When Jesus offers this gift of living water, the Samaritan woman first thinks he is talking about fresh, running water. That is why she says, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” (v. 11). She knows that you cannot get fresh water from a well without a bucket.

Jesus is talking about the other kind of hydōr zōn, however — life-giving water. Hydōr means “water,” which we still see in our English word “hydration,” and zōn comes from the Greek word for “life,” which we have turned into the English word “zoo.” Hydōr zōn — life-giving water. “Everyone who drinks of [well] water will be thirsty again,” says Jesus, “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” (vv. 13-14). The hydōr zōn that Jesus gives is not water at all — it is the gift of the Holy Spirit, which connects us to God and to Jesus for all time. It flows into us and through us, and brings life to the parts of us that feel the driest and most dead.

I’m a runner, and one of the hardest parts of marathon training is staying properly hydrated, especially on hot summer days. Last Monday, my son Sam and I went on a 20-mile training run, and all was going well until I hit a long, hard uphill climb at about mile 17. Sam, of course, had left his old man in the dust. The sun was baking down, and my water bottle had run dry. I didn’t know how I was going to finish, until I stumbled into downtown Vienna and refilled my bottle at a water fountain.

After a good long drink, I felt that my energy was coming back. It was as though the life was returning to my aching body. I finished the run — not particularly quickly, but alive and well.

In a similar way, the life-giving water of Jesus revives us when we are feeling dried out and discouraged, downtrodden and depressed. It brings forgiveness of sins … it gives us strength and hope … it satisfies our thirst for a connection with God … it offers refreshment, renewal, serenity, and joy … it carries the gift of eternal life.

Each and every one of us needs this water. We need it when our jobs are unsatisfying, and our supervisors are more clueless than the pointy-haired guy in “Dilbert.” We need it when we try to do the right thing, but keep making the same mistakes over and over and over. We need it when we feel so alone in the world, wondering if God really loves us and cares for us and is watching out for us.

Everyone needs this water, including the woman of Samaria. “Sir, give me this water,” she says to Jesus, “so that I may never be thirsty” (v. 15).