I heard a marvelous story the other day... One day a wise man was out walking when it started to rain. He began to run, to try to stay ahead of the drops. An onlooker asked him, after the wise man had gotten to shelter, why he had run, it didn’t look wise to the observer. And the answer came, “I don’t want to step on the mercy.” Huh? What? I don’t get it.
The problem was, you see, that the original story had been in Turkish. And in Turkish, the words for “rain” and “mercy” are almost the same. So the wise man wasn’t trying to keep from getting wet, he was making a pun. And that got me to thinking about rain, and language, and mercy, and misunderstandings.
First of all, if any of you were thinking that Jesus was talking about physical water that would quench a physical thirst, John explains that the living water that Jesus was talking about was the Holy Spirit. So that’s one potential misunderstanding cleared up. You can’t drink the Holy Spirit out of a glass any more than you can step on mercy.
But there are a lot more misunderstandings about the Holy Spirit than just being confused by the metaphor Jesus is using. We get a glimpse of how confusing it can be when we examine the story of the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well in John 4.
This woman’s life was a mess. It wasn’t just that she was a Samaritan, although that was bad enough from the point of view of a good Jew. You may remember that Jews wouldn’t even speak to Samaritan men, much less women; most Jews traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem and back again would take the long way around rather than go through Samaria. The very dust of the roads might contaminate them! And here is Jesus talking to her! Something important must be afoot...
As Jesus pointed out during their conversation, she had had five husbands and was living unmarried with yet another man. So even if she had managed to avoid drowning in guilt, she must still have been in a lot of pain over those failed marriages. And to add insult to injury, she was also ostracized by her community. We know this because she was up at the well at noon, the hottest part of the day, a good time for taking a nap. Women never went for water at noon, they went at dusk or at dawn, when it was cool. And that is why this woman chose that time to go to the well. Because it was the office water cooler of her day. The village women gathered there to dish the dirt as much as for getting water, and she was probably one of their favorite topics. It was better to endure the heat of the sun than the sidelong glances or even open comments.
So clearly this was someone with some serious needs. And then Jesus shows up, strikes up a conversation, and says, "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." [v.10]
But she didn’t understand. She offered objection after objection. And many of the objections were exactly the same sort that we might hear when we try to explain Jesus to a non-believer.
First, she has that misunderstanding we tried to clear up right at the beginning. She thinks that Jesus was talking about natural physical water. “Sir,” she said, “you have no bucket, and the well is deep.” Now, if Jesus had been offering something like the goose that laid the golden egg, maybe a bucket that was always full no matter how many times she dipped water out for cooking or washing, she would never have to come up to the well again. This would be VERY convenient. It would make her life a lot easier. And she would never accidentally run into one of the village women.
Now, mind you, everything else in her life would still be the same. Even if she got running water right there in her kitchen, she would still be carrying around the pain and shame of her past, and the insecurity of her present. She just wouldn’t have to have her nose rubbed in it. But like most people, the Samaritan woman didn’t expect any relief for her deepest problems. How many people try to medicate their restless discontent, their lack of satisfaction with life, with physical remedies - anything from shopping to hypochondria? Not to mention drugs and alcohol.
Another problem that we run into when we try to medicate a spiritual problem with a physical solution is that the solution we’re focused on may look impossible. The woman was quite right when she pointed out that Jesus didn’t have a rope or bucket. Now of course we know that Jesus could have said “Come” to the water, and it would have flowed up out of the well into his hands. But that’s beside the point.
Why perform a miracle to solve a secondary problem, when the likely result would be that she’d stop looking for solutions to what was really wrong, deep down inside? How many people are disappointed when we don’t get what we ask for in prayer? We look at verses like "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” [Mt 7:7] So we wonder why we don’t get what we ask for or find what we are looking for. Especially when we read further and come to “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" [Mt 7:11]
Well, if we look at the parallel passage in Luke, “...How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" [Lk 11:13] we discover that we have made the same mistake the woman at the well did. The “good things” Jesus promised was the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, not anything superficial or temporary. The Holy Spirit is the best gift of all. If we settle for anything less, we will be cheating ourselves, and Jesus doesn’t want that. He came that we may have abundant life. [Jn 10:10]
What have you been asking God for that he hasn’t given you? Is there something lurking underneath that he might be wanting you to turn over to him? Something you’re not ready to look at, or something that you don’t think can be fixed? It's probably something you're not even aware of, and won't be until God has grown you to the point when you can understand it. Think about it.
Anyway you can see that when we expect a physical solution it can damage our faith. The woman said to Jesus, “Where would you get this water?” What she was really thinking was, “He can’t really give me what he is promising. Jesus can’t really deliver.” And sometimes we may fall into the same trap. We may think that because no physical solution is forthcoming, or because our problem is too big, that Jesus’ invitation to come and drink of the Living Water isn’t really for us.
Now, since everyone here already knows about Jesus, we may technically have more faith than the woman did. But in the end, some of us may come to the same conclusion. You may think that whatever you’re dealing with is your thorn in the flesh, just your cross to bear. And that may be true. BUT if God doesn’t fix what you’re focused on, it isn’t because your burden is too big for him. It’s that he’s got something better for you than just a temporary fix.
Another misunderstanding the woman at the well fell into was thinking that Jesus was trying to get her to abandon her religious tradition or practices
The woman said to Jesus, “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well?” She had a lot of pride in the well. The Jews maybe had their temple in Jerusalem, but the Samaritans had the very well dug by Jacob himself.
Religious pride can keep us from seeking a deeper, different relationship with God. Even if our religion isn’t giving us what we want or need, we are often reluctant to let go our grip on it and reach out for something new and untried. There’s a joke about the seven last words of the church: “we’ve never done it this way before.” I’ve also heard it said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. This woman had followed her religious traditions all her life, but it had never actually done anything for her. Yet she didn’t want to give up those traditions. She wanted any solution to fit neatly within the framework of those traditions. Almost everyone - including me - hates change. We’d rather stick with the same thing, even if it doesn’t work, rather than risk trying something new. We actually got a terrific gift when the church burned down over 10 years ago... we discovered that the only tradition that really matters is the tradition of being committed to Jesus. But traditions can get built almost overnight, and we need to be alert to the dangers of replacing a vital and challenging relationship with Jesus Christ with a comfortable relationship with our church family.
There are many people - even Christians - who have not experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. Some even believe that the Holy Spirit is not active in the present as he was in the early days of the church, and so they do not seek him. Or they may think that receiving the Holy Spirit may mean something outlandish like speaking in tongues or shouting Hallelujah during the worship service, and you’re not really sure that this is for you. But there’s a far simpler check for the presence of the Holy Spirit. Listen to the end of the story. It’s a happy one.
The same woman who had once been so filled with pain and shame that she went for water at the hottest time of day in order to avoid her neighbors, forgot all about that and went back to the village and told everybody. Her shame and hurt had been washed away in the joy of knowing Jesus. Her spirit was healed. The outcast became the salvation of the whole village, because she had drunk at the spring of living water. Jesus’ promise had been fulfilled in her: “Out of her flowed streams of living water.” Because she believed, others lived.
Some of you may be like the Samaritan woman whom Jesus touched that day. Maybe you are haunted by betrayal or broken dreams or loneliness or shame. Or maybe everything in your life is pretty good but you’re thirsty for something more. Wherever you’re at, Jesus offers both a gift and a challenge. “ Let the one who believes in me drink!” Just believing in your head isn’t enough. We have to drink, as well. We have to fill ourselves with Jesus. That is, we have to let ourselves be filled with Jesus. You’re here because you believe. But are you drinking?
The anthem we just sang asks the Holy Spirit to come like the rain. We know about needing rain, don’t we? New Jersey has been one of the states hardest hit by the drought. Do you know why? It’s partly because there hasn’t been as much rain as usual... But a lot of it has to do with the fact that our farmland is being - or I should say has been - paved over with so much development that instead of sinking into the ground to replenish the aquifer, rain runs right off into the Atlantic or the Delaware or the Hudson. And so this week’s rain has been very welcome. Except that it came on the weekend, when we have important things to do.
We’d rather have it come when it’s convenient, wouldn’t we, like in Camelot, where, according to King Arthur when he was courting Guenevere, the rain fell only at night.
But the Holy Spirit comes when God wills. It comes like fire and wind, as well as rain, and as Jesus said, “the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with every¬one who is born of the Spirit." [Jn 3:8]
If we are not willing to let go of our control, not willing to trust God with our lives, we will not be able to experience the Holy Spirit. Because he is a gentleman. Like the mercy in Portia’s speech in the Merchant of Venice, the Holy Spirit falls as a gentle rain from heaven, not as a gully washer, flash flood downpour. If we’re so paved over with life’s all-consuming little details that our aquifers are inaccessible, the blessings God has for us, this great gift of eternal life that is ours even in the present, just runs right off. The Holy Spirit is grieved when we close ourselves off to him, but he doesn’t force us. He doesn’t coerce. If we’re going to be full enough of Jesus to spill over into the world, we have to spend daily time with him, drinking our own fill of his love and wisdom, so that we simply can’t help but spill over to the world.
Are you so full of Jesus, so full of his Holy Spirit, that his life flows out of you onto your friends and neighbors? Would you like to be? Come, Holy Spirit, like the rain.
