Quench Your Thirst With Living Water!

This reading from John 4 uses something from everyday life that is intended to give us a powerful connection to spiritual truth. It’s supposed to touch our head and our heart and impact our emotions. But I fear that it is lost on us. What am I talking about? It’s just plain water. Well, I guess drinking water specifically.

Here is what I mean. In the account of Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, water is a central theme. And it’s important for us to know that in the setting of our Gospel Lesson it took effort to get water. It wasn’t always clean. And it wasn’t uncommon for people to get sick and even die because of not having safe water to drink. Although there are perhaps many things that we take for granted in our modern world I think one of the biggest items is water that is safe to drink, easily accessible, and relatively inexpensive.

So, friends in Christ, what can we do to connect with the important truths found in our Gospel Lesson? First of all, it might be good to have a reminder of how fortunate we are to have the drinking water we so easily take for granted. And then, perhaps more importantly, we need to identify the things that make us “thirsty” in other ways that have nothing to do with water.

According to statistics from the World Health Organization over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries. Also, globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with feces. Microbiologically contaminated drinking water can transmit diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio. Those account for almost 500,000 deaths each year. Those facts might help to open our eyes to its context and connect our thoughts with our Gospel Lesson—in which, once again, water is used to teach a spiritual lesson.

There is some good news to report regarding drinking water. In the most recent analysis 74% of the global population used a safely managed drinking-water service—that is, one located on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination. Since we are among those who have safe and clean drinking water it might be most helpful for us to transition from physical water to the numerous things that make us thirsty in other ways—that is wanting satisfaction or fulfillment in some person, place, or thing and not finding it.

So, let’s dig into the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday from John 4 and use both ideas of “water” and “thirst” as the central ideas for our sermon together. Let’s use this theme to guide our focus on Jesus’ interaction with a Samaritan woman at a water well as you hear the invitation to:

QUENCH YOUR THIRST WITH LIVING WATER!

I. Recognize the thirst sin causes in you

II. Drink the living water Jesus offers you

Perhaps it goes without saying, but this is a lengthy Gospel Lesson! I’ll have to be brief as I give you some of the background information. Following John’s “paradigm of personal interaction” we have another “one on one” situation. Most of the Gospel Lesson for today is just about Jesus’ and a Samaritan woman. You may recall how that is one of the things that makes John’s Gospel a little different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Larger sections of John are dedicated to Jesus’ interaction with individuals. Think of how John 3 records the familiar one on one encounter between Jesus and Jewish leader named Nicodemus. John 4 has the Samaritan woman introduced in our Gospel reading this morning. It also has the account of one “royal official” who came to Jesus asking him to heal his son. John 5 tells us about a crippled man Jesus healed at the pool of water called Bethesda. All of John 9 is the account of Jesus healing one particular blind man. John 11 tells us about Jesus’ conversations with Martha and Mary and then his raising of Lazarus from the dead. And then five chapters of John’s Gospel records Jesus’ conversation with just his disciples on Maundy Thursday.

Now for the immediate context of our Gospel Lesson. John tells us, “So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.” Although I am sure many people recognize the meaning of the words “good Samaritan” far fewer people know the history of the Samaritans referenced in the Bible. The Samaritans were a racially mixed people that lived in the central part of Israel. They were the descendants of non-Jews who were forcibly settled in Israel by the Assyrians hundreds of years before Jesus. Not only were they a mix of races their religion was also a mix of Judaism and other ideas outside of the Bible. We hear about some of these significant racial and religious realities separating the Jews and Samaritans in our Gospel Lesson.