Living water for a thirsty soul

John 4.4-42

We seek the things of this world. At the very basic we seek water and food

Jesus here asks the Samaritan woman for a drink. He is tired and thirsty.
His disciples ask him if he wants something to eat because they think he is hungry

But there is another kind of hunger. A hunger for spiritual food. A hunger and thirst for righteousness, for the Kingdom of God, for God himself.

I guess we could say that there is the water and food which washes and refreshes and feeds us on the outside – and the water and food which washes and refreshes and feeds us deep on the inside.

So, when his disciples ask Jesus if he wants something to eat, he says to the disciples that he has other food – real food – which is to do the will of his Father

And Jesus says to the Samaritan woman that just as he has asked her for physical water, so she should be asking him to give living water – water which is the gift of God, which will never run out and which will satisfy us for eternity.

And this water will cleanse, refresh and give life

This water that God offers us washes us clean

The woman says to Jesus, ‘Give me this water’. She has missed the point, because she thinks that if she has this life giving water she doesn’t need to come daily to the well.

And Jesus answers her, ‘Go call your husband’.

She asks for living water and Jesus immediately spotlights a pretty significant stain in her life.

Her relationships are a mess.

Commentators remark that maybe she was seeking love, or trying to find even a half decent man. Maybe she was someone who just made bad choices, or could not be committed to faithfulness. Or she had simply chosen to live this way.

We do not know

And interestingly Jesus makes no comment. When it seems that she changes the subject – by immediately talking about religion (which mountain should we worship on?) - he doesn’t go back to it. And he doesn’t tell her to leave him.

He is simply saying to her, ‘I see’.

And that is what he does with us. He does look at our lives and he sees us. He sees the good, but he also sees the stains in our lives. They may be visible to others, or they may not. But he can see the lust, the wrong desires, the fear, the self-centredness, the envy and resentments. He sees the false things, the false gods that we hunger and thirst for – that we pursue to our own hurt and to the hurt of others.  And he also sees those things that we have done which have both shamed us, damaged others and also driven us away from other people.

And if we are prepared to ask him for the living water, he will give us that water. But it means he will begin to wash us clean – on the inside. He begins to get rid of the rubbish in us and to help us to become the people he created us to be.

And if we have come to him, he doesn’t condemn us. In his love for us, he has already taken the condemnation onto himself. He simply lets us know that he knows and he sees.

And when we come to confession – whether in church in our home in our daily prayers

We are not letting God know something that God did not already know. We are simply saying to him, ‘I am beginning to see myself as you see me. And I recognise that this is wrong, and I ask for your power to help me change’.

This water that Jesus offers refreshes us

Jesus gives this woman something new to place at the centre of her life.

He offers to give her a new desire, a new love which will begin to reshape all her other loves.

He offers to put worship of God at the centre of her being – life giving worship.

We often talk about seeking God. But Jesus here talks about God seeking us. He says that the Father seeks those who will worship him in Spirit and Truth.

That is why Jesus is talking with the woman at the well. The Father is seeking her.

And I wonder who God is seeking through us? 

The very fact that he has called you, means that he is probably seeking those you love. The very fact that he has put you in the house where you live probably means that he is seeking those who live close by.

Pray for them. Pray for those opportunities where you can genuinely serve them, and when possible, talk with them. And when appropriate, as one who is their servant, do invite them along to church, or to a lunch or to the men’s prayer breakfast. 

I notice that Jesus speaks of worship in Spirit and Truth.

They cannot be separated.

When the Spirit comes and lives in us, he will start to transform how we see things and people. We will begin to see them as he sees them, as they truly are. We will see them as beloved of God, created by him with a unique destiny, part of us – so that what happens to them affects us, and we will see what they could become in him.

And we cannot separate Spirit from truth and say that it is all about feeling spiritual and that  you can believe whatever you want to believe so long as the Spirit is right.

That is a quite modern idea.

But Jesus is quite blunt. He says clearly that ‘Salvation is from the Jews’.  

God did choose a specific historic people to be his people, to live his way and to be his message bearers.  
And Jesus is the person who all that history leads up to.

So when the woman asks about the Messiah, Jesus says something astonishing:

‘I who speak to you am he’

And that is one reason why there are grounded moments in our worship: when we go back to the sources, hear the bible read and the reader says, ‘This is the Word of the Lord’, and we declare the truths of the Christian faith in the creed

But I also note that Jesus says that worship is not about the externals: this mountain or that mountain; this music or that music, this liturgy or that liturgy; happy clappy or choral.

Because worship is about meeting with the Father, encountering the Spirit of God - not the God of our imagination (we are masters of self-deception) - but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

Worship – time spent in the presence of God, seeking the God who is seeking us, serving the God who has served us  – really can be the most life-giving refreshing encounter that we can have. When we spend time with God it can touch our soul and restore our vision.

The Psalmist wrote

‘The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his names sake’.

 And this water that Jesus offers us will bubble up into new life in us

“The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4.14)

The Samaritan woman is so overwhelmed by Jesus, by this encounter, that she rushes back to the city and tells people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything that I have ever done!’

Actually, he hadn’t. He had just told her about her husbands. But she knew that she was known.

And she says, ‘He cannot be the Messiah can he?’

It is bubbling up inside her. And it is so sad when it stops bubbling up inside of us.

And that invitation ‘Come and see’ is a key invitation in John’s gospel

Jesus says to the disciples who ask him, ‘Where do you live?’ (it is a huge question!) by simply saying ‘Come and see’. Spend time with me.

And when the people in the town meet with Jesus, they ask him to spend time with them.

The Samaritan woman came to the well carrying a jar for water.

But after meeting Jesus she leaves the jar behind - she has discovered the spring.

And now she herself becomes the jar that carries the living water to her town. 

Of course, we need physical food and water.

But if we want to live, to really live, and to live for ever, we can ask Messiah, God’s King, our Lord Jesus Christ for his living water.

And in asking him to give us living water and living bread, we are actually asking him to give us himself.

And he, and his Spirit, will come into us (just as physical water enters us when we drink) and he will cleanse us, refresh us and create in us a spring that bubbles up into eternal life