February 28, 2008

The conversation that day at Jacob’s Well between Jesus of Nazareth and a woman of Samaria is one that should never have take place according to every social rule and boundary. A man publicly speaking with an unknown woman--a social “no-no.” A Jew speaking with Samarian--absolutely not. The animosity and alienation of Jew and Samarian went back centuries and ran very deep. But in the world Jesus inhabits, the spiritual world, God’s world of Spirit and Truth, the world of divine fullness and life, there are no boundaries. He breaks the boundaries because for him they don’t exist. He feeds on doing the will of God and revealing the Way, the Truth and the Life of God. He will not allow boundaries of any kind to stand in the way of him doing the will of the Father who sent him to the world.

He knows who he is, he knows where he comes from and he knows why he’s here. Jesus is life-giving water wanting to pour the fullness of God into thirsty people. He roams the earth look for people thirsting for God so he can fill them up with the living water of God. And he sees one coming his way at Jacob’s Well in the noonday sun.

A lone woman, a lonely Samaritan woman who is thirsty for God without being aware of her thirst. That truly is a hard time for us. Having a deep thirst for God and yet not knowing or being conscious of it. So, we go looking for all kinds of ways to quench that spiritual thirst and still find ourselves coming up parched and thirsting, dry and dehydrated. We go over and over again to all sorts of wells to draw water which will never satisfy the deepest thirst of our spirits. We go through life unaware we are created spiritual beings inside physical bodies, yet we give our attention only to the physical, material, outward dimensions of life, believing that’s where we will find what we need when it is the inner drink and food we need.

The disciples were not with Jesus, we are told, because they had gone off to buy food! They are focused on the physical and are not aware that they are with the Living Water and the Bread come down from heaven! And when they returned to Jesus from the city with the food they had bought and are shocked to see Jesus speaking with a woman, what do they say to Jesus? “Rabbi, have something to eat,” which was when he told them, “I have food to eat you don’t know about.” And then still not getting it, the disciples say among themselves, “Did someone already bring him something to eat?” And the truth is that, yes, someone did.

The woman they were shocked to see in conversation with Jesus--she becomes aware of her spiritual thirst and receives living water. And in that moment she gave Jesus what he first asked for: “Give me a drink.” In her receiving living water, Jesus was given the food he feeds on. Not the physical food the disciples offered, but the food of doing the will of the One who sent him. He feeds on doing the will of God. That will for Jesus is to find thirsty people and give them a drink of living water, pour to overflowing the fullness of God into their lives.

She is thirsty and he is water and he wants to open the well to give her a drink. And when she drinks from the spiritual waters of that inner well, Jesus gets what he asks for. “Give me a drink.”

We can go through life unaware of inner food and drink, like the disciples. Or we can become aware of our inner thirst, like the woman, and find in Jesus the flowing source of living water. There is so much we can learn from her and see in her.

We watch in her conversation with Jesus how she moves from thirst to trust. And that move from inner thirst to living water begins for her by asking questions.

The first statement out of the mouth of the woman at the well is a question for the man at the well who says to her, “Give me a drink.” “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

“Why are you speaking to me? Why do you ask me for a drink? Why are you breaking social rules and taboos? What kind of well are you talking about? And how can you draw out its water without a bucket? Are you greater than Jacob, who gave us this well? Is your well better than Jacob’s Well? Sir, where do you get that living water?”

Questions, questions, question. It is through her asking question of Jesus that Jesus is able to begin to open her inner well so it’s living water will come gushing out.

To open the interior well God has placed in every one of us and to move from thirst to trust, you have to ask questions and stay in conversation with Jesus. Bring your questions into the presence of Jesus. Ask your questions. Pray your questions. Engage the Word of God with faith-questions. Do serious spiritual, theological, biblical reflection as a process of seeking and asking and finding. Asking questions is part of the process of faith formation.

The church is the spiritual community of Jesus where thirsty people must feel free and safe to bring our questions and ask them without fear of being rejected or ridiculed, or being charged with heresy. Heresy is about conclusions drawn, not questions asked. There are no heretical questions when God as Spirit and Truth is being pursued. God can handle our questions and we shouldn’t be afraid to let them be asked in the presence of Christ in scripture, in prayer, in study, in reflection. The church, the body of Christ, just as it was that day at Jacob’s well long ago and far away, is where thirsty people are encouraged to stay in dialogue with Jesus on our spiritual quest.

The words by Ken Medema in his hymn about the church gathering mean so much to me: Out of need and out of custom, we have gathered here again;/ to the gathering we are bring love and laughter, grief and pain./ Some believing, some rejoicing, some afraid, and some in doubt,/ come we now our questions voicing, we would search these matters out.[1]

And as the woman asks her questions, Jesus tells her there are 2 things she has to know if she is to receive in her thirsty spirit living water. If she knows these two things, she will be given that quenching drink. And through her questioning, she comes to know these 2 crucial things Jesus says she has to know.

First, she has to know “the gift of God,” and second, she has to know who she’s talking to, “who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink.’” If she knows in heart and head these two things, she would ask Jesus for living water and she would receive it.

When we come to know to the bottom of our being the living water as eternal life is the gift of God and know who is saying to us, “Give me a drink,” he then give us living water than never stops flowing. John wrote of Jesus at the end of chapter 3, “he gives the Spirit without measure” (3:34).

The well within us becomes a fountain. There is no lower a bucket to go down and draw out the water. Once the well within you is opened up, the water rushes up to you and gushes up eternally, neverendingly. The spiritual water Jesus gives without measure as a gift never stops. Physical thirst will always reoccur. Spiritual thirst will not come again. “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.” This is the gift of God--the free offer of living water--and this gift is the first thing we have to know.

And the second is knowing who it is we are talking to, who it is that is saying to us, “Give me a drink.” Know who was speaking to her was a deepening experience for the woman. Through her conversation and questions with Jesus, she deepens in knowing Jesus and participating in his identity.

At first she sees and knows him as a man, a Jewish man, who should never be speaking to her. But he does speak and interact with her. And what he says speak to her about who she is and how thirsty she is and the many empty, false attachments she has had in her life that have never fulfilled or made her fruitful. And through what he says to her about her thirsty spirit, she comes to see and know him more deeply as a prophet of God. And then Jesus reveals to this thirsty woman his deepest identity when she speaks of the coming Messiah. “Jesus said to her, `I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’”

Know the gift of God and know who is speaking to you, and now she does. Jesus the Jewish man becomes Jesus the prophet who becomes Jesus the Messiah. And then she knows who is speaking to her as the “I am.” “Tell them, `I am,’ sent you, God out of a burning bush tells Moses.

Now centuries later this woman at the Jacob’s well comes to know and trust she is looking into the human face and hearing the very voice of that “I am.” The one who embodies the actual being of God, who makes visible and available the very fullness of God, who incarnates the Eternal Word and imparts into human beings the being and love of God.

She knows the gift of God and who is saying to her, “Give me a drink.” And in that moment, he gives her living water. He pours the endless life and love of God into her. She shares in who he is and she participates in what flows through him--a stream of water gushing up to eternal life.

She leaves her water jar behind at Jacob’s well. She has more on her mind and in her heart now than physical life. Now she is in touch with something beyond or beneath or behind the physical. She has opened up and tapped into an inner fountain from which she could drink spiritual water and life anywhere, any time.

And when you have found living water, you go and point other people to where to get it for themselves. She becomes a witness to Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the I am of God. She returns to the city and shares her experience with others. She tells them he told her she had a deep thirst for God and he gave her living water.

She invites them, true to form, with a question concerning the Messiah to have a well-experience of their own. Her story attracted others to Jesus. Many, we are told, came to believe in Jesus the Living Water because of her testimony. “Many more,” we are then told, came to believe apart from her testimony and came to know the gift of God and who they were talking with as none other than “truly the Savior of the world.”

We are thirsty and he is water. Moving from thirst to trust is coming to know the gift of God and to discover in Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, the I am, a depth and glory of God’s presence we could never imagine or find anywhere else. And when that eternal stream of living water he gives is released and gushes up in us, we point other thirsty souls to him so they, too, will move from thirst to trust.

[1] Ken Medema, “The Gathering,”