Getting Real with God

Read John 4:1-26

"Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" John 4:10-14

We know the feeling of thirst. Perhaps not the thirst of the dying but at least we know that feeling of needing to drink to quench a nagging thirst. Water, we need it for life. Only a fool lives with thirst when their is refreshing water at hand.

Jesus was crossing cultural boundaries. He was speaking with a Samaritan woman. Jews didn’t mix with their unclean cousins and respectable Jewish men didn’t fraternise with women unchaperoned. She has been divorced 5 times and ostracised by her community for sleeping around. She was the victim of segregation and persecution. Yet this woman of poor reputation is the person Jesus chooses to reveal his identity as the Messiah who gives eternal life.

They meet at the well. She banters about water, trips to the well and that his offer sounds like a labour-saving device. He cuts through her smalltalk and identifies her deep thirst—failed relationships and rejection. She is wrong-footed for a moment and realises he is a prophet. Then she rights herself and asks a good theological question—which mountain? (or was it more small talk?).

Jesus gets to the heart, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

She makes a last attempt at getting this conversation under control, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus delivers the bombshell”: “I who speak to you am he.”

Tomorrow we see how this encounter with Jesus ends. Spoiler alert, the whole town gets converted! Later in Jesus’ preaching ministry he will attend a Festival of Water at the temple and declare himself ‘living water’. His promise is that streams of living water will overflow in those who come come to Jesus by faith.

Have you had your thirst quenched by Jesus. Is that living water overflowing? On my desk I have made a sign to remind myself to read the Bible regularly. It simply says in bold marker, “Drink you fool!”

RevGeoff