"Living Water"

The New Testament reading at church today was John 4. You know, the familiar story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. It's one of my favorites. I love it on so many levels.

Jesus shows his radical nature in this exchange. Defying societal and cultural boundaries by conversing with the Samaritan woman. Who are we, then, to turn our backs on the outcasts, the marginalized in our communities?

Jesus offers the woman the living water. "...those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty."

Imagine never being thirsty again.

Our thirst. Our appetite for the things in life that in the end...and I mean the real end...won't matter seems insatiable.

Money, power, material goods.

I know of what I speak. Few are immune.

Aren't we really just trying to fill the empty spot within us?

I feel fundamentally unlovable. So I ceaselessly seek attention from others.

I feel fundamentally unattractive so I ceaselessly spend more than I should on myself--clothes, hair, make up, accessories. And tell myself my profession demands it.

"Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again."

In the living water Jesus offers a different way to live. Who is brave enough to accept it?

Consider the woman at the well with her five husbands and the man with whom she lives out of wedlock. We don't ever learn why the string of men in her life. This fact hints at and her open response to Jesus tell us she is a women clearly in search of a different kind of love.

A different kind of water.

The woman is an outcast even within her own 'lower class' community. She goes to the well under the heat of the midday sun, likely to avoid her judgemental neighbors.

And yet, presented with the man she suspects is the Messiah she has the courage to return in the light of day to that community to share the Good News. And not just the courage. But the generosity. Put yourself in her place. Could you? Would you?

She even leaves her water jug behind. A short sentence in this story but weighty with significance. Vessel of life. Likely one of her most important possessions. She sheds it along with all other life burdens so that she may run unencumbered into her new life.

What do you need to leave behind before you can accept a new way of living? Christ's way of living?

It is also an acknowledgement, I think, that for as important as well water is to to the woman..to all desert people...it is the Living Water water that will save her.

Save us.

We can drink and drink and drink of the things of the things of the material world . Or we can consider a new life in the way of Jesus.

It may seem an easier choice for the woman at the well or for the marginalized in our own communities. They have everything to gain. And much less to lose. We have so many things. So many precious things.

And, yet, why does it seem I'm never quite satisifed?

Perhaps I am drinking the wrong water.