Sermon Index
Lent 3, March 19, 2017
GOSPEL LESSON: John 4:5–26 (27–30, 39–42) [The Samaritan woman at the well.]So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the town and were coming to him.
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
Jesus was talking to the women next to a well, and so he talked about water, “Living water.” “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.” The woman thought Jesus was talking about some sort of magic water that if she drank it she would never thirst again. That would be better than having to carry the heavy water jar every day to the well. She would be happy with modern indoor plumbing. She thinks Jesus is teasing her, so she teases back, until she sees that he is a prophet who can know about her personal life. Jesus is not teasing; he is telling her the Gospel truth! They are at a well, so Jesus talks about a subject that will be of natural interest and lead into the Gospel: “living water.”
Many homes throughout the world do not have running water. It is the same as in ancient Palestine. Sometimes people have to walk a long distance from their house to the village well. If it is like in the Bible story, everyone has to bring their own bucket which is on a long rope. This is lowered down into the deep well. Then they can carry the water home. Indoor plumbing would be nice. It would be like a bucket that never goes dry. Carrying heavy buckets of water is hard work, it makes a person thirsty. We all know what it is like to be thirsty, especially in the hot Okinawan summer. Wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus could make things convenient or give us a refreshing drink to quench our thirst for good? In the same way, we want Jesus to help us in our problems, to give us money to buy what we think we need. We want Jesus to satisfy all our desires, all our “thirsts.” We want that sort of “living water,” like a river that overflows its banks, an over-flowing bank account. But that is not what Jesus was talking about.
Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water (of the well) 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.” This living water gives eternal life. It does not settle for merely quenching our thirst temporarily. It is more than a convenient modern miracle, it is salvation. What is this “living water” and how does Jesus give it to us? There are two possible ways to understand it, and as is often the case in the Gospel of John, Jesus probably meant both at the same time.
First, the living water is Jesus’ teaching or revelation. It is the Word of God.
★ Proverbs 13:14 says, “The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life.”
★ Also, Proverbs 18:4, “The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook.”
★ In Isaiah 55:1, God invites people to hear so that their souls may live, “All you who are thirsty come to the water.”
★ And of course there is the beautiful Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
★ Also Psalm 23, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He makes me like down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul…..my cup overflows.”
The Word of God is living water. It is not stagnant. It is life-giving water, it give eternal life.
Have you ever been thirsty for the Word of God? When I first came to Japan and still didn’t know any Japanese, I had to attend church at a Japanese congregation. After awhile, I really wanted to hear the Gospel, so during the sermon I read theological books that did give me the Gospel word. I enjoyed the hymns because I knew many of them in English. I learned to enjoy the liturgy: the words were different, but the meaning was the same and I knew that meaning by heart -- in my heart. I often get upset when I listen to someone talk in church, whether during the sermon or a casual time, and all I get is dry, dusty words that do not quench my thirsty spirit. But when I feel the guilt of my sin like a scorching heat, I speak the prayer of confession, and my heart thirsts to hear the promise of God’s forgiveness and is restless until in faith I receive that forgiveness and grace. I understood the words of absolution. I knew the meaning of the sign of the cross. Those words sounded like cool, sweet, living water. It was the same with Holy Communion.
Jesus knew what it was like to be thirsty. Not only at the well in Samaria, but also in the wilderness for 40 days and then on the cross he said, “I thirst.” It was a thirst put upon him by all the sin and suffering of the world. Cool water could not quench this thirst, only the blood that was shed on the cross could. This sacrifice for forgiveness and grace is the true living water that overflows to give us eternal life.
The “living water” is the gospel-word of God’s salvation, and the “living water” is also the Holy Spirit which Jesus would give. Listen to John 7:37-39, “on the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” In 6:63 Jesus says, “The Spirit gives life.”
The meaning of the term “living water” is both the Word and the Spirit, and we do not have to choose between the Word or Spirit, because it is the Spirit who inspires the Word of God and who also reveals the Word of God and brings the Gospel into our hearts. This is the living water that gives us eternal life.
There is also the symbolism of Baptism in today’s passage. We don’t drink the water in Baptism, it is a washing of forgiveness and regeneration, a drowning and rebirth. But Baptism is a “spring of waster welling up to eternal life.” St. Paul in I Corinthians 12:13 says, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
The woman at the well did receive that living water that day. You can watch her faith grow: she meets Jesus as a stranger, then calls him a prophet, and then she confesses him as the Messiah. And then her living faith flows out and she tells the people in town, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” And those town people too drank the living water of faith and confessed, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Before you reach for the bottle of sports drink, before you try to satisfy your lusts and longings and cravings, before you go out to conquer the world; quench your spiritual thirst with the Word of God, with prayer, song, and worship. The Holy Spirit will give you the water of eternal life.
Amen.
Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church