Thirst

Thirst

12th March 2023

Exodus 17: 1-7

John 4: 7-19

In the Gospel passage,

the encounter is between Jesus and a Samaritan woman,

beside a well.

What sort of encounter is this?

Last Sunday we heard about the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus the Pharisee.

Does this woman have a similar encounter to Nicodemus?

Like Nicodemus, she is confronted with Jesus’ radical newness…

her categories are turned upside-down.

Like Nicodemus, she struggles to understand what Jesus is talking about.

But (unlike Nicodemus) she is open to this radical newness,

and for Jesus to change her life.

She sees Jesus understands her experiences and doesn’t condemn her.

She sees he’s not intimidated by barriers of race or gender

– he relates to her as a human being.

She sees that Jesus breaks down barriers.

Religion, culture, society will try to tell us who are those who meet God.

…those who have cultivated spiritual insight,

theological education,

who devote themselves to prayerful discipline.

But the New Testament tells us anyone can meet God.

including an outcast woman and drawing water in the heat of the day.

…And Mary (another lay woman) in the garden on Easter morn.

We don’t have a tame God

(like we think we can ‘flick a switch to activate God!’).

We can’t predict who God will meet with. It’s wide open!

Did you notice in the passage how Jesus and woman are talking about water, and then quite suddenly Jesus says to her

‘‘Go, call your husband…” (v16)

It seems like Jesus has changed the subject.

Having talked with her about this ‘living water’ he turns to her personal life; her very specific moral situation:

“Go call you husband…”

Jesus isn’t changing the subject.

He’s confronting her assumption that she doesn’t have a spiritual thirst.

She wants physical water:

“give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” (v15)