John 4:1-42 - Jesus is Water

I think most of you know by now that I love the woman at the well. While, Mary is the first female gospel preacher, preaching the good news of the resurrection to everyone else,  and is, in fact, the very first person to have ever preached on the resurrection, this Samaritan woman is the first woman to preach about the Jesus being the messiah. She is the first female preacher we find in the gospels and she is a powerful evangelistic preacher. Following her talk with Jesus there at the well that morning, she goes back and preaches to her whole town. And, “Many came to believe that day because of the woman's testimony.”

But what was she so excited about? What drove her into the village square to proclaim that the messiah was outside of town and they all should come meet him. What happened that got her so excited?  She went to draw water from the well. A pretty mundane task. And there was a man at the well. Again, this is not an unusual occurrence. Abraham servant, when he was sent out to find a wife for Isaac, met Rebekah at the well. Jacob met Rachel for the first time at a well. Moses met his wife Zipporah at a well. It is at a well where God meet Hagar and makes promises to her and later provides a well of water, when Abraham and Sarah had cast her out out of her camp. And there is even a scene in 1 Samuel where Saul meets several young women at a well. We can conclude that meeting people, even men at wells was a fairly common occurrence.

So she comes to the well, as part of her daily routine, and there is a man there, still not anything out of the ordinary. As she gets closer she notices that he is Jewish. Probably a little more out of the ordinary, but still probably nothing to go home and tell the family about. But then after she has begun to pull the water out and fill her jugs, something a little odd happens. He looks up at her and asks her for some water. This in itself was not so odd. After all the well was deep and he did not seem to have anything with which to retrieve water, and she clearly did. But the problem was that he was a Jew and she was a Samaritan. Jews did not go out of their way to talk to Samaritans. Not to mention that they would not share a jug, much cup with a Samaritan because Samaritans were unclean and therefore anything they touched was unclean, and for fear of becoming unclean themselves, they simply would not share anything much less a cup with a Samaritan.

Not one to beat around the bush or completely ignore social constructs even when others might, she asks him how it was that a he a Jewish man was asking her, a Samaritan woman.  And then Jesus answers her by telling her, if she really knew who it was who was asking her for a drink she would ask him for a drink.

But she is not taken in by this kind of foolish talk. He does not have a bucket to retrieve the water, why on earth would she (someone who actually did) ask him to get her some water. That was simply ridiculous! And she says so.

But then she noticed that he mentioned living water. Now although “living water”might not be a phrase with which we are familiar (you know outside of this passage), but “living water” was a phrase that had particular meaning to this woman to other people at this time and its' meaning not mystical and not at all religious, its' meaning was entirely practical. Living water was a common way of talking about a fresh spring; clean water, straight from the place from which is burst from the ground. In her attempt to figure out what this strange man is saying to her, she takes his reference to knowing a fresh spring, in the vicinity to this ancient well to which her peole have been coming for, forever, as some kind of insult to her and her people; because you know, the people who had lived here their whole lives might have notice that. So he asks him if he thinks he is better than Jacob, who found this water source and dug this well.

It is now that Jesus lets her know that he is not speaking of a literal spring, but is instead speaking more metaphorically of a water source from which one might drink and never be thirty again.  Water from this spring will burst forth and give eternal, abundant life. Life that is full, that is rich, filled with all goodness, all mercy, all wonder, all beauty.  The image Jesus gives her is of living water is the water that sprung up from the ground at creation, the rivers that flowed through the land of Eden. It spoke of life as it was at creation, life lived in communion with God. In that moment she knew that the life Jesus spoke of was life as it was meant to be. It meant living as she was created to live. In that moment she knew that she and every human who had ever walked the face of the earth had lived with a deep longing, a yearning. That life had always been live searching for a source of water, a sense of being that seemed to never be found. She was a deer, searching for water, longing for its coolness and suddenly she had burst forth from the underbrush and found it. And it was sitting there on the edge of that well she knew so well. When this water looked into her eyes he saw her, really saw her, and he knew her in ways that she did not even know herself.

When he told her about herself, when we revealed that he saw her, truly saw her. He did not simply tell her about the men in her life, about her sadness, her weakness, her failings. He did not simply speak of her place in society,  her living situation or even the reason she was there at the well at noon, instead of in the morning or the evening when her sisters from the village would be at the well, all the things she already knew, all the things he might have surmised or even heard in rumor or gossip, no when he spoke, when he told her about herself, he told her things she did not even know. When he looked at her suddenly she knew that he knew things that she had previously not even known. He showed her who she really was, showed her who she really could be, showed who she was meant to be, who she was created to be. In his look, in his words, he told her everything. She knew who she was. But not only that she in knowing who she was she saw who he was. The conversation went on from there and when he told her what she now knew to be true, that she was indeed speaking to the messiah, he was indeed the messiah, she could not contain herself. She left her jar there at the well and ran back to town and told them everything, “There was a man outside of town, he knew everything, he told her everything about herself. He knew her and and she knew herself. And, and, I think, possibly, maybe, he can not be, can he? I. .I. .I think he just might the messiah!

She had met a man, who water, living water, water that washed over her and revealed herself to her. She met a man and he was the messiah and he was water, living water in which she had bathed and had been washed clean, had been renewed, in whom she found she could be who she was created to be. She met the messiah, and he was water, living water, and when she drank from him, she found that she would never be thirty again, that the longing inside her soul had been quenched, that which she had lived her life in search of, had been found. She met the messiah and he was living water, which had sprung up inside of her, filled her to over flowing, it was bursting forth from within her, and she could not contain it. So she went into town and told them everything, told them all about the messiah at the well, the water in the man, the living waters, that was flowing forth, just outside their town, just waiting there, to be found, to find them, to show them who they were, to reveal to them everything they had never known, to show them what it meant to live eternal life. Come, come, come to the water, come to the well, come meet the messiah. Come discover who you are, come see who you can be, who you were meant to be, who you were created to be. Because when you meet the messiah, when you drink of the living water, Jesus changes everything. When we find relationship with the one and only living, son of God, we find that we are not who we know ourselves to be, we are so much more! When we find relationship with the one who died and lives again, we see, finally see who we were created to be and find that we can actually be that person, that when we are washed in the water, when we live in the water, we are able to be who we could never be on our own, we are changed, but not into someone we are not, into the person we were meant to be, we are changed into who we really are.

We have stood too long in the road of live, allowed the dust has settled onus, we are covered in mud spatter, it has covered our skin and our clothes, it has dried and is caked on. We have walked through life so long, like this that we have come to believe that we are the color dust, that our skin is truly made of scales of dried mud. We look at ourselves, and say this is who I am. This is who I know myself to be, I have always been like this, this is me.

Then we encounter the living water, her reaches up and wipes one small portion of our face clean, we did not even know we were dirty, we thought that was our face, we thought that was who we were, but now we see our skin, right there on our cheek and we are amazed. In that small space who we really can be is revealed. And we have a choice we can continue to live as we have always lived, we can continue to walk through life, dust covered and mud cake, or we can allow ourselves to be cleaned, to live as we were created to live, to be who we were meant to be.

We can allow Jesus to keep on scrubbing, to keep on cleaning to peel off the scales and reveal to us who we are. Or we can continue on, living life the way we are.

The thing most dangerous thing to say to ourselves this morning, would be to say, “I am clean. I do not need to be cleaned.” Or perhaps even, “I have been cleaned before. I am no longer need it.”

We all need to be cleaned, we all need to remain with the living living, water, our thirst is quenched, we are clean, we know who we are, our lives are eternal, full and rich and lived as they were meant to be, but as soon as we step away, as soon as we go anywhere, the dust from the road on which we walk comes up, the mud from passing wheels sprays us again, we move through life and without even noticing, without even paying attention, we move back to who we once were.

But Jesus invites us to partake of living water, water that will clean us, that will continually change us to who we can be, that will allow us to no longer be thristy again. To be truly washed clean, but that means living with the living water, that means dwelling with the one who will continually fill us, continually wash us, continually create us and recreate us, who will always remind us who we were meant to be and always be changing us so each minute, each day we are the person we can be, that each minute, each day we are closer who remaining the person we were meant to be, that each minute each day, we are made over into the person we were created to be. Holy, pure reflections of the the very one who cleanses us, examples of the holy pure love that called to us and pulled us out of the mud, who  created us from the dust of the earth, by living with the living water, in relationship with the living water, daily emerging ourselves in the living water we become holy women and men, who see ourselves for who we are, who we can be, who we were meant to be, who we are created to be, and know we can live into that person, that we can truly be the holy people God is calling us to be, because those the people God created us to be. We can live eternal lives, holy lives, sanctified lives; lived wholly immersed in the things of God, reflecting perfectly the image of God, sharing the love of God. We can be this woman, so full of all that Jesus had to tell her that she could do nothing else but go tell everyone she knew, invite her friends, her family, the people around her, to come see the one whom she met. When we are washed clean, when we are see who we really are and see we can actually be the people we were created to be, when we truly come to know the messiah, when we are daily made holy, sanctified, then we can not help but share what we know, WHO we know with those around us. Our lives become living testimonies to the goodness, the greatness, to the very love of God. We become aware of when to speak to people in our lives about spiritual things, about water, about life, about who we really are and to whom we belong. It becomes our passion to allow our lives, our words, our actions to be witnesses of the messiah we know, of the way life can be lived, of the riches, the freedom, the joy we know. That is just what holy people do. When we like this woman encountered Jesus, and find that suddenly we know who we are, when we are washed clean, sanctified, made holy, learn what it means to live as we were created to live, then we will be this woman. And not to put too fine a point on it, but if we call ourselves Christians, if we believe we have met the messiah, if we look down at ourselves and see that we are washed clean, that we have been made holy, sanctified and proclaim this to be true in our lives and do not find that we are a spring of living water,bursting forth with the good news that Jesus is the messiah, with the truth of the living water, with the good news of eternal life and the amaizing nature of being washed clean and made holy, then perhaps you have not really met the messiah, or perhaps you have not yet been washed clean, perhaps you do not know holiness. But the good news is Jesus is here today! The spring of living water is here this monrning! Come, meet the one who told me everything, who showed me who I was, who I am and who I can be! Come drink of the water, wash and be clean! Come know what it means to be holy! Know what it means to be THIS woman so full of the water that you can not help but be a fountain overflowing on the world around you.