2nd June Trinity 2009, No Water

June Trinity

John 4, 1-26

  

At this time the Lord became aware that it was rumored among the Pharisees that Jesus was finding and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, though his disciples did.) Therefore he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

Now he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was also there. Jesus was weary with the journey, and he sat down by the well. It was about midday, the sixth hour.

Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples had gone into town to buy bread.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews avoided all contact with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew how the divine world now draws near to men, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you would ask him, and he would give you the water of life [the living water].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where will you draw the living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him, his thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again, and need never come here again to draw.”

He said to her, “Go call your husband and show him to me.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You have well said that you have no husband. Five husbands you have had, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that only in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship.”

Jesus answered, “Believe me, o woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship a being you do not know; we worship what we do know. That is why salvation had to be prepared for among the Jews. But the hour is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father with the power of the spirit and in awareness [knowledge] of the truth.”

Then the woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I AM he who stands before you and speaks to you.”

2^nd June Trinity

June 14, 2009

John 4: 1-26

We need water to live. In the ancient desert communities, even today, the source for water was a well. The water itself was deep underground, and one had to lower a vessel down to that source and draw the heavy water back up.

For the ancient peoples, their ‘water of life’, the source of spiritual meaning in their lives, their knowledge of eternal life, came through their ancestry. The gospel reading centers around the ancestral well of Jacob. Over time the connection to the sacred source had receded deeper and deeper. It became harder and harder to access.

Christ came to unlock a new source of the life-giving waters of God. This source is to be given to each individual human being, regardless of ancestry. He delivers this message to a Samaritan woman, whose bloodline had long ago diverged from His. He speaks to the woman of the gift of a spring, a gushing fountainhead, where the water of the meaning of life rises and overflows forever. This well spring, this source is to be found within the heart of each individual human being.

“Whoever drinks the water I will give him, his thirst [for the eternal spirit] will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.” John 4: 13     

Christ and the woman are watching us. The poet says:

Don't say, don't say there is no water

to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall

…The woman of that place…. was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were

refreshed.

Don't say, don't say there is no water.

That fountain is there among its scalloped

green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there

with its quiet song and strange power

to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1]  Denise Levertov, “The Fountain”, http://www.poetrychaikhana.com/L/LevertovDeni/Fountain.htm