5th June Trinity 2008, Thirsty Fish

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 [Si’-kahr], 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.”

5^th June Trinity

June 15, 2008

John 4: 1-26

Sometimes a person is too ill to take anything by mouth, and it becomes necessary to give fluids directly into the bloodstream. As a result the person feels no thirst, for thirst is quenched in another way.

In this gospel reading, Christ meets a woman drawing water from an ancient well. It was a well established by Jacob the Patriarch and over the centuries had quenched many a thirst. But over those same centuries, mankind had become more and more ill. This illness produced a deep existential thirst that needed to be quenched in another way.

Divine Physician

The hope was that this thirst for meaning, a thirst for guidance and purpose, could be quenched by the five senses, represented by the woman’s five husbands. She is the Soul, looking everywhere for her missing half, for her completion. She looks for meaning through taste and touch, through sight and sound and scent. She looks to the past and to the ancient ways; she looks for purpose in high worship on the mountain. But no longer does any of this suffice. This experience is captured by Rumi:

I have a thirsty fish in me

that can never find enough

of what it’s thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean![1]

Humanity’s soul is ill. She needs the World Physician who will quench our deep thirst another way. “Whoever drinks the water that I will give her, her thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I will give her will become in her a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”  John 4:14

Through our union with Christ, our deep existential thirst will be quenched, for we will be hooked up to the Source; we will find our way to the great Ocean, drinking in, filling ourselves with His life-giving love.

www.thechristiancommunity

---

[1] Rumi, “A Thirsty Fish”, in The Essential Rumi, by Coleman Barks, p, 19.