Wednesday 30 March 2011

Living Water


My sermon for last Sunday, the Third Sunday of Lent, Year A:


One of the commonest metaphors in the Bible is the metaphor of hunger and thirst. Spiritually we have a need for God parallel to our physical need for food and water.

Jesus employed that metaphor when he said that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God, and he uses the same kind of image here when he says that whoever drinks ordinary water will get thirsty again, whereas the water that he gives will turn into a spring, welling up to eternal life.

We know that when someone is deprived completely of food he might remain alive for weeks. But if someone is deprived of water, he won't last longer than a few days.

Our need for water is even more basic than our need for food, and what Jesus is saying here is that, spiritually, our need for God is just as basic: separated from God our soul will quickly die of thirst.

But what Jesus tells the Samaritan woman is more precise than that. In trying to awaken a sense of her need for the living water that he is offering, Jesus doesn't point upwards to heaven, to God the Father, "immortal, invisible". He points to himself. Now, if we want to know God and receive salvation from God, we don't turn to the Law of Moses or the teachings of the prophets, we turn to Jesus Christ. He is the fullest revelation of God, surpassing all the traditions - and rivalries - of both Jewish and Samaritan religion. And it's only through Christ that we can come to know the true God and be united with him.

Another significant element in this encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well is that Jesus actually goes on to criticise and challenge her about her moral circumstances: "You are right to say, 'I have no husband; for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband'".

We'll never know the background story of the woman's situation, but one scripture scholar, commenting on this passage, wrote that in meeting Christ she "was suddenly compelled to face herself and the looseness and immorality and the total inadequacy of her life".*

That seems rather harsh and sweeping, but I think what we can say more generally is that whenever anyone of us comes into genuine contact with God and his holiness and perfect love, our lack of holiness and love is immediately exposed. Any genuine encounter with Christ brings us face to face with our sinfulness and challenges us to change. So in this episode we're not being invited to condemn the Samaritan woman. We're being invited to identify with her: to react as she does when she finds herself in Christ's presence and to experience the same kind of conversion.

One of the features of our present situation is that many Christians try hard to be open-minded and accepting towards the outlook and lifestyles of non-believers. But we can easily be too open-minded and accepting, in the sense that we end up saying, more or less, that Christ isn't necessary, that people are are rights with God without the effects of Christ's saving work.

Whereas the genuine proclamation of the Gospel message always begins with the recognition that we're not at rights with God and we need to accept Christ, his teaching and his work of salvation, as the way to God.

That's the conclusion of this gospel story. Having met Christ, the woman goes back to her town to announce to her neighbours that they also need to come and meet him. The story ends then with a lot more people meeting Christ and coming to believe in him as - in St John's words - the saviour of the world.

It's an image of the Christian mission. Once we've accepted Christ we can't just keep him to ourselves. We have to try, by some means, to bring other people to the same acceptance and belief.

At the very least it's a reminder to the Church community that Christ has brought something unique and necessary to the human race. We can't be content with the widespread modern attitude that everyone's entitled to make their own mind up about God, salvation, and how to live. Without Christ we're missing the one essential thing in life, and we're in trouble, as the community of his followers, if we lose our sense of that conviction.

It was certainly St John's conviction in writing his Gospel, and its the lesson he wants us to take from this story of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well.

* William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 1, p. 156.

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