Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

What can be said about the Gospel according to St. John that adequately states what a treasure it is as a means and part of God’s revelation? It is that unique Gospel which is a theological treatise rather than an historical and chronological account of the life of Jesus, as the first three Gospels are. It contains unique stories not written by Saints Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It presents the triumph of Jesus as being in the Cross which proclaimed His willingness to go the Cross and what that states about God, rather than the triumph being His Resurrection.

Today we have the incredible story of our Lord’s encounter with the woman of Samaria at Jacob’s well. We have heard the rather long and very full story, and no sermon can adequately plumb its depths. To understand the story fully requires more time and study, as in a course of study or in reading a book on the story.

Speaking of a book, I once mentioned that I once profited from a very inspiring book entitled The Woman at the Well written by Father Adrian Van Kaam in 1976. I lost track of this book having lent it out to someone, but I was touched and delighted that for a consecration gift three years ago, Ed Nealley presented me with a fresh copy that he had tracked down. Thank you again, Ed.

We need to first remember that Jesus did many radical and shocking things as the Word of God Incarnate. He was fully a man and fully Man at a particular place and time, but as the Son of God on earth he was in no way constricted nor allowed himself to be constricted by the age in which he lived on earth as Jesus of Nazareth. It is heresy to say that He was because it is a denial of His divinity, His divine sovereignty, and His mission being at a particular time for all times. Jesus was and is God.

We get a penetrating view into both His human and divine nature in this story. As a human being with the same humanity that you and I possess, we see a Jesus who is “wearied as he was with his journey,” and who is physically thirsty. He says to the woman of Samaria who had come to draw water from the well, “Give me a drink.” And from that point, the incredible dialog begins.

The woman protested His request not because she didn’t want to oblige, but because she knew that Jews were to have no dealings with Samaritans. Samaritans knew that they were regarded by Jews as half-breeds because when the city of Samaria was invaded by the Assyrians in 721 BC, many foreign settlers had replaced the Samaritans who were taken into captivity, and pagan worship and practice established a foothold there. There was intermarriage as well between Jews and foreigners, so Samaritans had lost in the eyes of Orthodox Judaism their spiritual purity and integrity. Added to this was the Samaritans’ insistence on worshipping in their own Temple on Mount Gerizim instead of offering sacrifices in Jerusalem.

Jesus doesn’t answer her question as to why He is speaking with her, but challenges her to consider who He is, who is making the request. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

She thinks that he is referring to the deep running water at the bottom of the well at its source, but He wasn’t. He was speaking about the living water of the Holy Spirit that man needs just he does water itself. The Holy Spirit, of whom He was implying, quenches the deepest spiritual thirst of man forever while the physical element of water does its quenching for bodily thirst temporarily. He goes on to say in a profound and authoritative way, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” What He says He can provide to her and to all who will drink from what He provides is quite without parallel, past, present, or future. As Prof. John Marsh writes in his commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Jesus was saying, “What I have to give a man will infiltrate inside of him and become inside him a spring of water, and the end of his taking my gift will be eternal life.”

The woman says, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

But she stills sees this to be about a type of physical water.

We know from the rest of the story that he reveals Himself to her as one who in His divine nature knew her past of having five husbands. He challenges her and her Samaritan people to realize that the physical place of worship that a people claims is no longer critical. God looks for the human heart to worship Him in spirit and in truth no matter where one abides, no matter what their history or culture. In other words, a new day has dawned when man’s primary relationship is not to be with place, but with a person, Jesus Himself who is God with us. In another place, is this not why Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it again in three days”? He was referring to Himself as the temple to replace the geographically situated physical Temple.

Father Van Kaam in his book The Woman at the Well states, “The living water that Jesus gives is like a spring inside us. We carry it with us; it is always ready to well up. It refreshes and strengthens us in our daily endeavors with humanity to build the earth and the kingdom of God. The more we allow the living water to quench our thirst for worship and human service, the more it wells up inwardly. When we are called to leave the earth we helped to perfect in our own little way. The spring inside us does not leave us. Now it will well up in us to eternal life. The thirst of our spirit will be quenched throughout eternity. The inner well becomes the source of our participation in God’s glory” (pp.55-56).

Now this may all seem highly mystical and difficult to grasp, and we certainly can see how the Samaritan woman didn’t understand what Jesus was saying; but we all need to understand that nothing brings satisfaction, fulfillment, peace for the journey in and to eternity except a living relationship with God in which we (as I said last Sunday) are being led and governed by the Holy Spirit. We have needs, desires, and necessary human thirsts that rightly and understandably call for them to be met, but the human soul created by God for an eternal relationship with Him must be nourished- nourished by God. The human soul’s created thirst is for God. Nothing or no one else will or can satisfy this thirst.

It was St. Augustine who said, “My heart is restless, O Lord, until it finds its rest in Thee.”

The living water of the Spirit that Jesus gives as we seek it and open ourselves up to it, the spring of water that will well up if we don’t dam it up, is what keeps us on course, and what comforts the soul in its struggles against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

St. Paul, in what we heard from his epistle to the Romans this morning, speaks of the mindset the Christian is to have as he wades through the challenges and struggles of the world. He claims that we can have an un-worldly and other-worldly disposition because of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit, with the living water that has been given. He writes, “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”

We can only rejoice in our sufferings, endure in and with them, know our character to be made stronger, and have hope when God the Holy Spirit is free to breathe in and upon us, and bestow its comfort and strength. We all need to seek the Spirit of God as we ask for the outpouring, infusion, and infiltration of it, as we feel the flow of the living waters that become in us a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

I conclude with the words of Jesus found in St. Luke’s Gospel, “For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”(St. Luke 11:10-13)