Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 12 March 2023.
The Water of Life Discourse between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well by Angelika Kauffmann, 17–18th century (Source)
• First Reading: Exodus 17: 1-7 (Moses struck the rock and water came forth)
• Epistle: Romans 5: 1-11 (Justified by faith – we have peace with God through Jesus)
• Gospel: John 4: 5-42 (The water that I give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life)
We have all seen the appeals by Water Aid, showing children, mainly African, having to walk for miles to find water. What water they find is tepid, stagnant, and infested with bacteria and parasites but the children and their families have to make do. The appeal of course is to provide funds for boreholes to be sunk and water pumps installed in each needy village.
But the theme of tepid, stagnant and infected water abides. Then look at our own water regimes, as we struggle to control water run-off to manage snowfall and cloudbursts, to build reservoirs and then wonder why we face shortages during the warmer summer months because the will to act is never there.
Water is no laughing matter and lack of it can be fatal in just a few days so desperate times call for desperate measures.
Now look at the story of the Exodus with the children of Israel in the wilderness and again, running short of water. This time Moses appeals to God who instructs him on what to do.
Strike the rockface and water will flow. Geologists may have their explanations but the point is that God did indeed provide for His people in their time of need. This need was nothing trivial – in such situations people can livestock can succumb quite quickly.
And yet the need was met. This was water flowing freely, cold and refreshing, ample for the needs of the whole people. God was not rationing His blessing as if the people had to earn it. It was there for the asking and when asked for it was given, graciously and plentifully.
Now look at John’s account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.
The first thing to see is that it comes almost directly after Jesus’ meeting with Nicodemus. There is an interlude between these two stories centred on John the Baptist, but it is more the contrast that matters.
There is a move from Jerusalem, the centre of faith and worship in Israel to Sychar in Samaria, rejected by the Jews because they are not following the law of Moses as given and they are not proper Jews anyway, being an intermarriage of incoming tribes and those left behind in Israel during the times of the exile.
And among the Samaritans this is a woman of a rather – shall I say, mixed – reputation. An effective outcast from her own people and having to get her water during the heat of the day in order to avoid the insults and taunts of her neighbours.
In this sense John is showing the total inclusiveness of Jesus, accepting conversation from a leader of the Jewish Council and then personally initiating one with a Samaritan social outcast. This is never about accepting these people on their own terms and with their own agendas. He comes to them with His own agenda and He will not compromise it.
But then Jesus is doing more. He is making a promise of water that refreshes the broken heart and the bruised conscience. The person who is socially outcast and yet has a personal audience with the Messiah.
He has no illusions about her lifestyle and certainly does not endorse it, but He starts with who and where this woman is and goes on from there. Even when she had tried to change the subject, Jesus was firm but without condemnation.
And then there was the living water. The water that flowed freely, and brought refreshment and life. It would be there for healing and cleansing, bringing life to what was dormant or dying.
It reminds us of the water that flowed from His side when He died on the cross and was speared open.
But Jesus’ living water is there for all of us, and we do not have to earn it. We only have to ask.
It is there for the parched soul, living a same-old, same-old existence in a featureless landscape and lifestyle of tedium and boredom.
It is a water that not only gives life but which allows us to yield fruit. A new strength in our faith and a new confidence in our relationships.
A new enthusiasm for sharing what we have and yet a sensitivity to the sense of where others are in their own journey of faith.
The water welling up to everlasting life is not restricted to the children of Israel in the wilderness or the Samaritan outcast woman, now emboldened to share with her own tormentors the wonders of who Jesus was and what He had said and done.
It is there for us as well – an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to all who desire it.
It is the grace to turn to the Lord’s service all those impossible aspects of our lives, the reverses and the rejections; it lays before Him the hurts and wounds of years past and the things we never thought we could forgive.
It is there so that all who seek it may find it – and may do so without having to feel they had to earn it.
It is always there for us to receive it – provided we want it.
