One thing that I found amazing as a
child and still do is that you can fill a jar with water from a
puddle in the backyard after a big rain and after letting it sit for
a few days, it suddenly starts to team with swimming things. It’s
like the water is living and spawns life. But, even though the water
supports life and would seem to be safe to drink, we know better than
just go and drink water out of the yard because some of those
swimming things can make you very sick.
Another thing that amazes me though
not in a good way is how some of the lakes in Algonquin and Killarney
Provincial Parks have no life in them. They look like they should
have life but little to nothing is able to survive in them because of
the effects of acid rain that resulted from nickel smelting up in
that corner of the world. Dana once showed me a picture of one of
the lakes at Killarney that is quite small. From above the water is
clear and sapphire blue and you can just about see to the bottom as
if it were a Caribbean lagoon. But though it is pristine and
extremely beautiful, the water is so acidic that nothing at all lives
in it. It is dead water. Thankfully, environmental legislation has
proved quite successful up there and many of the lakes that were once
dead are beginning to live again. Water, clean water, will foster
and nurture life.
Well, when Jesus spoke of living water
he did not mean a jar full of puddle water with swimming things in
it. Back in those days without the medicines that we now have that
kind of water could make a person sick enough to die. It looks
alive, but it is deadly. Living water, rather, was running water as
opposed to stagnant water. The swimming things tend not to live in
water that is moving. This makes the Algonquin and Killarney problem
a bit deceptive. They are in fact living water as water flows
through them from lake to lake, but because of pollution, many of the
lakes are dead. Keep these contrasts in mind.
So, it is no accident that John has
placed this story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well
immediately after the story of Nicodemus, the Pharisee and leader of
the Jewish people who came to him at night. Jesus teaches them both
about the Holy Spirit. The Samaritan woman gets it. She gets into
the flow of the flowing living water of the Holy Spirit and goes back
to her town and tells all the people that it is likely that the
Christ/the Prophet is sitting out at Jacob’s well (please
appreciate the symbology). All the people in the Samaritan town go
out to meet him and after hearing him speak, they believe Jesus is
the Saviour of the world on his own merits. That’s the flowing of
the living water of the Holy Spirit. He sends people forth, brings
people to Jesus, and gives them faith.
The Samaritan woman is a prime example
of what Jesus taught Nicodemus about the Holy Spirit and those born
from above by the free gift of the Spirit. For Nicodemus, Jesus used
the analogy of wind. We cannot see the wind. It blows where it
wishes. We do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
Nevertheless, we hear it when it blows. We feel it. We see its
effects. Jesus says this is the way it is with those who are born of
the Spirit. The Spirit leads them here and there and through them,
people hear about Jesus, and indeed hear him. It is debatable
whether Nicodemus caught the drift or not. He came in the night and
after Jesus chides him for being a teacher of Israel who yet doesn’t
know about the Holy Spirit, he fades away back into the night. To
his credit, Nicodemus does show up two times later in John’s
Gospel; once to defend Jesus against the Jews and then to bury Him.
The Holy Spirit comes to us by means of hearing those who are full of
the living water of the Holy Spirit and who proclaim Christ. Along
with that proclamation, we hear Jesus himself. By the presence of
the Holy Spirit, the Jesus we proclaim meets us in and through the
proclamation of him as he did both the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus.
When we proclaim Jesus, he does come and create a moment for people
to meet him in order to drink the water and catch the drift. Well
crafted sermons meant to convince people are bunk in comparison to
our simply proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and letting the Holy Spirit
do his work.
Well, it is interesting that John wants
us to know that it was the Samaritans and not the Jewish authorities
who first received Jesus and proclaimed him to be the Saviour of the
world. Samaritans and Judeans did not
associate with each other. The Judeans considered the Samaritans to
be racial half-breads who worshipped the LORD wrongly. Why? Well,
five times the region of Samaria had been ruled over by the rulers of
other nations who sent their own people into the lands they conquered
in order to intermarry. In Jesus’ day, Samaria had a sixth
husband, the Romans; but the Romans were not allowed to intermarry
with the locals. Though the Samaritan blood line was not pure, they
still clung to the Jewish faith and probably more strictly than did
the Judeans. The Samaritans only accepted the first five books of the
Bible in which Mt. Gerazim, located in Samaria, rather than Jerusalem
is the mountain that was the central worship place for the
Israelites. The Samaritans also rejected the books of the prophets
yet it is significant that the Samaritan woman would call Jesus a
prophet. Moses told the Israelites at the end of Deuteronomy to
expect a prophet greater than he to come and be the Christ. This
prophet would be the only prophet the Samaritans would accept.
In the midst of all that history, bad
blood, and religious dissent this nameless Samaritan woman who's had
five husbands and for some reason probably economic necessity still
likes to have a man around is according to John the first evangelist,
the first to flow in the living water of the Spirit. This is in
contrast to Nicodemus who is named, who is a leader among God's
chosen people, who is a man, who is wealthy, who is very devout in
the Jewish faith, and yet he finds it very difficult to catch the
drift of the wind of the Holy Spirit. The living water of the Holy
Spirit flowed to and through the Samaritan people who biblically
speaking according to the prophets and the historical writings at
least, would have been should have been like stagnant water, mixed
with swimming things that would be deadly. On the other hand, Jesus
says that salvation comes from the Jews, yet the Jewish religion back
then especially of the Pharisees was like that lake in Killarney –
beautiful and you’d think they were full of life; but nothing lived
in them.
This nameless Samaritan woman who's
had five husbands and for some reason probably economic necessity
still likes to have a man around is on the ball. She knows that
Jesus isn’t just talking about wells and water. He’s talking
about faith and a living relationship with the living God which flows
from the Father through him in the power of the Holy Spirit and then
in worship - in adoration and faithfulness - in the power of the Holy
Spirit it flows from us through Jesus the Son back to the Father.
Nicodemus, on the other hand, upon hearing Jesus talk about such
things gets deeply confused and so asks how this living relationship
with the living God can be. “How can these things be?”
Nicodemus was deeply under the impression that Law observance was the
way to get ready for the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. The
Samaritan woman, on the other hand just simply wants that living
relationship the Prophet greater than Moses was to bring, receives it, and wants to tell others where to get it.
She finds Jesus to be the fulfillment of everything Moses
had said.
So, what does this thirsty nameless
Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason probably
economic necessity still likes to have a man around have to do with
us? And, if I may tack to that question, what does the contrast
between her and Nicodemus have to do with us? Well, grace is the
word. Indeed, it is the Triune God of grace’s desire to share his self
with us through the Holy Spirit freely on account of Jesus’, God the Son’s, faithfulness,
indeed faithfulness unto death. We are all sinners. Everyone is.
Not one of us is worthy to be in God's presence. But, Jesus has been
faithful for us to the extent that he has in his self scapegoated our sinfulness
away unto death and in the power of the Holy Spirit begun something
new with us. God's grace isn't that he will show mercy to us by
acquitting us if we just confess our sins, say we're sorry, and toe
the Jesus line until its heaven when we die. The Bible's
understanding of grace does not come from the courtroom but rather
from the King's court. Grace is that the King of all creation has
summonsed and brought us into his presence and even though we have
been unfaithful servants he is pouring his favour upon us and will
act on our behalf. That understanding of grace does not make sense
unless we are talking about the Holy Spirit who is God's presence
with us gluing us to Jesus and in him working in us to heal our
brokenness and create us anew to be more and more as Jesus is, the
resurrected incarnate Son of God who has defeated for us the sin and
death to which we so readily succumb.
Let’s go back to the question of the
nameless Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason
probably economic necessity still likes to have a man around, the
question of where to get that living water. Well, we find it in
Jesus. Jesus’ has made it so that his new life in the Holy Spirit
that lives to the glory of the Father is freely available to anyone
who wants it and he's even at work in some who don't know what it is
or even want it...that would be those good ole religious folks like
Nicodemus and like us the good ole church going type. Even a
nameless Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason
probably economic necessity still likes to have a man around wants it
and can have it. God did not withhold his very self from someone
like her. That's grace and we've got to note and take to heart that it was the religious folks who had a hard time with grace.
As we have gathered here to proclaim
and hear this Good News, the Holy Spirit has been working to make us
open to Jesus who wants only that we share with him in his
relationship with his Father in the Holy Spirit. Just drink. Just
start partaking in that relationship. It is freely available to you.
Read your Bible regularly, God will speak. Pray, God will answer.
Share it with others. All that's going to happen is that
you will find yourselves wonderfully accepted and loved. Just drink.
Just drink. Amen.
