Living Water

Many Christians are probably fairly comfortable with Jesus. We know much of the world rejects Him and His claim to be the Son of God, but we Christians believe in Him. We know about His story and His teaching and, for the most part, we have a pretty good understanding of Jesus . . . or at least we think we do.Read John 4:7-26 and you'll see that people (Christian or not) really don't know how to handle Jesus because they want Him to fit their own expectations. In the first two verses, Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. Right away she's thrown for a loop because 1.) He's a Jew and 2.) He's a man. A Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman is already pushing it, but a Jew would never eat or drink from something a Samaritan had used. Jesus disregards the silly limitations humans put on themselves and each other.

When the woman asks Jesus how He could ask her for a drink, Jesus responds by telling her that if she knew who He was, she would be asking Him for "living water." Of course, He is using an illustration, but she takes Him literally. Noticing that He has no bucket or pitcher of any kind, she asks where He's going to get this water. Rather than pointing out her error directly, Jesus simply continues with the illustration saying that whoever drinks the "water" He gives will never thirst again and the "water" will become a spring "welling up to eternal life."The woman replies by telling Jesus to give her some of this water so she won't have to keep drawing water from the well for the rest of her life. She still doesn't get it. Now Jesus becomes very direct with her. He tells her to get her husband and come back. When she tells him she has no husband, Jesus says she's right and that in fact she's had five husbands and the man she is now with is not her husband. This woman would probably be considered "loose" in our culture today, but in that day and age, her lifestyle was beyond scandalous. One can only imagine the look on her face at this point or how long she stood there speechless before changing the subject.

And that's exactly what she does. She brings up and age-old disagreement between the Jews and Samaritans about the proper location to worship God. Jesus tells her that this dispute will soon be a mute point. Still not quite understanding Him, the woman says the Messiah is coming and he will explain everything. Again, it's up to our imagination to determine how she must have reacted when Jesus followed with "I who speak to you am he."Now some of us might make the mistake of looking at the Samaritan woman and thinking, "Boy, was she dense!" as if we're somehow better than she is. But how many of us continue to be limited by the ways of the world today. Jesus says love your neighbors and love your enemies, but in our hearts we say "He can't expect me to love so-and-so" and whether because of fear or pride or both we fail to obey Christ.

Thus, our sin blinds us to His teaching. Even pastors and scholars have argued and disputed for centuries about various theological issues that are essentially mute points and ignore the sin in their own lives. Jesus is willing the point it out to us, but we would rather change the subject because it isn't comfortable. The time to address it is not tomorrow. Jesus is here NOW! And He's speaking to you.