The thirst beneath our thirst

Text: John 4: 5-30

One of the signature features of John’s Gospel is the many layered lingering conversation between Jesus and someone or some group of people. They’re the kind of conversations that you can imagine are re-visited long after they’ve happened, because of the questions that got raised, or the belief that was challenged, or the grace that was experienced … the way something in the course of that encounter got opened up or touched in a brand new way.
It’s into the middle of one of these conversations that today’s scripture passage lands us this morning. A passage that invites us to come close … to listen in.

The meeting place is at a well where, for generations, people have come to satisfy their thirst. And this day is no different. It’s about noon, we’re told, when Jesus arrives, thirsty and weary from the day’s journey so far. He’s there alone -- not surprising, for most people aren’t coming to draw water in the heat of the day. And yet as grace would have it, along comes a local woman. “Give me a drink,” he says to her. That’s how this conversation begins … with the most basic, most human request.

Except, that’s not how she hears it. What she hears is a shocking disregard of the long-standing bitter hostility between Samaritans and Jews. “You, a Jewish man, are asking me, a woman of Samaria, for a drink?” What’s happening?

Kind of shocking isn’t it … how the norms we inherit have the power to derail us from the most basic human encounter.

So what does Jesus do with that?
Well, first of all, he’s not about to be talked into abiding by social conventions that separate people from each other. Besides, he’s thirsty! But there is something he also has to offer, even and perhaps especially to this woman. And so he responds to her … not by suggesting why don’t they just forget the messy history between Samaritans and Jews. He responds by opening another door entirely … with an invitation of sorts -- “if you only knew the generosity of God and who is asking you for a drink … you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

It seems however he said it, something landed for this woman. Gone now is any reservation about her, a woman of Samaria, engaging this Jewish man. She’s there … with a daring wit and willingness to wonder.
“Sir,” she says, “you don’t even have a bucket to draw with. And the well is deep. How do you propose to get this living water? Are you telling me you’re a better man than Jacob who dug us this well?”
“Whoever drinks of this water, Jesus says, “will be thirsty again and again. Not so with the water I give; it will become in them spring of water welling up bringing abundant life.”
“Sir, give me this water! … that I may never be thirsty … never have to come back here to draw water again.” It’s like she’s egging him on. What a dream … to be so relieved … so refreshed.

But Jesus has in mind more than a dream.
“Go, call your husband, and come back,” he says to her.
It sounds to us the oddest response … except that if we knew something about her life, maybe it’s not odd at all. Maybe this is Jesus meeting her in the place that is most troubled … aching for relief. Maybe this is Jesus, attuned to her heart, cracking open yet another door, enquiring “so what about your life … back home?”

“I have no husband,” she replies, her guard up, firmly in place.
“How true,” Jesus says, “for you have had 5 husbands and the man you are with now is not your husband.”
So much for being guarded!

Notice we’re offered no explanation of her marital history … yet it’s often assumed she’s a woman of dubious morals. But that might not be it at all. Who knows what has happened to her husbands? What we do know is that Jesus sees into the heart of her life … knows her story.  His knowing of her is compelling in such a way that, far from wanting to get away from him, she recognizes “this man is of God” … someone she wants to speak with even more. And so she ventures perhaps the most pressing question that stands between Samaritans and Jews … where are we truly meant to encounter God? -- on the mountain or in the temple, she asks. Jesus says, “neither … the time has come when where you worship doesn’t matter … what matters is the Spirit by which you live your life, and that you bring the truth who you are.

Just then Jesus’ disciples arrived … cutting short their conversation. But not before something very powerful has happened to her … she has tasted a love so deep, so wide, so freeing that she makes her way back to her city filled to overflowing. The next we see her, she’s announcing to her friends and neighbours, to anyone and everyone … “come and see! … come and see this man who’s not just any man … who knows me through and through! (like it was the best thing that ever happened to her.) He cannot be the Messiah can he? … the one we’ve waited for all our lives!

Chances are it was the brightness and freedom, the sheer beauty of her being that, even more than her words, awakened their curiosity and compelled them to go and discover for themselves.

I never heard from Clara any of her stories about going to a well … but 102 years ago in Fort George, I’m guessing there was such a place. It was a well of a different kind that Clara was eager to tell me about. One afternoon when we were visiting together in her suite at Parry Place, she was leafing through her History of Prince George and spotted the photo of Reverend Wright.That led her to pickup a binder in which there was this collection of special official correspondence celebrating her 100th birthday … from the Queen, the Governor General, to the Mayor of Prince George, where Clara was born and lived many great years. And then we got to the page in her binder she was really looking for, with her baptism certificate. Clara was baptized by Reverend Wright. She was one month old. “What difference do you think it made to your life Clara,” I asked her, “that you were baptized?” “Belonging,” she said. “I always knew I belonged.”

What a powerful thing … to have known it somehow from the beginning … that she had a place … that she was known and loved.  I’m not sure that any one us know the details of Clara’s experiences of God’s presence … to be sure she was a woman of prayer.  We can imagine Clara engaged in any number of those lingering conversations with the Holy One, for if there’s one thing stands out about Clara, it’s that wellspring of love that rose up from within her and spilled over to touch us … to bless us … to soak us with a divine love.  It was there in her humour … never nasty … often cheeky … always used in a way to draw us in, a way that lifted our spirit.
It was there -- this overflowing love -- in the way she used her money -- giving it away, even to point of Ces, her executor, needing to reign her in if there was to be enough to see her through to the end! It was there -- this overflowing love -- in the way she was with anyone and everyone who came into her presence … as though in that moment, you were all that mattered … you were all there was. It’s a powerful witness to that wealth of love that flowed so freely within her … that there are so many of us who felt we were Clara’s special one!

There was a beautiful moment in that conversation with you David and Betty, when you were speaking of Clara as someone who lived her faith … and I enquired, “so what did that look like to you?”  And David you referred to her strength …her strength of personality. In her career as the Administrator of the Forest Service Office in Prince George, she was a woman in a man’s world, and she ran that place! But there and everywhere she was, far from using that strength to bully, she used her strength, David, you said, "she used her strength for the greatest kindness possible." There it is again … this wellspring of divine love that rose up and spilled over to bless.

Perhaps at the height of her career, Clara made the decision to leave her work and care for her mother, her father having already died. Once again her strength showed itself in great kindness as she nursed her mother through those few years to her death. It was a powerful thing for Clara -- and no doubt for her mother -- that her mother died in Clara’s arms. “I couldn’t understand people mourning my mother’s death,” Clara told me. “To me, she was going on to something beautiful. When I die,” Clara said, “I just hope people will wish me well.”

Such parting words! It rings doesn’t it, of something of that same joy and confidence that we hear in the voice of that woman at the well. “Come and see!” she urges us … for there is more for you too.

There is always more … that’s what Clara was tapped into … the unending, sustaining, re-creating flow of God’s love.

St Paul puts it like this:
Who can separate us from the love of God?
Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor trials in the present or any trials to come; neither height, nor depth, nor all of creation will ever separate us from the love of God poured out in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God!