A Drink of Water

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, "Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John" - although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized - he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him,"How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "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." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." John 4:1-15


A Drink of Water

The Teacher asks for a cup of water
my enemy speaks to me with kind words
his eyes with sorrow deep and gentle
we sit and talk in the shaded afternoon.

A cup of water breaks down the walls
Jericho and Jerusalem come tumbling down
we are not strangers nor enemies
by children at the family table.

A cup of water and he knows my heart
there is no judgement for my foolish ways
with him there is welcome real and known
a place is set for all humanity.

A cup of water and we become
one family, one people beloved of God
we linger in the shade and rejoice
for all of creation gathers around.

A cup of water that I bear
I who is not worthy but wanted anyway
whom God has chosen to hear this news
and carry it back to my tribe and clan.