Living 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

Water is life, whether standing with the Dakota people protesting the oil pipeline or standing near a baptismal font holding a young child, water is truly life. Our bodies are mostly water, and we can go without food for a long time but not without water. This encounter with the Samaritan woman is an extraordinary moment, early in Jesus' ministry. He crossed so many previously taboo lines - A Samaritan, a woman and sinner. And he offers her the water of life, the living water, eternal life. What scandal! Even his disciples would question his behaviors, yet this encounter resulted in the healing of a large community, previously considered to be the alien, the outsiders, the unwanted. May we seek the living, eternal water as seek and serve the outcasts in our communities.

Gracious Creator, you consider us all your offspring

and call no one an illegal alien, nor an outcast

but draw all of the world to yourself through your son.

We have nasty names for the recent immigrants 

we think no one deserved what we have not worked for

and we live behind gates and divisions creating fear.

Help us to rise above our fears and our prejudices

so we might bring light and life to those in need

and be filled with the living water as we offer your love. Amen.