Must I stay thirsty? (2)

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water leaping up into eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Lord, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” (John’s first century eyewitness biography of Jesus Chapter 4: 13-30)

We’re back again in AD 30 Galilee at Jacob’s Spring near Sychar, a village in despised-by-Judeans Samaria. Jesus said to her, “Depart, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” Did this Samaritan woman lie to Jesus? Or was she “economical with the truth”? Why did Jesus, instead of upbraiding her, point to the truth of her statement, “I have no husband”? Is it possible that this statement (“I have no husband”) was her heart’s cry? That she had an enormous void within her? Was that the reason why she so much longed for the “living water” within her, the water “leaping up into eternal life”? That she had never, ever before, known total love? Was that indeed the awful truth?
The woman said to him, “Lord, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”	.
The Samaritan woman has been shocked by Jesus’ knowledge of her. She still calls him, “Lord” and adds “a prophet” to her assessment of him. Her mind has then jumped to the unseen God whom both Samaritans and Jews “worshipped” – in different places. Is she like many people today who see so many Christian churches and can’t fathom it? Is she indirectly seeking the one reality about this centuries old Jewish religious dispute? Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” The woman had spoken about "our fathers" who "worshipped on this mountain". She had not named the actual God whom they truly worshipped. Was she at that time a worshipper? What “hour was coming” that would change things and bring about this worship of “the Father”? “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Judeans.” At that time (AD 30) both Samaritans and Jews knew from their common Scriptures (the Old Testament in Christian Bibles) that their Messiah would be a descendant of Judah (alive around 1800 BC). That Messiah would be their deliverer, their saviour. The woman had already identified Jesus as a Jew. Did a new thought arise when Jesus said to her, “salvation is from the Judeans”? “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.” Again, Jesus speaks about “worship the Father”. Is he, in the there and then of AD 30, recommending church or religion to “such people”? Is he trying to get her to worship him? For him and for her, who is “the Father” who is seeking "such people to worship him"?
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”	.
A second mention by Jesus of the vital thing of worshipping “the Father” “in spirit and truth”. How on earth is this woman going to manage to do that? This dear woman seems to know, deep within, that it will be the coming Jewish Messiah who will explain all to her and who will change her within – “in spirit and truth” and giver her within that “water” which “will become in her a spring of water leaping up into eternal life.”

Sinner Syvret

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