Streams of Living Water

Years ago in another parish I found myself teaching an inquirer’s class for young people, most of whom were planning to be confirmed at the bishop’s annual visitation. It was a fun class. They enjoyed asking questions, questions which I sometimes could not immediately answer. But to the credit of the class, their questions were not frivolous; they were just good, solid questions.

One day in the class, we were discussing vestments: what they are, why they are worn, what they symbolize. I had taken the class into the vesting room, and we were looking at the actual vestments as we talked about them. Now it happened in that church, that we kept a cope and miter for the bishop to wear whenever he visited.

I was explaining about the miter, how it was intended to be reminiscent of the headgear worn by Jewish high priests. I thought I was on a roll, and then came a question.

“Why does the miter have those two ribbons hanging down in the back? They all seem to have them. Why is that?”

They had me; they absolutely had me. Obviously those ribbons meant something, but I didn’t have the first clue what it was. All I could do was tell the class I would try to find an answer and let them know.

That week I hit the books. I learned more about miters than anyone would ever want to know. I learned that by the time the wearing of miters became popular among Christian bishops, no one really knew what the headgear of the Jewish chief priest had looked like. The actual model for the first miters was a ceremonial cap awarded to the winners of Greek athletic competitions. And I learned that those two ribbons were called “lappets” or “infulae”, and that they were indeed a part of every miter worn in the western church. But I found nothing on why they were there or what they symbolized!

In desperation, I decided to go to the source. I called the bishop’s office. Robert Tharp was Bishop of the diocese at the time. He had just ordained me about a year before this.

Fortunately for me, church trivia of this nature was something Bishop Tharp actually enjoyed. He got on the phone, and I told him what I needed. Of course, I fully expected what came next: “Art, you mean to tell me that you don’t know?” “No, sir. I have no idea.”

So the bishop proceeded to tell me that those ribbons, those lappets, were probably the most important part of the miter because they symbolized an outpouring of the Spirit, an outpouring of God’s power and saving grace. He said, “They represent streams of living water.”
A month later when the bishop came for confirmation, he met with me and my class before the service. He had some questions for the class, but I’m not sure they were so much to check on the class as on their teacher, because his first question was: “Tell me everything you know about living water.”

In today’s gospel reading from the fourth chapter of John, that is exactly what Jesus does. Through his unlikely dialogue with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus explains to us all about the importance of living water.

If you were to look at a map of the Holy Land in the time of Jesus, there were two areas of Orthodox Judaism. There was Judea in the South. This is where Jerusalem was located - - the old Southern kingdom. The other Jewish region was to the north and was much smaller. This was Galilee, the region where Jesus grew up and began his ministry.

Between Galilee and Judea was Samaria. The inhabitants of this area, the Samaritans, were ethnically related to the Jews. They claimed descent from the Jews who had lived in the old northern kingdom of Israel, but over the centuries, the Samaritans had intermarried with Gentiles, foreigners. They had incorporated foreign culture and foreign religious practices into their own.

Jews believed that the Samaritans had failed to keep themselves or their religion pure, and they hated them for it.

If a Jew found it necessary to travel between Judea and Galilee, he would usually go out of his way to travel along the seacoast so as to avoid Samaria altogether, and to avoid contact with those unclean Samaritans.

In our gospel reading we find that Jesus with his disciples is making just such a journey from Judea to Galilee. But Jesus has purposely chosen to take the direct route, to go through the very heart of Samaria.

At the City of Sychar, Jesus stopped to rest. This was a very strange place for a Jew to linger because it was practically in the shadow of Mt. Gerizim. The Samaritans maintained that the only appropriate spot in the entire world for offering a sacrifice to God was atop Mt. Gerizim. The Jews insisted that the only proper place was on the temple mount in Jerusalem. To the Jews, Mt. Gerizim was an abomination.

But here is Jesus, taking time to rest at Jacob’s well, within sight of Mt. Gerizim.

Jesus sends the disciples away. He sends them for food because Jesus is expecting an encounter. He somehow knows he is going to meet a Samaritan woman. He wants this to happen, and he knows if the disciples were there, they would try to prevent it.
It is noontime, Jesus is alone at the well, and a woman comes to draw water. When the woman gets to the well, Jesus asks her, “Give me a drink.”

The woman is astonished. In the culture of the time, outside of family or one’s household, a man just did not speak to a woman. Moreover, from his appearance and from his speech, the woman could tell that Jesus is a Jew, and Jews did not speak to Samaritans under any circumstance.
But Jesus has done the unthinkable, and the woman responds: “You, a Jew, ask me, a woman of Samaria, for a drink?”

But Jesus would not be put off. This was a conversation he wanted to take place, and so he begins to direct it in a new way according to what he intends to unfold.

Jesus tells the woman, “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.”

“Living water” was a term understood by Jews in the time of Jesus to mean flowing water. In Jewish purification rites, the water in the ritual bath, or “miqvah” was always supposed to be “living water”, water that could not only make you clean, but also could carry away all the impurities.

But the Samaritan woman is not Jewish, and she seems not even to comprehend what is meant by “living water” in this literal sense. As to the higher, symbolic and spiritual meaning of “living water”, the meaning intended by Jesus, the woman is completely lost.

Nevertheless, Jesus has captured the woman’s curiosity. She wants to know how Jesus would even go about getting the living water. She points out that he has no bucket. Can he produce water without having to draw it from the well? Is Jesus greater than Jacob, who gave the well to the ancestors of the Samaritan people?

Jesus then tells her that all who drink the water from the well will be thirsty again, but those who drink the living water offered by Jesus will never thirst again. “The water that I will give will become in them a spring gushing up to eternal life.”

The woman is still thinking literally, but she likes the idea of never being thirsty again and of never again having to draw and carry water. More importantly, she is beginning to sense that Jesus is no ordinary person. She asks Jesus therefore to give her the water of which he speaks.

The conversation continues, and with everything said, the woman learns more and more about how special Jesus is. He tells the woman things about her life that are deeply personal: that she has had five husbands and that the man she is with now is not her husband. Yet, the woman knows that she and Jesus have never met before. How can he know these things about her?

Jesus tells her the time is coming when the dispute about whether God should be worshipped on Mt. Gerizim or in Jerusalem will no longer matter. The barriers and differences which have traditionally defined the hostility between Jews and Samaritans will be meaningless. God will accept the worship of anyone, anywhere, so long as they worship him in spirit and in truth.

The woman tries to take all this in. She knows it sounds wonderful, but she is still confused. Nevertheless, she confesses faith. She, a Samaritan, confesses faith that the Messiah is coming. And when he comes, the woman says, he will make all things known to us, he will proclaim the truth.

On hearing the woman say this, with most unusual directness, Jesus reveals that he is the Messiah. “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
And amazingly the woman believes. She rushes off to tell all her friends and neighbors that the Messiah has come, that he is in their City, that he is there for them to see and hear. The Samaritan woman has become an important Christian witness.

There is a detail in today’s story which unfortunately is not included in the verses which make up our reading. When the woman goes to tell her news in the City, she leaves her water jar at the well. Symbolically she doesn’t need it anymore.

She may not have fully understood everything Jesus had tried to tell her about living water, but in the end, she did receive the gift. She was refreshed, she was energized, she was enlivened. The Spirit found a place in her, gushing up from within, an endless source of living water.
In this Season of Lent, I think there is good reason for all of us to identify with the Woman at the Well. Lent is a time for honest self-examination: examination of our lives, our relationships with others, our relationship with God. Like the Samaritan woman, God knows us. Nothing about us is hidden from God.

But remember that even with full knowledge of everything the Samaritan woman had ever done, all her sins and all her brokenness, Jesus was still willing to extend to her the gift of living water: forgiveness, grace, and salvation.

All the Samaritan woman had to do was accept the gift being offered; to believe in Christ and to worship and serve him in spirit and in truth.
We were all pledged to just that when we were baptized. Lent is a time to be especially aware of those baptismal pledges and promises and to be especially intentional in their fulfillment.

Being intentional means that like the woman in the story, we cannot be passive beneficiaries of the gifts of the Spirit. Like her, we must become witnesses for Christ: Witnesses through our lives, witnesses through our love, witnesses through ministry.

Living water cannot be contained; it cannot be bottled up. It has to flow, it has to cascade, it has to gush and spray. It has to be shared until all the world has been refreshed in Christ.
Amen.