John 4 - Drink up

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The imagery is of a well, and water, and thirst. That the woman Jesus meets at Jacob's well while the disciples are shopping for food is Samaritan probably had more impact on early readers than it does on us. Central to the story is Jesus' use of the quenching power of water in a dry land to introduce the woman to a life that is more than the daily drawing of physical-life giving water, that promises fulfillment for the spirit, a fulfillment for which she thirsts.

It's a thirst we all experience, a wish to be more like eagles that soar than like worms that drag themselves along the ground, grinding out their daily lives. Jesus offers the Samaritan woman only the news that the Messiah who will bring with him the spirit-raising water is here, sitting on the side of the very well where the ancestral hope for his coming was given birth. There is no “born again” transaction here; John's story is for the edification of the early church, a continuation of his defense of who Jesus is, what he can do, a bulwark against doubts that would assail a struggling following.

That he would include the fact of the woman at the well as Samaritan—a member of a sect of Judaism considered unclean—might well be speaking into the tendency to carry prejudices into the new, young church, a church that was to become the universal, the inclusive fellowship under God. “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” Prejudice has no place in spiritual worship.

Through the enthusiastic witness of the Samaritan woman, it appears her entire village comes to believe that Jesus is the awaited Saviour. We're not given the denouement of that story, supposedly the point is already made: the gospel is for all and extends a welcome to all.

John 4 ends with a “second sign,” the healing of an official's son . . . from a distance. John seems to make very clear that the timing of the son's healing corresponds exactly with Jesus' intervention; again we run up against the miraculous as being necessary to the early church as the sign of the spirit's power and the authenticity and power of Jesus as the Christ.

What shall we make of that in this age when so many miracle-working ministers prove to be charlatans and our hopes for health are placed—advisedly—on hospitals and drug interventions? The answer strikes me as obvious; the gospel is not primarily about being rescued from the pain and suffering that is inevitable to all life; it is about trusting enough to ask for the water that quenches our deep spiritual thirst, to learn to fly with the eagles. 

No matter what our situation.

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