“Living Water” (John 4:5-42)
Rev. Bart Cochran
March 19, 2017
We all have things in our lives that we would
prefer to keep hidden. We all have things in our past
that, if we have a choice, we would not want our friends
and family to find out about. I know I do. Some of the
things I hide within my soul are what I would consider
small things… maybe if they got out I would be
embarrassed for a time but, eventually I would be able to
live it down. Maybe I told a lie or made some bad or
foolish decision. I don’t want those things to be
broadcast to the neighborhood.
I have other things in my life which are bigger;
things that if they got out could really do damage to me…
or worse, if they got out they could hurt other people…
people I love and care about. I have my secrets. I think
that anyone who walks around on our planet for a while
will understand what I am talking about. We all have
secrets; big and small. As human beings we must find
ways to live with our secrets and in doing so… we must
learn to live with ourselves. Sometimes we can do that…
but sometimes we can’t.
As a pastor… as a minister of God and what some
would think of as a priest, part of my job means that
sometimes I must keep other people’s secrets, because
there are people who carry secrets bad enough to erode
their inner lives. Secrets that, if they are not confessed,
will gnaw at and destroy their inner peace… or worse,
manifest as self-defeating behavior.
Sigmund Freud once gave a good example of this.
He spoke about the trauma of life and what happens
when we hold it inside. He said, “Imagine a house… and
from one of the open windows of the house you see
dense smoke pouring out of the window. As an observer,
you know that there is a fire inside that house
somewhere… but just because you see the smoke
pouring out of one window, that doesn’t necessarily tell
you where the fire is on the inside of the house.” Human
behavior is a complex thing; sometimes people act in odd
ways and we see the odd behavior, but that doesn’t tell
us where the secret lies inside that person.
I am sure each of us has heard about the famous
“12-Steps” used in addiction recovery. The 12 Steps
were first used as a tool in alcohol addiction recovery but
over the years has been adapted to be used in all kinds of
addiction treatment. It might surprise you to know that
the 12 Steps has even been tailored by some theologians
to be used as a Christian model in how to deal with what
might be called generic “sin” in our lives.
Allow me for a moment to point out a few of these
steps:
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Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves. As a Christian, when is the last
time you made a fearless moral inventory of your soul?
When is the last time you named the sin that may attack
you personally?
Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed,
and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9. Made direct amends to such people
wherever possible, except when to do so would injure
them or others.
You noticed I left out many of the steps, but I
picked the ones that directly speak to finding and dealing
with those sins and trauma in our lives that prevent us
from leading a social, relationship-filled life.
Christ calls us to live in community. Christ calls us
to deal with the things in our lives that prevent us from
making connection to others who might have a fire
burning within the house of their soul. All of us… every
one of us has a secret, destructive fire burning inside…
and it prevents us from being who God wants us to be.
What behavior in your life is manifested by the inner fire
that burns unchecked?
This is the work of Lent and it leads us to a well… a
well of water. How appropriate that we find water just
when the fire threatens to consume us.
*****
Jesus lives in a desert country. And if you pay any
attention to the news these days you may have heard
this statement… “Water is life.” The English poet W.H.
Auden once said, “Thousands have lived without love,
not one without water.” If there is no water, there is no
life. Even the great astronomers who look for life on
other planets begin their search by looking for water.
Jesus comes to a well for a drink. Now there is
nothing unusual about that. It’s hot, he’s in the desert.
Here is the unusual part… here is the smoke in the house
of someone’s life. A Samaritan woman came to the well
to draw water. What is so unusual here? The bible says
it is noon. It is the beginning of the hottest part of the
day, so while it is not unusual to get a drink… it is very
unusual to gather water… it is very unusual to fill jugs of
water… it is very unusual to do work at the well in the
heat of the day. This is an unusual behavior. All the
other women would come in the cool of the early
morning to draw water, not at noon. This woman is
avoiding human contact. This woman seeks to be alone
and alters normal behavior to achieve that solitude. And
this is where Jesus finds her… in her brokenness.
Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” What
audacity on the part of Jesus, doesn’t he know that it is
forbidden for Jews to talk to Samaritans… doesn’t he
know that a man cannot address a woman if she is
unaccompanied by her husband or father or brother?
This bold… audacious man has no sense of rules and
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regulations… he has no respect for the cultural norms…
and she calls him on it.
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that
you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” I
get the sense that she thinks Jesus is crazy.
“If you only knew… If you only knew the gift of
God… if you only knew the gift of God… and who I am…
who is asking you for a drink.”
I have to stop right there. This conversation isn’t
about that dirty desert water from a revered but ancient
well… something… big… something important is
happening here.
He turned the conversation from the mundane (a
drink of water) to the spiritual. "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" (John 4:10, RSV). She wondered what he
was talking about. In the common parlance of their land,
living water meant flowing water as in a river, not the
well water they were discussing. But Jesus told her that
his living water was different. He said the living water he
would give would come "gushing up into eternal life"
(John 4:14, RSV). She had been drinking water that
satisfied only for a short time, but Jesus spoke of water
that would never again leave her thirsty.
She asked for this water; and in the conversation
that followed, he peeled back the layers of her life right
before her eyes. Moving boldly into the secret places of
her heart, he told her that she had had five husbands and
was now living with a man not her husband. When at last
she left him, she went into the city and told anyone who
would listen, "Come and see a man who told me
everything I have ever done" (John 4:29).
He knew her! He understood her! He got her! He
saw her sin and her shame and secrets, calling it what it
was, and he loved her anyway. He offered her hope. He
gave her living water.
In a moment… in a single conversation… this
woman and her town and her world was changed
forever… saved, healed, restored. We are all this
woman, every one of us. And those secrets that we
guard so ferociously are known to him… and he still loves
us enough to die for us.
If this message doesn’t give us the courage, to
admit to ourselves our sins and our pain and our traumas
and our burdens… nothing will. If today we cannot ask
Jesus Christ to share with us that living water, then we
are doomed to live in a house that is burning down
around our ears.
We are this broken, ashamed, beautiful woman…
and today we ask Christ that gift of God… for love…
because while we are not able to earn God’s love… we
are worthy of God’s love… we are God’s children… and
we cannot… WILL NOT hide from our salvation. AMEN
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