J U N E 7, 2 0 1 5
THE WALK
Obey Your Thirst
Scripture Lesson: John 4: 4-26
©
Dr. Victor D. Pentz | Senior Pastor
Jesus’ movement is not
doing well these days. In
many places where his
name appears, Jesus’
people lack their founder’s
passion. Where do we go
to get it back? Let’s go to
the source—the person
of Jesus. Watch Jesus’
dazzling people skills as
he loves people and makes
them believe there is
actually a God who knows
us. Talk a walk with Jesus.
Would you have followed
him?
T
here is a word that is very big these days, and if you want to be part of
“what’s happening” you will sprinkle it into your conversation. The word is
“post-modern.” As in, “Wow, that is so post-modern.” Although I’m not sure what
it means. To give you an idea of the confusing jargon surrounding this word, I
came across the classic question: How many post-modernists does it take to
screw in a light bulb? Answer: Even the framing of this question makes a grid of
patriarchal assumptions – such as, technical accomplishment has inherent value, and quantities of labor can be determined empirically – all of which makes a
discourse which further marginalizes the already disenfranchised.
Yet one aspect of post-modernism does makes perfect sense to me – I think.
That is: one must always be aware of one’s context. I had this positive “aha”
with post-modernism a few summers ago while, of all things, floating on the
Chicago River.
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When you visit Chicago, do not miss the
architectural tour of the Chicago skyline by
boat. Our tour guide said, “Over there you see
a modern building. Modern buildings stand tall
and proud and solitary. They are rational and
replicable. You can take a modern skyscraper –
the Sears Tower – and drop it as is into any city
in the world.”
Then our guide said, “Now over here you see a
post-modern building. What is its color? Blue.
Why? It’s on the blue water. It draws its color
from its context.” And not only that, she said,
“Notice its shape is a curved crescent. That’s
because it’s on a bend in the river. That building
draws its color and its shape from its context.”
That’s post-modernism.
Brilliantly Contextual
That got me to thinking that we Christians need
to think as post-modernists in today’s world. A
few decades ago, we were like a modern
skyscraper, tall and solitary. Christianity was the
only show in town. We dominated the horizon.
But today in the 21st century, we look out on a
religious skyline where we see monuments to
every belief and religion imaginable.
Today’s big argument against our faith is, “Look
at all the other religions. How can you impose
your beliefs on other people?” In many ways,
America’s real religion is “live and let live,” “do
your own thing.” All roads if followed sincerely
will lead equally to the same God. (Never mind
sincere followers of Isis or the Aryan Nations
movement – we don’t want to think about that.)
Hey, it’s all about tolerance. As someone has
pointed out, at most cocktail parties you can
get away with talking about Fifty Shades of
Grey and bizarre sexual practices but if you turn
to someone and say, “God loves you,” you might
get thrown out. The worst thing you can be
today is a religious fanatic.
But here’s the thing. In a way, Jesus was a
post-modern person. He was brilliantly
contextual. This morning we’re going to see that
our Lord was a genius at speaking just the right
word at just the right time, in just the right way
into just the right context. No gospel writer
expresses this better than John.
In John chapters 3 and 4, Jesus meets two
radically different people in what could not have
been more radically different contexts. In John
3 in Jerusalem he meets the ultimate insider,
a righteous, elite religious scholar named
Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin who
comes to Jesus at night. Then in the very next
chapter Jesus meets the ultimate outsider and
outcast, a five-time-divorced Samaritan woman
who comes to Jesus at high noon. What Jesus
said to the insider – male, Jewish, righteous
Nicodemus – could not have been more blunt:
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“You must be born again.” “Buddy, only a
complete makeover is going to get you into
heaven. You need a dramatic turnaround.” But
this sinful outsider woman Jesus wooed gently.
He charmed her with small talk. He won her by
being vulnerable.
At the well, Jesus was just plain exhausted. As
we say in the South, the Lord was just plain
tuckered out. Hammered by the midday heat he
plopped his weary body down next to a well. He
was fatigued and thirsty and hungry. This was
the real Jesus. He hardly ever did miracles. On
this day he didn’t multiply loaves for lunch. He
sent his disciples into town to find some kosher
take-out.
While he was sitting there resting, along came
the woman to draw water. What follows is the
longest recorded conversation we have
between Jesus and another person. Let’s jump
into this moment which we find in John’s
gospel, chapter 4, beginning with verse 4:
Now Jesus had to go through Samaria. 5 So he
came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near
the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son
Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus,
tired as he was from the journey, sat down by
the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan
woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her,
“Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had
gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The
Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew
and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask
me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with
Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew
the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a
drink, you would have asked him and he would
have given you living water.” 11 “Sir,” the woman
said, “you have nothing to draw with and the
well is deep. Where can you get this living
water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob,
who gave us the well and drank from it himself,
as did also his sons and his livestock?” 13 Jesus
answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will
be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water
I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I
give them will become in them a spring of water
welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to
him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get
thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw
water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband
and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she
replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when
you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you
have had five husbands, and the man you now
have is not your husband. What you have just
said is quite true.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I
can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews
claim that the place where we must worship is in
Jerusalem.” 21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe
me, a time is coming when you will worship the
Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not
know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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.
24
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship
in the Spirit and in truth.” 25 The woman said, “I
know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming.
When he comes, he will explain everything to
us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking
to you—I am he.”
Ignoring the Taboos
“Ma’am, may I trouble you for a drink of water?”
“Sir, you shouldn’t be talking to me. In fact you
probably shouldn’t even be here, for I am (a) a
Samaritan and (b) a woman.”
That’s two strikes right there. Verse 9 is a
breathtaking understatement: “For Jews do not
associate with Samaritans.” We’re talking about
a very special kind of hatred here.
Why? Years before the Samaritans had been
Jews but then spun off their own religion.
Instead of worshipping on Mt. Zion, they found
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their own mountain to worship on – Mt.
Gerizim. Then, even worse, the Samaritans were
mongrels, said the Jews, They intermarried with
Gentiles and then even added other gods to
their worship of the Lord God of Israel.
But the deepest cut of all by far came in 150
B.C. when Judas Maccabeus led a revolt against
the Syrians and the Jews won. The Jews threw
out the Syrians and cleansed the Temple in a
triumph that is still celebrated today on the
Jewish calendar as the holiday of Hanukah. But
during that revolt of Judas Maccabeus, the Samaritans sided with the Syrians. They betrayed
their own Jewish cousins. Imagine if the Canadians had sided with the Nazis in World War II.
How would we feel about Canadians? To say
there was bad blood between Jews and Samaritans was the understatement of the year. Most
Jews avoided Samaria.
So Jesus went to a country he was not
supposed to go to and there he spoke to a
person he was not supposed to talk to: a
strange woman. There you see in a nutshell
the most controversial thing about Jesus of
Nazareth with the exception of his claim to
deity. In that society divided by race and torn
by ancient hatreds Jesus in the course of his
day went around calmly ignoring all the taboos.
Like a genteel southern gentleman in a small
town he tipped his hat and said, “Ma’am, pardon
me but if you don’t mind, if it’s not too much
trouble, would you be so kind as to give me a
drink of water?”
Someone once asked Albert Einstein: “Dr.
Einstein, what is the most important question
that can be asked?” Einstein thought a moment
and replied, “Is the universe a friendly place?” In
other words, is God good? Well if Christians are
right and Jesus is God then this universe turns
out to be friendlier than Mr. Rogers’
neighborhood. Here’s Jesus chit-chatting with a
Samaritan woman and she can’t believe it. Verse
9: “How can you ask me for a drink?”
If that was shocking what followed next was
even more so. Jesus said, “If only you knew the
free gift of God and who it is that asks you for a
drink, you would have asked him and he would
have given you living water.” (Verse 10, New
Century Version)
“If only you knew the free gift….” Free gift. If
you’re a grammar Nazi, you know that “free
gift” is a tautology. It’s saying the same thing
twice, redundantly. But we have to overstress
to express this precious truth. New life in Jesus
is a free gift. The price has been paid. The only
way you get it is freely, as a gift. Think of grace
three ways: 1. There’s NOTHING you have to do.
2. There’s nothing YOU have to do. 3. There’s
nothing you have to DO. That’s grace.
“If you only knew, dear Samaritan woman, who
is speaking to you….” John is saying to all of us
who are reading, “If you only knew, dear reader, who it is who is really speaking to you from
these words on this page….” I have to tell you if I
believed I were the one speaking to you when I
stand in this pulpit I wouldn’t be here. So if only
you knew, dear Peachtree, who it is who is the
One who is really speaking to you from my lips
this morning in this service you would be
asking him to meet the deepest longings of
your soul. You will ask for living water.
Water: The Obvious Metaphor
Jesus seizes on the most obvious metaphor for
that moment: water. It was hot. It was midday.
They were in a desert. They were both thirsty.
Jesus said, “If you don’t get this living water I’m
talking about, you’re going to die. Without this
life that I can give you, you will die spiritually.”
Now here in Georgia this context is hard for us
to grasp. I grew up in Southern California, and
out in my home state they are in terror right
now without rain.
That’s because Los Angeles in its natural state
is a wasteland with blowing tumble weeds. Most
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of the water needed to sustain the millions of
people who live out there has to come from
somewhere else, because Southern California’s
climate is almost identical to the climate of the
Holy Land. In fact in the 19th century when
people were moving there they thought, “What
will grow here?” They discovered they were
on the same latitude as the Holy Land and the
Mediterranean and so they brought in ships
importing foliage from the Holy Land – which is
why you see palm trees in LA. So in effect Jesus
and this woman were sitting in Death Valley
talking about water.
Jesus was saying what was obvious in that
context: without water you die. When people
get lost in the desert or if your car breaks down
on some remote back road, within a few hours
you’ll be delirious and seeing mirages and you’ll
drink anything, even antifreeze, if you have to.
Jesus said, “You need this water I have to give
you even more than the water in this well on a
hot day. Without the life I give you, you will be
eternally dead and lost, but what I have to offer
you is a free gift of more living water than you
can ever want or need or can even imagine – so
much that it’s not just a well like this but my
water is a fountain of life that gushes up within
you for eternity.”
But this woman was totally clueless: “But sir,
you don’t even have a bucket and this is a very
deep well. Where do you think you are going
to get this so-called ‘living water’ you’re talking
about?”
That old rivalry pops up here: “So Mr. Big Shot
Jewish person, you claim to have magical
water, do you? I suppose you think you’re a
bigger deal than our Samaritan ancestor Jacob
who dug this well in the first place, don’t you?”
And we have to smile to ourselves: “Lady, if only
you knew! Yes, this man is a bigger deal than
Jacob. He made Jacob! This is the Son of God.
The second person of the Trinity. God in human
flesh.”
Verse 13: Jesus answered, “Everyone who
drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but
whoever drinks the water I give them will
never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will
become in them a spring of water welling up to
eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give
me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and
have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Still she didn’t get it. She thought it was a
miraculous water faucet or a divine fire hydrant.
She thought Jesus was going to give her a
labor-saving device so she wouldn’t have to
keep making all these trips to the well.
But even though she asked in some
discombobulated way for the wrong thing,
Jesus said, “Close enough!” He’d said all you
had to do was ask and he kept his word to her,
even with her bad theology. Isn’t it wonderful
to think that God doesn’t just forgive our sins?
Sometimes he forgives our theology. We think
we need to have great faith in God. But no, all
we need is a little faith in a great God.
This woman said, “What is this water? I want
this water.”
Now suddenly the story turns PG-13. Jesus said
to her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
(Verse 16)
Whoa! Where did that come from? Forgive me
for saying this but doesn’t it seem that Jesus
is being something of what we would consider
a jerk here with this kind of rude non sequitur?
Here they were talking about thirst and water
and wells and springs and now suddenly out of
the blue Jesus brings up her sex life. After all, he
knows full well right where this is going.
17
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say
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you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had
five husbands, and the man you now have is not
your husband. What you have just said is quite
true.”
Oh my. Things had been going so well.
Why suddenly change the subject to all this
dirty laundry of her failed marriages and current
awkward living arrangement? Is he trying to
shame her? Is he wanting to embarrass her?
Getting Satisfaction
No. It’s brilliant what he did. He was saying,
“May I show you what this living water is? It’s
what you’ve been so desperately searching for
in men without success. Living water is that
nameless thing you’ve been longing for in all
those broken relationships.”
We know this woman. We’ve met her. She’s
everywhere in our society. We meet her in that
old country western song, “I’ve been looking
for love in all the wrong places, looking for love
in too many faces.” And now after all those
wounds to her spirit she could no longer open
up and love and trust. She’d even given up on
the institution of marriage.
Are there good things in your life that over the
years you’ve given up on? Just know that there
is no place you can fall to that puts you beyond
the reach of God’s love this morning.
That’s the message of John’s gospel and why
John speaks so profoundly to our post-modern
age. He wasn’t writing to Jews. John wrote to
Gentiles. Not many people appreciate how John
understood sin and salvation differently from
the other gospel writers, like, say, Matthew who
wrote to a Jewish audience.
To the Jewish mind sin is breaking the rules.
God gave us his law and if you transgress
against the laws of God you are guilty of
sinning. That’s Judaism. And it’s true. The only
problem is 81% of young people today don’t
believe in moral absolutes so they don’t feel
guilty, even though they’re far from God. What
they feel is empty. They feel thirsty and
unfulfilled like this Samaritan woman.
Several years ago Rolling Stone Magazine came
out with their list of the 500 greatest rock and
roll songs of all time. What song do you think
topped list as the number one rock and roll
song of all time? I wish it had been “Hotel
California” or “Yesterday.” But the number one
song of all time is the perfect sound track for
this woman’s life: “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”
Why do you think John included the story of
this woman in his gospel? Because he was
writing to people in that day who couldn’t get
no satisfaction – to Gentiles living in the
decadence of late Roman Empire, who amidst
their materialistic and sex-crazed lives were
wondering if this was all there was.
So John wrote the story of this woman to say
that only Jesus satisfies. You can try and try
and try but you won’t get no joy or peace or
happiness or fulfillment unless you come to him
and drink his living water.
Notice this is not a Jewish context. Jesus
doesn’t rush up to her and say, “Lady, you broke
all the rules. Shape up! Repent, sinner!” No,
Jesus comes to her and says, “It’s not working
for you, is it?”
Sin in John’s gospel is trying to find satisfaction
or peace or joy in anything or anyone other than
Jesus. Think of your friends today who aren’t
believers. Just know that if you chase after them
and whap them on the head with the Bible and
hit them with a guilt stick you’ll just drive them
further away, because they don’t feel guilty.
Chances are what they feel is empty. Instead of
drinking living water they’re chugging saltwater.
So they try and try and try and try and
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they only get thirstier and they can’t get no
satisfaction in their frantic search for a
nameless something they haven’t yet found..
Nobody saw that clearer than David Foster
Wallace, considered by some to be the most
brilliant post-modern thinker of our time. He
was a professor at my alma mater, Pomona
College, who in a now-famous commencement
address said, “Everybody worships. The only
choice we get is what to worship. And the
compelling reason for maybe choosing some
sort of god…to worship…is that pretty much
anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things, if they are
where you tap real meaning in life, then you will
never have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your
own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you
will always feel ugly. And when time and age
start showing, you will die a million deaths
before your loved ones finally plant you….
Worship power, and you will wind up feeling
weak and afraid, and you will need ever more
power over others to numb you to your own
fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart,
you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always
on the verge of being found out. Look, the
insidious thing about these forms of worship is
not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they are
unconscious. They are [our] default settings.”
David Foster Wallace was not a believer and
later committed suicide in 2008.
There’s an amazing scene later in John. It was
time for the Feast of Tabernacles so Jesus sends
his disciples on ahead into Jerusalem and said
he’d join them later. It was a big moment because Jesus was about to declare himself publically to the world at the feast. But then Jesus
didn’t show. He waited and waited and finally,
says John, “On the eighth day, the great day of
the feast, Jesus stood up and said, ‘If anyone
thirst let him come to me and drink.’”
Of course that seemed to make no sense at all.
By the eighth day everyone was exhausted
from eating and drinking and they’d partied
themselves into the ground. Everybody was
stuffed. But that’s the whole point. Jesus was
saying, “Is anybody still thirsty after you’ve seen
it all and you’ve drunk it all?” He says the same
thing to those living the American dream:
“After you’ve seen it all and you’ve drunk it all,
and you’ve done it all with wealth and career
and romance and sex and the fun and the fame
and the toys and you tried and tried and still
can’t get no satisfaction—if you still feel empty,
then come to me and I will pour myself into you
and you will be filled to overflowing like a
fountain of joy and peace and love and life.”
What does it feel like to have Jesus pour his
living water into you? I have a homey example.
Have you ever gone fishing and pulled in a fish
that’s too small, so you take it off the hook and
toss it on the bottom of the boat or there on the
ground? You keep fishing, so you forget about
it for a while. Then you look down and say, “We
need to toss it back; it’s too small.” But it looks
dead. You throw it in and instantly what
happens? It flicks its tail and, whoosh, away it
goes. The water revives it. That has got to be
the greatest feeling a fish can have. There can
be no greater joy for a fish than to be tossed
back in the water. (Thanks to Tim Keller)
If you’re not Jesus’ disciple, you’re working way
too hard. You’re gasping. You’re flailing on the
ground like a fish out of water if you’ve never
said, “Jesus, I’m yours, totally and completely.”
But if you say this morning “Jesus I’m all in with
you,” like that you experience the very thing for
which you were created. You’ll feel like a fish
getting thrown back in the water. It’s living
water - life as it was meant to be.
Prayer:
Lord on this hot summer day you’re like a gurgling, splashing, life-giving stream of cool mountain water. Lord, we confess that we’ve drunk a lot of brackish water in our day – a lot of salt
water that did not satisfy. Lord, fill us with the only thing in life that satisfies – intimate daily
contact with you, through indwelling presence of your Spirit. Amen.
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