Are You Thirsty for Living Water? John 4:1-10

 Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4 Now he 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.”

The gospel of John features many stories of Jesus' interacting with people of all races and backgrounds.  Today, he meets up with a Samaritan woman. The fact that Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, engaged a Samaritan woman in a public place would not have gone over well any Jew.  The Samaritans were considered less than Jewish, because after the Jews in Samaria were invaded, they intermarried with those from other cultures.  You might say a Samaritan who intermarried with Gentile was considered a "half breed".  Jesus even took the direct route to Galilee, where he would have been more likely to run into a Samaritan. Most pious Jews took a different route which was much longer just to avoid them. 

“The strict Rabbis forbade a Rabbi to greet a woman in public. A Rabbi might not even speak to his own wife or daughter or sister in public. There were even Pharisees who were called ‘the bruised and bleeding Pharisees’ because they shut their eyes when they saw a woman on the street and so walked into walls and houses!” (Barclay)

Also she was a woman with a morally compromised background, as we shall soon see.  For these reasons Jesus would have avoided making any public contact with her.  Yet Jesus, thirsty from his journey, asks her for a drink.  John shows Jesus' human and how gets thirsty like anyone else. The fact that the woman came at noon, showed that she wanted to avoid the crowd of other women, who would have gone earlier in the morning in the cool of the day.  In this way she could keep a low profile and avoid being seen. 

When the woman asks Jesus why he is taking the risk of interacting with her.  This gives Jesus a chance to reveal his identity to her. Jesus uses the term "living water", which in his day was a term applied to spring water when it bubbled up from the ground.  In the Old Testament "living water" is associated with God. He is called the "fountain of living water".  Jeremiah 2;13, 17:13  We will see in John 7 that living water was also seen flowing out of the temple bringing healing to all nations (from Ezekiel 47:1-12)

Jesus is much more interested in satisfying the woman's spiritual thirst, rather his own physical thirst as real as it was at the time.  Jesus was the master at using real life situations to reveal who He was and the salvation he brought from God.  The bottom line was Jesus was not afraid to take a risk to show this woman His unconditional and risky love.  

How about us?  Do we take risks by sharing Christ with those who are outcasts in the world?  Do we approach those written off by society or considered religiously "incorrect".  Let's take a cue from Jesus and meet people's everyday thirst with the living water of Christ!