Sunday 24 February 2008

Background

John's Gospel can work on various levels with many differentlayers. This story is no exception:

• Jesus is tired and thirsty and converses at a well with a womanwho has come to draw water,
• Jesus, a Jewish man, who would not normally have used adrinking vessel 'contaminated' by a Samaritan, asks a Samaritanwoman for a drink, crossing boundaries, as is his way,
• the reader of the Gospel has already discovered, in earlierchapters, that Jesus is a person of extraordinary significance, butthe woman does not know this and so their conversation is partly atcross purposes,
• and much more.

Our theme this week, invites us to focus on the centralidea of the passage - living water. This is a play on words,because in the Greek in which the Gospel was originally written, itcould also be translated 'running water'.

We have enough experience of drought in the UK to be familiarwith large dry areas in reservoirs and sometimes streams in whichno water runs. For many people in other parts of the world, droughtand thirst are part of daily, life-threateningreality.

At the heart of the passage is an assumption that physicalthirst is not the only kind that human beings experience. There canbe an inner desert that longs for the water that will make itfruitful.

John portrays Jesus as the person who can meet this inneraridity and bring refreshment and renewal. This living, runningwater is a spring or a stream that will never dry up.

To Ponder

Have you known this inner dryness and where haveyou looked for refreshment?

To what extent is it right to focus only on thisinner desert and ignore the reality of physical thirst experiencedby millions of our fellow human beings?