Readings:
Exodus 17:3-7; Romans 5:1-8; John 4:5-42

The people complained against Moses, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt? they said, ‘Was it so that I should die of thirst, my children. too, and my cattle?’ Moses appealed to Yahweh. How am I to deal with these people?’ he said. ‘A little more and they will stone me!’ Yahweh said to Moses, You must strike the rock, and water will flow from it for the people to drink.‘
Exodus 17:3, 4,6

Today’s Gospel, Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, is too long to give, even in summary, within this two page limit, so I shall give a brief commentary and a few quotations.

I heard a Sikh give an address at the funeral of Stella Reekie, a Church of Scotland deaconess. He said of Stella that she was like water, ‘for she gave us life, cleansed and refreshed us. But she was also like water because she assumed the shape of whoever she was with, so that to me, Stella was a Sikh, to my Muslim friends a Muslim, to Jews she was Jewish.’ It was a wonderful tribute: the Sikh recognised a life-giving quality in her, so compared her to water, a scriptural image for the life of God.

It is remarkable that this famous discourse on God as living water should be given to a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, because no self-respecting Jew would normally talk to a Samaritan, who was considered worse than a pagan, and therefore to be avoided and despised. That is why the woman replies to Jesus’ request for a drink, “What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?’

Jesus says to her, ‘If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water’. The woman answers, ‘You have no bucket, sir, and the well is deep,’ discounting, by this piece of common sense, Jesus’ revelation of himself as giver of eternal life! It is an answer to be pondered, for we are constantly laying down criteria to which God must match up if he is going to have any chance of acceptance by us. It was the same in Jesus’ own lifetime: is he not a carpenter’s son? Prophets do not come out of Galilee. We are constantly laying down conditions to be fulfilled if we are to pay serious attention. If the reality with which we are presented does not fit into our mental filing system, then the reality is denied or ignored. A headmaster, being informed late one evening by a staff member with a drink problem that the school was on fire, said. ‘You’re drunk, and a wing of the school burned down’. It is useful to make out a list of our ‘you have no bucket’ phrases, and then pray to be delivered from every form of prejudice, bigotry and snobbishness, from every form of attachment, including religious attachment, which blinds us to the gifts God is offering us in the truth of things.

It is to this openness to truth that Jesus invites the woman, ‘Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem… The hour will come in fact it is here already-when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth: that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants. God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth’ (John 4:21, 23-24).

We cannot find God simply by worshipping in a particular place, or in a particular church, or with a particular form of service. The place, the church, the form of service is important, but only as a means to help us worship in spirit and in truth. Forgetfulness of this truth leads to division between Christian churches and to fierce divisions within them. When we meet together across the denominations to pray silently in spirit and in truth, and when we meet to serve Christ together in work for our local community and for the wider community, then we can come to know that there is a spring within us welling up to eternal life.

Prayer
Lord, deliver us from searching for our ultimate security in any created thing, in any theory, system, or organization, sacred or secular. Show yourself to us, our light, our refuge, our salvation, so that we may recognize you in all things and worship you always in spirit and in truth. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.