From the Daily Lectionary for Wednesday in the Tenth Week after Pentecost
John 4:1-26
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”—although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.). The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband;’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
John will just not let go of this conflict between the followers of John the Baptist, and the followers of Jesus. So we have to pay attention to it. As I have argued, the theology of John’s Gospel is radically different from that of the Synoptic writers. Matthew, Mark, and Luke depict a resistance movement contained within Palestine, within the confines of Judaism. For the Synoptic writers, Jesus’ ministry and teaching is a reinterpretation of Torah, Jewish law. For them, Jesus’ ministry is consistent with that of John the Baptist’s, proclaiming the imminent coming of God’s reign in which corrupted power will be overthrown, and the nation of Israel, both spiritually and politically will flourish once again. John, the writer, is aiming at a more universal belief system, one not confined by its Semitic origins.
The woman at the well, a Samaritan, sworn enemies of the Jews, asks Jesus if he is greater than the great patriarch Jacob, the father of the nation. Jesus doesn’t answer, but the answer is clear: Yes he is. We see here the future of the Jesus movement “breaking” from its being a local sect peculiar to this odd province called Palestine, and becoming a cosmopolitan, inclusive philosophy that will resonate with a wider following. Rather than espousing Torah as the rudiments of the faith, John acclaims the guidance of the “Spirit of Truth,” a decided Greek category. Paul, much earlier than the writing of this Gospel, makes a similar argument.
As post-modern Christians, still, we look to the whole of the New Testament, the four Gospels, and the letters of Paul, as our means of staying rooted in the tradition, but the Spirit of Truth knows no boundaries. That is why science, and “new knowledge,” and experience are not in conflict with scripture. It is as if John gives us permission to seek and speculate theologically, knowing that we can trust the truth, that the truth will not lead us astray, despite its myriad facets.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the church “closed” the canon of scripture in the early fourth century. No new books. There are many ways into the truth: music, art, poetry. It strikes me that John’s sensibilities include the human imagination in the process of discovery. Why else the audacious metaphor of “body and blood?” It may be that mystery is perhaps a more noble goal than knowledge; that questions may serve us more than answers; that the canon is not really closed, but alive, growing.
The times in which we are living cry out for the Spirit of Truth, what Coleridge would equate with the human imagination and its relentless grace. The engine of the imagination is Love; and Love will overcome the insidious indifference that infects our world. This, I believe, is the “living water” of which Jesus speaks. Give us this water, O Lord… and soon.
A Prayer attributed to Paul, the Apostle (BCP p.126)
May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
