SPEAKER_00 0:02

Somebody give me this water in the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. It is the middle of the day. There is no slave. The heat is unbearable. Jesus has travelled a long way. He is exhausted. His closest friends are nowhere to be seen. And he lets it be known that he is thirsty. A scene not from this morning's meetings, but from later in St. John's Gospel. On this later occasion, Jesus is offered in return not water, but vinegar placed on a hyssop. The ancient Israelites have been instructed to use the hyssop plant to sprinkle their doorframe with the blood of a man at the time of the Passover. And now Christ, the Passable Man, having cried from the cross, I first, passes over from life to death. As he does so, blood and water flow from his pierced side, inaugurating the two greatest sacraments of the church, the Eucharist and baptism. As this happens, Christ's own words from chapter 7, verse 38, are fulfilled. Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. Just moments before uttering those words, Christ had also said, If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. And previously, at the beginning of his public ministry, at a wedding feast in Cana, Jesus had provided miraculously and abundantly for those who might otherwise perform thirsting. In the words of Bishop William Temple, the water that is born at the command of Christ is wine for him who drinks it. Here is promise of an inward spring, which is an annexia of life eternal for him who receives it. All of which is to say that the encounter we did hear about this morning is best understood in the context of the whole of St. John's Gospel, in which Jesus as the water of life is a recurring theme, appearing at every stage of his public ministry, beginning, middle, and end. If you will pardon the expression, it flows throughout the whole of the Gospel. In one sense, this was not a surprise. The miraculous provision or treatment of water as a sign of God's life-giving abundance was a recurring theme also in the Old Testament. It is by passing from water that the Israelites are saved at the Exodus, while their persecutors are drowned. As we heard this morning, God subsequently provided water miraculously for Israel during their years of wandering in the desert, even when they quarreled and tested the Lord, even when they wondered about if he was really present with them or not. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, Jeremiah twice refers to the Lord as the fountain of living water. Ezekiel 47 speaks of the waters of life flowing from the temple. Zechariah 14:8 speaks of living waters flowing from Jerusalem all year round. Given the clear identification elsewhere in the Gospel that Christ is the new and eternal temple, the imagery is clear. So there is a biblical context, both new and old, for this morning's reading, and yet there is at the same time an even more foundational observation to be made at the most basic level of human existence. We need water both to live and to be clean. When Jesus and later the church step into this context, they do so knowing that the imagery is immediate and powerful. This, all of this, is the backdrop to this morning's gospel reading. It is the middle of the day. There is no shame. The heat is unbearable. Jesus has travelled our way, he is exhausted, his closest friends are nowhere to be seen, and he lets it be known that he is thirsty. There is much that could be said about the exchange that follows, and not time enough here and now. I want simply to note two highly important features of the story before returning to my main theme of water. First, in speaking to the woman, Jesus makes two taboos. His interlocutor is not only a Samaritan, but also a woman alone in public. He should not have spoken to her at all. Perhaps it is no surprise that her response is abrupt at first. But it is clear that in initiating and pursuing this encounter, Jesus is pushing at the boundaries of both the purity codes and the social etiquette of the time. He does so in order to make the point that whilst, in his own words, salvation is from the Jews, it is then offered to all who believe in Jesus, the Savior of the world. The Samaritan woman's spiritual journey, which takes her from lack of faith or understanding into the world of full discipleship, going so far as to testify about Jesus to her own people. This stands for the incorporation of the Gentiles into God's plan of salvation and commission of the church. The second point relates to the fact that the woman is very specifically a Samaritan and not, for example, a Gentile. As many commentators have observed, feuds within pharies are often more bitter than those between completely unrelated parties. So it was with the Jews and the Samaritans. As our reading tells us, they were bitterly divided over where God was to be found and worshipped. For the Jews it was in Jerusalem, for the Samaritans it was on Mount Gerizen. But as Jesus says, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. In the new dispensation, place is superseded by person. For Jesus is the incarnation of truth, and by his glorification bestows the Spirit on those who believe in him. And so, at the climax of today's encounter, Jesus reveals himself to the woman as the Messiah and Christ, in whose coming she has just expressed faith. Our English translations tend to mangle the text and so risk weakening the point. But the Greek is clear. This exchange with the use of the divine name I am should therefore be seen as being on a par with the other great I am sayings of St. John's Gospel. I am the bread of life, the light of the world, and so on. All point to the divinity of Jesus Christ, who is I am, the God who, until this point, was not to be seen or named. This great moment of revelation, and with it the incorporation of many Samaritans into the ranks of Christ's followers, is made possible because Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for help, for a drink. On a human level, this opens the conversation. On a spiritual level, he was really thirsty for her faith. Dominican theologian Aiden Nichols expands this concept of two levels of reality. He says at one level, Jesus is just another travel, weary, hot, dusty, thirsty, in a hostile countryside. But at another level, he is the source of the Holy Spirit, a life giver. And so he can provide living water. He can give her a taste of the life of God. It will be like a perpetual spring inside her, refreshing her now and forever. In saying this, Father Nichols is drawing on patristic precedent. St. Augustine wrote, Jesus asks for a drink, and he promises a drink. He is in need and wants to receive. He is rich and wants to satisfy the needs of others. He was promising the crown of nourishment in abundance that comes from a fruit of spirit. She did not yet understand, and because she did not understand, what did she reply? The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty, nor have to come here to draw water. This work was forced on her by her poverty, but her frailty made her shrink heart. If only she had understood the words, come to me all you who lay down and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Jesus was saying this to her, so that her labor would be at an end.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

So wrote St. Augustine.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

But the beautiful thing is that Jesus says the same thing to us. We are invited to participate in what Father Nichols calls the Christian experience of grace. So that the Holy Spirit, which flows out from Christ's sacred heart, becomes in us a spring of water welling up to eternal life. We are incorporated into this life in the waters of baptism, in which we pass over from death to life, and through which water we receive both life and cleansing. In the Eucharist, we are fed again and again with the bread of heaven and the precious blood of the Saviour, which flowed with water from his wounded side. In sacramental profession, we are restored to the purity of our baptismal state through the forgiveness of sins which Christ won for us upon the cross. Understood alright, all of this means that we need never be thirsty. We need never draw water again, except from the wells of the Savior, through the sacraments of his church. Christ does indeed say to each of us, Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. All of this is summed up in the wonderful hymn by Charles Wesley, which we have just sung, and in particular the words of the last verse. Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all thy sin. Let the healing streams abound, make and keep me pure within. Thou of life the fountain art, freely let me take of thee. Spring thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Or to put it even more simply, sir, give me this water. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.