SPEAKER_00: Once again, I'm Pastor Jen Swindell, serving here in Evangelism and Communication, and excited to be with you as we continue our series that's called Seeking, Asking Honest Questions for a Deeper Faith.
SPEAKER_00: Today's question is pretty simple.
SPEAKER_00: Will you give me a drink?
SPEAKER_00: Thirst is one of our most basic human needs.
SPEAKER_00: Water is the thing we know we can do without for the shortest amount of time.
SPEAKER_00: We all know what it's like to be thirsty, whether it's after a workout or yard work, travel, or just after a long day.
SPEAKER_00: But some things we thirst for aren't a thirst that's in our throat, but a thirst that shows up in our soul.
SPEAKER_00: So today we have two different stories, one from our Old Testament and one with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Two dry places that are thirsting for something with that one question, will you give me a drink?
SPEAKER_00: So we already heard our Old Testament reading, the cry out to Moses to give us something to drink.
SPEAKER_00: On the surface, it's easy to say that this was the complaining phase of their travels, but underneath that question is something deeper.
SPEAKER_00: The real question that's being asked for the Israelites is God, have you abandoned us?
SPEAKER_00: Old Testament scholar Walter Brugeman puts it, saying that Israel's complaint in the wilderness reveals a deep human anxiety, the fear that maybe God isn't actually present with us after all.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're honest, that question has probably crossed most of our minds at some point.
SPEAKER_00: In moments of stress, in seasons of uncertainty, when life feels dry and difficult, fear can make us forget those ways in which God has already carried us up to this point.
SPEAKER_00: But what's remarkable is even when we forget, God provides.
SPEAKER_00: Water flows from the rock, not because the people had a strong faith or because they asked perfectly because they didn't, but water flows because that's who God is.
SPEAKER_00: It comes before and ahead of any readiness.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we call provenient grace.
SPEAKER_00: God provides those waters even when faith wasn't strong yet.
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, because God's faithfulness doesn't depend on ours.
SPEAKER_00: So now we visit this same question, but from the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be looking at this reading, and I'm splitting up that longer text into different parts.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll start in John chapter 4, verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: So he came to a Samaritan city called Sakar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given his son Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out from his journey, was sitting by the well.
SPEAKER_00: It was about noon.
SPEAKER_00: A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
SPEAKER_00: His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman from Samaria?
SPEAKER_00: Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, then you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
SPEAKER_00: So if we step into this moment where this gospel begins, it starts with some basic where and when that can feel like just some context and setting, but it actually tells a lot more and adds layers to this.
SPEAKER_00: It might sound like going through Samaria is simply a geography piece of information, but it was anything but ordinary back in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: Jews and Samaritans had deep cultural and religious divides.
SPEAKER_00: Many Jews would go out of their way to avoid Samaria, and yet Jesus chooses this route.
SPEAKER_00: He also arrives at noon, the hottest part of the day, which seems fitting for needing a drink, but women would normally come and fetch water together in groups, early or late in the day, when the already grueling work of carrying water would be a little bit more bearable.
SPEAKER_00: But this woman found herself alone for reasons of being left out and ostracized.
SPEAKER_00: We get to see some of these barriers: gender barriers, class barriers, morality barriers, social barriers, religious barriers, all of those things that would have shouted out to that first century folks in which this takes place.
SPEAKER_00: But that makes what Jesus did even more surprising.
SPEAKER_00: To come to her, to choose to go to her, and to say, Will you give me a drink?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, the Son of God, begins a conversation asking for help with a need.
SPEAKER_00: In all of his humanity, he's tired, he is thirsty, and he uses that question that God's been answering for centuries of, will you give me a drink?
SPEAKER_00: He deliberately crossed those boundaries that folks thought were fixed and well observed.
SPEAKER_00: Boundaries of ethnicity and religion and geography and gender.
SPEAKER_00: Divides that back then would have run even more clearly than the divides we see today.
SPEAKER_00: This interaction came with risk of reputation and vulnerability, but Jesus chose that conversation anyway, which tells us something important about how God works.
SPEAKER_00: God chooses to come to us with relationship, not through magic and domination.
SPEAKER_00: If we think about it, this is the same Jesus who turned water into wine, the same God that had water come from rock.
SPEAKER_00: If he was simply thirsty, he didn't need to ask this woman, but he chose to.
SPEAKER_00: So in the same time that Jesus embraces his humanity, he also gifts that woman at the well hers.
SPEAKER_00: By being vulnerable, he asks a question and puts her in a place of power, of being able to provide, which is something she probably hadn't experienced in quite some time.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' willingness to ask the question opens the door to this woman's transformation.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll pick up in Scripture back at verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: The woman said to him, Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep.
SPEAKER_00: Where do you get living water?
SPEAKER_00: Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and flocks drank from it?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.
SPEAKER_00: The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up for eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: The woman said to him, Sir, please give me this water so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
SPEAKER_00: So at this point in the story, Jesus begins to shift the conversation, mirroring what Pastor Kevin talked about last week with Nicodemus with changing from physical conversation to spiritual, we start to make that same change here a chapter later.
SPEAKER_00: He starts talking about more than water, because as we started, some of our thirsts don't show up in our throat, but show up in our soul.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question to consider to get us started here today is what are we thirsty for?
SPEAKER_00: Not coffee or water that maybe we had before coming, but in our lives, that deeper soul thirst.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're thirsting for rest, for security, longing for peace or purpose or forgiveness, or maybe just a place to belong.
SPEAKER_00: See, in the Gospels, that physical need opens a doorway to that deeper need of our soul.
SPEAKER_00: And our acknowledgement that sometimes what we think we're searching for isn't actually our deepest need.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we think we need to fill our time with things to do to stay busy, but what we're really looking for is to make meaning.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we chase success, longing to be the best, but what we're really looking for is reassurance that we're worthy just as we are.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we look for approval, trying to accept and be a part when we don't want approval as much as belonging.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we'll cling to control when what we're really searching for is the ability to trust or to surrender.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, more often than not, just as Jesus said, we drink from wells that cannot satisfy.
SPEAKER_00: But the good news is the grace of God means that we don't get shamed for being thirsty.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, over time, through God's grace, through others, and through God's guidance, we get reshaped and rerouted closer to what God's creation dream is for us, that God works within us to help shape our desires and move us towards following Jesus' footsteps.
SPEAKER_00: The woman embraces some vulnerability and asks for that living water, and she does so with some confidence that Jesus is willing to give it.
SPEAKER_00: Grace begins in those moments when someone is brave enough to ask that honest question to admit that we're seeking something more or something deeper.
SPEAKER_00: So in this interaction with Jesus and the woman, they go back and forth of being able to, Jesus reveals that he knows about her husbands or five husbands, and she's acknowledges that he is a prophet, and they go back and forth in one of the biggest divides about the location of worship, of mountain and temple.
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm going to pick up with our scripture at verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to her, I am he, the one who is speaking to you.
SPEAKER_00: Just then his disciples came, and they were astonished that he was speaking with the woman, but no one said, What do you want, or why are you speaking to her?
SPEAKER_00: Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city, and she said to the people, Come and see a man who told me everything I've ever done.
SPEAKER_00: He cannot be the Messiah, can he?
SPEAKER_00: So they left the city and went on their way to him.
SPEAKER_00: So this woman who was probably not listened to very much gets to come, and we see the people react and come.
SPEAKER_00: There's also a small detail in that part of the gospel that's easy to miss if you read it quickly.
SPEAKER_00: Right in the middle there, just five little words.
SPEAKER_00: She left her water jar.
SPEAKER_00: Seems small.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she was just so excited and forgetful, but that water was the reason she came in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: She came because she was thirsty or because she needed water for the household or for dinner or for whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_00: That part of her daily routine, something she had done over and over again, probably hard to forget.
SPEAKER_00: It would be like forgetting to brush our teeth.
SPEAKER_00: But after that conversation with Jesus, something shifts and changes, and she leaves that jar behind.
SPEAKER_00: And with it, she leaves that identity, that downtrodded, hiding in the middle of the day, invisible identity.
SPEAKER_00: She came looking for water, but left carrying something else.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of having to carry that water, she became the vessel that carried that living water, that spring that overflowed and shared with person after person, offering that life that Jesus offers.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't just come to the well to receive something physical, but she now has become part of the living water itself.
SPEAKER_00: That's our invitation too, to be part of living water that overflows and can share with others.
SPEAKER_00: Things changed pretty fast for her.
SPEAKER_00: She went from invisibility to being able to gather.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, the woman who avoided community was probably pushed away from community, becomes the one calling community together.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of John says that many Samaritans believed because of her testimony, which means that the outsider, the stranger, the woman becomes one of the first evangelists in the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: She becomes the one proclaiming the good news when she probably didn't have anything good to speak of just a little bit before.
SPEAKER_00: Which shows us again how God's grace works.
SPEAKER_00: When someone truly encounters Jesus, it doesn't stop with them.
SPEAKER_00: When grace fills you, it doesn't leave you where it found you, it overflows.
SPEAKER_00: Whether that's through testimony, through service, that's why we have things like our missions table, because faith isn't meant to be something we keep to ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Our own personal transformation, personal holiness, is meant to overflow and to become community transformation through relationships, through service, through prayer, advocacy, and more.
SPEAKER_00: Grace changes us, and then it moves through us, and it's our job to become that spring for other people as well.
SPEAKER_00: Whether we come feeling like our buckets are empty, or maybe we aren't even sure what bucket we need to fill, we can be that person who can leave the old behind and to take on what Jesus has to offer.
SPEAKER_00: It's important to consider, again, both the woman at the well and last week with Nicodemus, that Jesus doesn't rank people before loving them or offering them this gift of eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: We aren't based on what we do or what we know, not based on reputation or education or religion.
SPEAKER_00: In the kingdom of God, grace flows freely, which is something that is beautiful and true and accessible for all the world.
SPEAKER_00: No one is too broken for God's grace, and no one is too important to need it.
SPEAKER_00: But this story isn't just about Samaria thousands of years ago.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the wells that we come to every day of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We still live in a world full of those divides: generational, economic, racial, political, even church.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere we turn, lines are being drawn, sometimes by us or sometimes for us, and people decide who's on which side.
SPEAKER_00: But in a world like that, this need to come, this soul-level thirst becomes even more important because it's up to us as followers of Jesus, as those who represent God's light in the world, to know that this isn't about us going just to help, but about the way in which we get shaped in the process.
SPEAKER_00: If you stop by the missions booth and look at those pictures, it is not just those folks that we help that benefit because we, as the helpers, get shaped even more.
SPEAKER_00: It's about a mutual need for human connection and the ways in which we need each other and we know that we're better together.
SPEAKER_00: And again, that doesn't have to look like going off to Peru for a week.
SPEAKER_00: It can be simple in our day-to-day lives.
SPEAKER_00: Choosing to listen before we speak, choosing curiosity over the assumptions that we've made or that were made for us.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it means overflowing and sharing our story with testimony and excitement, and sometimes it means being quiet and making a space for someone else to share their story instead.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it means instead of saying, I'll pray for you later, to drop everything and pray with someone right then.
SPEAKER_00: Those small acts of courage, those small moments of connections are the things that can change communities.
SPEAKER_00: Because we grow strongest when our humility runs deepest.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's our question for ourselves today is how can we show up differently in a way that invites conversation and learning and mutuality?
SPEAKER_00: And again, for some of us, that means sharing a testimony and excitement.
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, it means being willing to be honest about our needs, being willing to say, can you give me a drink?
SPEAKER_00: Can you help fill this need that I have?
SPEAKER_00: Because if we can trust one another with our real needs and listen to those needs and do our best to help meet them or connect to folks who can, when we're brave enough to name those true thirsts, those moments that we really need, that's when transformation happens with vulnerability and connection, of being able to offer grace and to overflow.
SPEAKER_00: So whether you feel like you're wandering in the wilderness, wondering where things can come from, or whether you're sitting at the well with a bucket, our lives today are made to come together, to unify, and to say we're in this together because God's grace abounds.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.