Are You Thirsty? (original) (raw)

The story you have just heard, Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, is so long and contains so many themes of theological importance that it's hard for any preacher to decide what to focus upon in one 15-minute sermon. To do this passage justice, it would take hours. Therefore, I'm going to focus on just two. First, we'll look at how Jesus challenges the social and religious norms of his day, and we'll explore how we can do the same. And second, we'll try to unpack the meaning of the metaphor "living water," and explore how that can lead to a transformation in our own lives. To put it most simply, this story is a reflection upon human need, God's grace, and transformation. It's a story that at first seems to be about actual physical thirst, but then reveals its deeper meaning about spiritual thirst. On a very deep level, I would suspect that we are all spiritually thirsty. Interestingly, this story is the longest recorded dialogue between Jesus and anyone else in the Bible-a conversation between a Jewish male religious leader and an unnamed marginalized woman from a despised people, the Samaritans. In our day and time we miss, unfortunately, the extent of what an incredibly scandalous story this was to those first readers of John's gospel. As previously mentioned, this text is primarily about transformation, starting with how Jesus transforms traditional social and religious conventions and expectations. He does this by challenging the status quo. I love when the Jesus does that, especially when it challenges our own long-held traditional thoughts and practices. First of all, Jesus' request of the Samaritan woman, "Give me a drink," was a very serious violation of the social and religious customs of their day. Jews would not drink out of a Samaritan cup because they considered all Samaritans to be unclean. Therefore, anything they touched would be unclean. Secondly, it was improper for a man (especially a rabbi) to talk to any woman in public. This is supported in the story itself by the "astonishment" of the disciples when they returned later and saw that Jesus had been speaking with a woman. We must not underestimate the impact of these introductory verses in this story. The status quo was indeed severely challenged by Jesus. As mentioned, Jesus acts intentionally to break down the traditional, socially acceptable prejudices and dividing lines between males and females, between people of opposing nationalities, and of differing religious beliefs. This, in and of itself, makes this story very relevant in our own day and age, where there is still inequality between the genders, between people who are not "from here," and with those who don't believe what we believe. So before we even get to the issue of living water and what that means, we are challenged to consider what customs and prejudicial traditions of our day need to be