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John 4:5-42

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him. Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

By: Deacon Renée Beyea (MDiv)

Next to air, water is critical to human survival. In the Western world, unless a drought makes us conscious of our water consumption, we think little of it, save when paying bills. Clean water flows from every faucet, water for bathing, for cooking, drinking, and maintaining yards. Not until we lose it do we realize how essential it is.

Water is important in today’s texts. The Israelites, thirsty in the desert, complain that the Lord has abandoned them to die in the wilderness. How quickly they forget their divine deliverance from Egypt and focus only on the present trial. In our Lenten journeys, we sometimes camp in arid places and fear we’ll die of thirst. These are the times to recall the Lord’s faithfulness and past activity in our lives; He will not abandon us. The psalmist adjures us not to harden our hearts but to stay tender toward the Lord and attentive to his voice. If we do this, if we persevere in our suffering, Paul writes, it will strengthen our character and increase our hope.

If water is scarce in Exodus, it is abundant in John. Jesus invites the Samaritan woman—and us—to reject the water this world offers and quench our thirst with living water. We who have drunk from that cup know the joy of eternal life welling in us like a spring. Yet just as the woman was mystified by Jesus’ pronouncement about water, so are the disciples mystified by Jesus’ enigmatic remark about food. They’d gone to town for provisions and, upon returning, urge Jesus to eat. “My food,” Jesus responds, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

Lent is a season for fasting, yet the paradox is that in denying our physical appetites we often find a spiritual feast. We feed on the Word of God and on Jesus, the Bread of Heaven broken for us. We slake our thirst with Living Water and the Cup of Salvation. Today Jesus reminds us there is another dish on the menu—the food of doing God’s will. The very act of being obedient to the calling he has placed on our lives will nourish and sustain us.