Colour Supplement

Articles by Christians around the world

Sunday 24 February 2008

 

Water

a sermon preached by Tricia Anderson - Reader at St. Andrew's Church on 24 February 2008

 

Water. cool, clear water. Cleansing, refreshing, life-giving.

 

Not dirty, muddy, sewage-infested water. Disease-ridden, polluting, threatening. What flood victims found in their homes, last summer, and what some people found in their homes for a second time, last month, in Gloucestershire.

 

Not deluges from all directions. Rain hurtling down in bucketloads, rivers bursting their banks washing away homes and roads. What people in flood prone countries like Mozambique and Bangladesh live with so often.

 

But water. Cool, clear water. Cleansing, refreshing, life-giving.

 

That was what the Samaritan woman wanted as she came to Jacob's well. As she approaches, carrying her precious water jug in the noonday heat, she finds a man sitting by the well. A man, a Jew, tired after his journey, who asks her for a drink - a drink of cool clear water.

 

She is startled. A Jew wouldn't speak to a Samaritan. He was more likely to treat a Samaritan like those Spaniards treated Lewis Hamilton. Jews considered Samaritans an unclean and godless people. But not Jesus.

 

Moreover, a man wouldn't speak to a woman, especially one he didn't know, in public. But not Jesus.

 

And she is even more amazed when he tells her all her secrets - five husbands, and now living with a man to whom she isn't even married - a woman of dubious reputation. And to add to the scandal, she is now talking, in public, with a man, and a Jew at that.

 

But the result was remarkable. She left her water jar and went back to the city. Can you believe it? Water was so precious, drawn from deep wells in water jars. It was hard work - and then the heavy jars had to be carried home.

 

But she left it! Why?

           

Maybe she didn't need it any more. She didn't need the endless rounds of drawing water only to find herself thirsty again. Maybe she had had too much of the water of lost relationships attacks on her self esteem, of being a social outcast, of feeling alone. Maybe there was no room in her jar for the Water of Life, which Jesus said he could give her. Maybe she herself was so full of this Water of Life that she needed to share. And share it she did. Outcast as she may have been, the people listened to her and came out to meet this remarkable man she told them about.

 

And Jesus knows the empty places in our lives. He invites us to do like the Samaritan woman, and stop our ceaseless rounds, to leave our precious water jars behind and taste the Water of Life.

 

Of course this is scary. We all need our security blankets the things that represent a lifetime of hard work. Maybe we find they are just too valuable to leave behind, maybe without them we feel like social outcasts. They carry, not water, but our pride, our self esteem, our accomplishments, our belongings.

 

Maybe our water jars are hiding places for things we'd rather others didn't see. Things like guilt or fear, loneliness or regret, grief or shame.

 

This meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman shows that Jesus ignores all divisions of race and religion, gender and culture. It reveals the truth of St Paul's saying:

 

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female;  for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:28)    

 

And surely it encourages us to leave behind our water jars full of hurt and humiliation, rejection and regrets, and to go forward to experience the cleansing, healing and renewal that Jesus gives us in the Water of Life.

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