Children’s Address
Have you ever seen a wishing well? A well uses a bucket you can wind down to collect the underground water below. To protect the water and keep it clean from birds and rats and other things, people often built a wall around it, and added a roof like this in the picture. As early as the 2nd century, people dropped coins in wells. Why did they do this?
Many ancient cultures thought that underground springs were special waters given from the gods. People often thought that spirits or gods ruled over these waters and kept them clean. To thank the gods, people would drop coins into the water. The earliest reference of this comes from the 2nd C. Some believed that if a person made a wish loud enough while standing at the water, and dropped a coin into the well, the spirits might take pity of them and grant their wish.
Since this became such a widespread custom, it has become big business. More than 3,000 coins are tossed into Rome’s Trevi Fountain each day. That’s around 2 million dollars per year! [1]
It would be great to throw a coin in the well to make a wish come true. But the gods and spirits that are part of the wishing well legend are not real. You would be just throwing money away.
Here is a picture of another well. Now you might say that this doesn’t look anything like a well—it is a picture of Jesus. You are right! But in today’s Gospel reading Jesus tells us that he is like a well. Just as we need water to stay alive, we also need life from God. Jesus is the well—the source of living water to give us the blessings and gifts of his own life through the Holy Spirit.
He doesn’t bless and help us depending on whether we throw a coin in to the well. We don’t have to pay God to make him happy or pleased with us. God doesn’t wait to collect our blessings. He freely gives his blessings out to us, through Jesus his Son, who shares his own life with us, giving us eternal life.
Jesus says that those who drink the water he gives will never be thirsty again. He means that He is the well to go to for life and blessing forever. And you don’t have to pay a thing!
Growing faith at home prayer insert
SERMON: Episodes in Lent: Episode 3 “Scandal at two wells”
As we continue the sermon series Episodes in Lent, the opening scene of episode 3 is a shot of the blazing sun in a pastel blue sky. As the camera pans to ground level, we see Jesus on the move from Judea to Galilee, which means he had to travel through Samaria. He arrives at a place called Sychar. It’s quite a significant place. Jacob bought a piece of land in this vicinity and set up an altar which he named ‘El Elohe Israel’ (‘God, the mighty God of Israel’—Gen 33:19). Tired and thirsty from his journey, Jesus approaches Jacob’s well, and sits there to rest. His perspiration shows how much he needs refreshment, but you notice that he has no implement with him with which to draw water from the well. He waits for someone to come. The anticipation builds.
Just then, a Samaritan woman enters the frame, coming to the well to draw some water. Jesus asks her for a drink.
There’s no mistaking the shock on her face at this scandalous request: “How do you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
You see, Jewish custom did not permit a Rabbi to speak in public with a woman. But further, the Jews hated the Samaritans. The Samaritans were a mixture of former Israelites and Gentiles from neighbouring pagan regions, and Israelite and pagan elements became mingled in worship. The Samaritans worshiped the LORD, but also served the gods of other nations by performing abominable practices like child sacrifice. Worship with the Samaritans was forbidden by the Jews, who went so far as to prohibit marriage with them too. To eat the food prepared by Samaritans was considered equal to eating pig’s flesh, making a person ritually unclean, and the Jews prayed that the Samaritans might have no part in the resurrection.
Yet it is Jesus, a Jew, who initiates the conversation with this woman. Jesus’ simple request for a drink grows into a fascinating exchange in which he intriguingly speaks of himself as the source of living water, showing the woman that her spiritual thirst can only be quenched by him.
Jesus said to her: “If you knew the gift of God and who is the One saying to you: “Give me a drink” you would have asked him and he would have given you living water”.
The woman replied: “Sir, you have nothing for drawing water and the well is deep. Where then can you get the living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who has given to us this well and drank out of it himself, and also his sons and his sheep and goats?”
Jesus said: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water which I give to them will never be thirsty again. The water I give to them will become in them a fountain of water springing up to eternal life”.
The woman thinks Jesus is speaking literally, and asks Jesus for this water so that she won’t have to keep coming back to the well. When Jesus tells her to come back with her husband, this scandalous episode quickly descends to new depths: “I do not have a husband,” the woman replies. Jesus uses this opportunity to expose her secret life. The man with her now is not her husband and she has had five husbands. “How does Jesus know?!” She asks herself. She senses there is something special about Jesus, but falls short of fully recognising him: “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.”
The language and imagery Jesus uses shifts from living water to Spirit and truth, reminding us of Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus in which he teaches that a person must be born anew by water and the Spirit to see the Kingdom of God. The conversation quickly moves to the subject of Jesus’ identity. Worshipping God will no longer be in any particular location, but in the new Temple, Jesus. He is the Christ who has come with salvation, he is the source of the living water, the springs that bubble up to eternal life. It is through him that his Father is worshipped in Spirit and truth.
The woman says to Jesus: “I know that the Messiah is coming; the One called Christ. When he comes he will teach us all things”.
Then Jesus said to her: “I, the one speaking to you, am he”.
Time now to press pause. What does this unfolding conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well have to do with us today? How does it connect with us? Where are we in the scene before us, of Jesus and the woman at the well?
The picture that seems to be presented to us of the woman is that she is on the bottom rung of the moral ladder, and quite likely ostracised by her own community. Perhaps that’s why she comes alone in the noon heat, instead of what was usual practice in the culture of the day—coming with others in the cooler hours prior to evening. As we hear the exchange between this woman and Jesus, what is your reaction to her hidden life? How would you respond if you sat and talked with her? Would we be shocked? Offended? Would we be uncomfortable talking with her? Would a sense of unease or even disgust rise up within?
We need to be careful about how we arrive at the conclusions we do about the situations others are in. We are not called to judge others, because we are not reliable judges—we simply don’t know the reasons behind the circumstances that others are in. But Jesus does. “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did,” the woman declared.
The purpose of today’s episode is not for us to think how the woman should be treated, or what should happen to her. The purpose for us is to consider: How are we like her?
You see the reality of our sinful nature means that in our natural state all people are like the
Samaritans—unclean in God’s sight, irrespective of the moral exterior we put on in public. None of us measure up to God’s holiness but are all spiritually destitute before God in our own strength. Our broken condition means that not only do we forsake God, we look to meet our spiritual needs according to our ways, just as Jeremiah said:
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jer 2:13).
What wells do we draw from—wells that cannot provide lasting refreshment? What is it we are thirsty for? We can be thirsty for the approval of others. We can be thirsty for peace to replace fear and conflict, and thirsty for calm in mind and soul when all seems out of control. We can be thirsty to belong somewhere; to matter to somebody; anybody, so desperate to be loved, and loved just as we are without the need to measure up to other people’s expectations. We can be thirsty for forgiveness to free us from the crushing burden of the shame and guilt of our sins.
Do you have a secret life; a secret past that if ever exposed you would be too ashamed to bear, with thoughts and attitudes of your heart pushed safely down, away from view…but not from the sight of Jesus, who knows everything about us, and everything we ever did? What is your water bottle filled with? Is it filled with poisoned water of pride and judgment? Is it filled with bitter water of the refusal to forgive, and to gossip about others to make ourselves feel better? Is it filled with the undrinkable salt water of controlling behaviours to try to cope with life that is out of control? It is filled with stagnant water of fear and hurt that stifles us and robs us of true life? What is it that we turn to for life in place of Jesus and his word?
We have to dig very deep down those wells, and its hard work, to keep doing that all the time, to source water that will never quench our thirst for the deepest needs in life.
It is no coincidence that this discourse in John’s Gospel should happen near the place Jacob set up an altar and called it ‘God, the mighty God of Israel’. For Jesus is greater than Jacob. He is Jacob’s Maker, and the Maker of all there is. He is the mighty One of Israel. Jesus is the new location of God’s gracious presence that is neither in Jerusaelm or Gerizim.
Any morally upstanding Jew wouldn’t want to have a thing to do with the Samaritans.
But Jesus does. He promises to quench the human thirst for unconditional love, mercy and peace, grace and compassion. Did you notice how, in the conversation, Jesus does not condemn the woman, revealing her sin to shame her, but he exposes her sin in order to show the woman her need for him. even there at Sychar the hour is approaching when he who is thirsty at Jacob’s well, will cry out “I thirst” as he hangs from a Cross.
Jesus made himself unclean by taking upon himself the sin of the world and was lifted high on the Cross, to reconcile all people—no matter how far gone we might think them to be—so that whoever believes in him, even the Samaritans, will share in the fullness of life God gives, and will certainly also share in the resurrection.
See yourself in the picture, in the same need of the living water that Jesus promises—grace and life in him. For Jesus is the second well in the scene. He is the well of eternal life for you; the source of divine blessing to go to and drink. He says to you: “whoever drinks of the water which I give to them will definitely not be thirsty again, but the water I will give to them will become in them a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.”
When the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. Where can we go to be in the presence of such a loving, merciful and compassionate God? We don’t have to go to Mount Gerizim in Samaria, or Jerusalem in Judea to worship in Spirit and truth. But right here, in the Person of Christ, God comes to us—and he stays permanently.
He is the well from heaven for you weary travellers, and you do not have to go any further to draw from his springs of living water. God, the mighty God of Israel; the Saviour of the world is present for you again today, right here. Because of his words, you have become believers too. He welcomes you to his table to give you his precious food and drink. We are made pure from this holy spring, and strengthened to worship in Spirit and in truth. His might is sufficient for your every need and burden. His grace is sufficient to take away all guilt and cover all shame; the shame that is so hard for us to try to cover ourselves.
As we come to him, he transforms us to be like the woman in the text, who left her water container behind and went to others to tell them of Jesus. He calls us to do the same; leaving with him the heavy burden of carrying water jars that will never be able to quench our thirst for true life, and fills us up with his living water—his own life. And even when he calls us to share it by pouring it into the water containers of others, you will still have enough to last you for all eternity. Amen.
1] An article by Karen Harris | May 6, 2019 https://historydaily.org/folktale-origins-of-wishing-wells/9
