Day 37: Monday in the Sixth Week of Lent
John 4:14
Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.
Jesus is speaking to the woman at the well. She comes in the heat of the day to the well outside town because she is not welcome among the women who gather together in the cool of the early morning to draw water at the well in town. The woman at the well is the object of gossip and scorn. She has had five husbands and the man with whom she now resides will not honor her with the covenant of marriage. Likely, she is thought to be cursed. But Jesus treats her as a member of his own family. And to her, Jesus promises a water beyond all thirst, a water that does not sustain for the moment but into eternity.
Later, speaking to the crowds in Jerusalem at the Feast of Sukkoth (‘booths’ or ‘tabernacles’) – a festival at the end of the long dry season that includes prayer for the winter rains to refresh the land – Jesus will say: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37-38)
Water is a precious commodity in arid climates. Without it, people perish. And the promise of an endless supply of fresh, running water is too good to be true.
The woman at the well knows that the only water around is deep in the well before them, and Jesus has no bucket. But she will learn that there is a source of life she had not imagined, one that will send her running back to her village to declare to all those who shunned her that she has found the Messiah. She will find life in Jesus’ words. She will find community. She will find an endless mercy. She will find a life-giving fountain, a river of life.
Gracious and ever-present God,
whose mercy knows no bounds,
and whose arms are ever open to your world:
Grant that Christ may live in us and we in him
And make us joyful in your service.
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Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seerenbach.Falls.jpg Ekem / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)