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Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. You may be seated.
Over the years, I have engaged and challenged people with this thing that I call the dot and dash puzzle, and I challenge them to solve it. You probably ask, but what is a dot and dash puzzle? It’s where I would present that person with a sheet of paper that has dots arranged on it in a specific pattern. And then I would ask them to connect the dots with so many connected and continuous straight lines.
In all the years, those who were exposed to it for the first time, no one has ever broken the code. No one has ever solved the puzzle. But it fits. It fits so well with this morning’s Gospel reading that I’m going to give away the secret. In chapter 3, Jesus is drawing the attention of the Pharisees. Why? It was his popularity and it was activities that were now superseding those of John the Baptist. Those who were being baptized by his disciples and being immersed in his teachings, that community was rapidly increasing. The body of followers, it was growing larger and larger. Since Jesus was associated with John and not the Pharisees, whom John called “you brood of vipers” and “you whitewashed tombs,” this made Jesus an even higher priority on their radar.
But this was not the time, for there was more for him to do. The text states that he left Judea and traveled, departed for Galilee. Instead of taking that traditional route along the Jordan Valley, he journeyed into the heart of Samaria. It was about noontime when the sun was directly overhead in the heat of the day. After walking along this rugged terrain in an area that was unfriendly to the Jews, he came to an open well. It was outside a town called Shekar.
But this was no ordinary well. It was Jacob’s well, the well that was located on the land that Jacob, the grandson of Abram, had given to his son Joseph. This was no ordinary well with a shaft where the water would leach through the ground, but the shaft that actually taps into an underground spring over a hundred feet below, thus adding to our conversation this morning about the living water.
We see in our text Jesus’s humanity, where he speaks that he was wearied from his journey. He was thirsty. He was hungry. He was tired. While sitting there all alone, for his disciples had gone into the nearby city to buy something to eat for him and the group, there a woman of Samaria approaches the well to draw water. Now, you have to understand that in accordance with Jewish tradition, at that time, Jewish men were not to give attention to or engage in conversation with Samaritan women. In other words, in her world, this man does not even see her and will not acknowledge even her presence.
But to her surprise, Jesus says, “Give me a drink.” In preparation for this message this morning, I reflected on something that happened to me last week concerning water. Between two of my visits one afternoon, I had some extra time, so I stopped by McDonald’s off 183 in Northwest Austin to get a drink, find a corner table, read a book, check my phone messages, and look over my schedule for the rest of the day.
After I placed my order at the counter, I stepped back. Unaware, a man from behind me stepped forward. His hair was messed up. His clothes were dirty. A bag was over his shoulder, an open sleeping bag wrapped and draped around his body, and a McDonald’s water cup that was empty in his hand. I stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with him in my clerical collar, and I asked him, “How are you doing?” He said, “I’ve seen better days,” but in saying that, he never gave me eye contact. I asked him, “What is your name?” and his words caused my heart to break. “What does it matter?”
“Okay, what’s your first name?” His response was, “I don’t give my name to anyone.” “Are you hungry?” I asked. He said yes. “Would you like something on the menu?” He said, “Yes,” in a soft voice, “a Big Mac.” Even though I tried to add fries or drinks or an ice cream or coffee, he refused me again and again saying, “Just water, just water, just water.”
I told him after he gets his food, if he needs a place to sit, I would be in the back at a table in the corner and he can visit with me, and I can visit with him and get to know him a little bit. But it saddened me when I saw him walk out of the establishment with his little McDonald’s bag and his plastic glass cup full of water that will only temporarily quench his physical thirst. He is an outcast in our community.
The woman standing before Jesus in this morning’s text is just like this man, an outcast. For everyone knows that women collecting water from the well do it in the morning and in the evenings, in the cool of the day, and for safety reasons, they would make those journeys in groups and never alone. This was the case in West Africa when I would visit the villages; women never went to the wells outside the villages alone. Here she was in the heat of the day, journeying alone to get her water for her daily needs.
Due to the history of circumstances and her personal decisions made in her life, she was in a predicament of being inside the box, alienated from the community. She was there to work, to draw water from the well, but Jesus was there to draw her to the eternal fountain and to give her the gift of the living water so that her thirst would be forever satisfied. With Jesus’s request for a drink, her response was, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”
This is the puzzle. With her own abilities, she would never be able to solve the puzzle that Jesus has just placed before her—He Himself, and who, why He is in her presence. Those dots and dashes on the paper in that specific pattern, I have seen people draw lines and lines and erase them and repeat the process again and again and again, even to the point that the paper would become so thin that there would be holes in the paper, and they would draw new sets of dots and start all over again.
The woman was dead in her trespasses and sins and she was an enemy of God. There was nothing that she could do through her own merit to earn this free gift that was before her, putting his own physical thirst aside. Jesus wanted this woman to drink and to become satisfied. And he continues, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you the living water.”
So she realizes that Jesus is different. Instead of being defensive, she is now asking the Dr. Martin Luther question: “What does this mean, sir? You have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
Jesus is drawing her to that place where the gift can be given. Jesus reveals to her the truth. Jesus turns her eyes from the well, the water that is in the well, unto Himself when He says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, and whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman sees the benefit of this water that is offered by Jesus. Two things: it’s free and it’s eternal. When the conversation started with Jesus saying to her, “Give me a drink,” is now the woman saying to Jesus, “Sir, give me this water.”
Now here’s the secret to the puzzle. The only solution to the dilemma is knowing that there is life outside of the box of the parameters of the dots. For broken humanity inside the box cannot save broken humanity. Salvation only is possible when the divinity enters into the world of the broken humanity—true God and true man—and pays the price for the cost of the brokenness with His own life on the cross and declares to those who are connected to him by faith as righteous before the eyes of God.
Jesus continues to draw her unto Himself by revealing her brokenness. “Go, call your husband, and come here.” She confesses her sin, reveals her uncomfortableness in his presence and in the situation, and He tries to create this diversion of worship locations, but Jesus is not distracted. Instead, He gently continues to draw her unto Himself hand over hand with the power of the Word of God and the working of the Holy Spirit.
“The hour is coming and is now here when the true worshiper will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
From the sacred scriptures, commingled among the false teachings of the Samaritans, the woman states, “I know the Messiah is coming, and when he comes, he will tell us all things.” Now is the time to give her the gift. Jesus speaks into this woman’s ears these words, “I who speak to you am he.”
With the “I am” verbiage of Mount Sinai in the gospel of Saint John, the woman is brought to see the picture of inside that box, the brokenness of her sinful life, as well as outside of it, to it with God’s love for her in sending the Savior—and Jesus is He. This is the law, and this is the gospel that Jesus used to transform her life from being spiritually dead in sin to being spiritually alive in Christ, to brothers and sisters in Christ.
You and I share her story. For you and I were once in the bondage of the box of sin, unable to free ourselves. Through God coming into the box through Christ, our lives and destiny have been eternally changed, for we have that spring of water welling up in us to eternal life. Through the waters of holy baptism, we have been saved. And we are sustained through the one true faith, through the Word of God and His sacrament that satisfies our hunger and quenches our thirst.
In her own town, this woman, what does she do? She repeats Jesus’ words and works for her. And through her witness, others believed and were saved, and they too confessed, “We know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” Did the woman need to go back to Jacob’s well again to draw water? Yes. Did Jesus create a new community inclusive of the woman in the larger community to which each receives the water from the spring of waters welling up to eternal life? Yes, the secret’s out. The mystery has been revealed. It’s all about Jesus. It’s all about what Jesus has done for you and for all the world. Amen.
The peace which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
