Thirsty People

In 1644, a few years into the English Civil War, the poet John Milton published a stirring call for a free press, for a society where people could publish what they believed and debate it freely.  For him that liberty was the cornerstone of the Parliamentarian cause, crucial if England were to become a nation of virtuous, courageous Christian people.  Only if they were willing and able to test their ideas, to air them, debate them, and have them challenged, would people come to discover the truth and to hold it firmly in their hearts.  For, Milton urged his readers, ‘our faith and knowledge thrive by exercise’ – and Christians must be curious, not blindly following the beliefs of their ancestors but actively seeking God’s truth for themselves.

Milton’s prose is electrifying, his ideals inspiring, but perhaps I am too drawn in by his vision of library loving Christians, which in Milton’s time meant wealthy, privileged men. Indeed, our gospel reading challenges any elitist assumptions with its story of real curiosity and commitment.  It tells of a conversation across boundaries, as Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman and opens new perspectives for her on God and on herself.   This is a woman used to the daily labour of fetching water, but one who will not be defined by her tasks and chores.  She understands the history of her land and her people, the deep connection to Jacob and the patriarchs, but she is not closed-minded.  She recognises the Jewish community around her, with their different customs, and she wants to learn more.   With Jesus by her well, she seizes the opportunity to discuss with him, to question him, to be drawn more deeply into the divine presence she senses in him.  And there Jesus lingers, encouraging her, teaching her, reorientating her sense of herself and her world, offering to her the deepest truths about God.
This meeting may yet seem rather unremarkable compared with some of Jesus’s signs and miracles – the water does not become wine, no sickness is cured, no one is raised from the dead.  And yet it is clearly important to John, a writer so self-consciously selective in the material he includes and whose long account takes almost a chapter.  In the encounter John relates, we may not see a conventional miracle, but we are privileged to share in the most important kind of conversation, a conversation in which the desires and longings of a human being are acknowledged, and then lifted up, towards God and the true eternal life.   The woman shares with Jesus her hopes, her thirst for true life, her wish to worship God aright, and soon also she shares her difficulties, her several husbands, her unconventional situation.  And Jesus listens, not condemning her, but gently leading her to a new understanding of life and of scripture, where her desire for God and God’s desire for her meet in her heart.

Throughout scriptures we see these conversations, these moments in which human life and longing is expressed and is held by God, even as it is transformed and redirected, towards God and God’s kingdom.  So often these moments involve new ways of seeing creation, not merely as means for earthly life but as revealing God’s goodness and abundance.  Our reading from Exodus is one of these moments: we hear the people groan and grumble, desperate for water and rest, for safety and security after their long journey from Egypt.  They feel abandoned and deceived, they’re struggling to understand what God’s purposes might be for them – and they are not afraid to tell Moses and God, to demand help and to seek answers.  And God does not respond in anger or even exasperation, but sends to them the water and the assurance they need, the spring from the rock that nourishes their bodies but also their souls, as they come to rely on God in trust and obedience.   The water and the rock come to be for them signs of God’s power and presence – and the story comes to be remembered in scripture and in the psalms as a time of learning and of truth.

This story, of Moses and the rock, was part of the Bible shared by Jews and Samaritans alike, known no doubt to this woman at the well.  Like the ancient people she too is thirsty, for the good things in creation, but not only for them, for the divine truths which she senses she also lacks.   As she talks with Jesus her curiosity is awakened, intensified, and she discovers not only her need for God’s spirit and salvation, but also the possibility of true fulfilment, the liberation of the promised messiah. The encounter is so profound, so life-changing, that the woman must tell all her friends and neighbours too, that they might come also to believe.   And they do – once they too have heard for themselves the life-giving words of Jesus and shared too in his presence.   This whole Samaritan town is full of thirsty people, curious and keen to learn about their God and God’s truth.

John lingers on these events, on Jesus’s time at the well and in the town, because he is writing for thirsty people, for people like this woman and her neighbours, people who will not rest content with half-truths, or handed down stories known at second hand.  Like Milton those centuries later, John is writing for the curious, for everyone who wants to worship God in truth and who knows that truth is something that has to be grasped for ourselves even as it must also be shared with others.   To learn that truth is first of all to listen, to have the courage to hear the words of Jesus, the words of scripture, and to allow them to transform us.  And it is to come to see creation anew, not simply a resource to be used and possessed, but a sign of the love and concern of God.  It is to see that our thirst and our hunger cannot be satisfied only by food and drink but that we need too the water and the bread of life, for our souls and our communities.

    As I’ve been thinking about these two passages, I’m struck by their place in the lectionary, a couple of weeks into Lent and as winter starts to turn to spring.  For me they suggest Lent as a time not of giving things up, but of putting them in perspective, of seeing in the wonder and beauty of creation something of the divine power and glory.   Lent is, perhaps, a time for desire and longing, for the thirst for truth, for the vigorous striving that Milton advocated and that the Samaritan woman showed in her life.   The words of scripture, the sacraments of the Church, the encouragement and wisdom of others – all these offer to us such rich resources, but we ourselves must respond and receive them actively, with the help of the Holy Spirit.  For God offers to each of us the water of eternal life, the spirit that brings light and life to creation and to our own hearts and minds; and promises us that those who seek, in faith and in hope, will find their heart’s desire.