Day 8 - Wednesday, March 1
Title: JESUS OFFERS A DIFFERENT KIND OF WATER
Scripture: John 4:1–42

Now when the Lord found that the Pharisees had heard that “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”—although, in fact, it was not Jesus who did the baptizing but his disciples—he left Judea and went off again to Galilee, which meant passing through Samaria. There he came to a little town called Sychar, which is near the historic plot of land that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph, and “Jacob’s Spring” was there. Jesus, tired with his journey, sat down beside it, just as he was. The time was about midday. Presently, a Samaritan woman arrived to draw some water.

“Please give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, for his disciples had gone away to the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

“If you knew what God can give,” Jesus replied, “and if you knew who it is that said to you, ‘Give me a drink’, I think you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water!”

“Sir,” said the woman, “you have nothing to draw water with and this well is deep—where can you get your living water? Are you a greater man than our ancestor, Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank here himself with his family, and his cattle?”

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I will give him will never be thirsty again. For my gift will become a spring in the man himself, welling up into eternal life.”

The woman said, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may stop being thirsty—and not have to come here to draw water any more!”

“Go and call your husband and then come back here,” said Jesus to her.

“I haven’t got a husband!” the woman answered. “You are quite right in saying, ‘I haven’t got a husband’,” replied Jesus, “for you have had five husbands and the man you have now is not your husband at all. Yes, you spoke the simple truth when you said that.”

“Sir,” said the woman again, “I can see that you are a prophet! Now our ancestors worshiped on this hill-side, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship—”

“Believe me,” returned Jesus, “the time is coming when worshiping the Father will not be a matter of ‘on this hill-side’ or ‘in Jerusalem’. Nowadays you are worshiping with your eyes shut. We Jews are worshiping with our eyes open, for the salvation of mankind is to come from our race. Yet the time is coming, yes, and has already come, when true worshippers will worship in spirit and in reality. Indeed, the Father looks for men who will worship him like that. God is spirit, and those who worship him can only worship in spirit and in reality.”

“Of course I know that Messiah is coming,” returned the woman, “you know, the one who is called Christ. When he comes he will make everything plain to us.”

“I am Christ speaking to you now,” said Jesus.

At this point his disciples arrived, and were surprised to find him talking to a woman, but none of them asked, “What do you want?” or “What are you talking to her about?” So the woman left her water-pot behind and went into the town and began to say to the people, “Come out and see the man who told me everything I’ve ever done! Can this be ‘Christ’?” So they left the town and started to come to Jesus.

Meanwhile the disciples were begging him, “Master, do eat something.”

To which Jesus replied, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

This, of course, made the disciples ask each other, “Do you think anyone has brought him any food?”

Jesus said to them, “My food is doing the will of him who sent me and finishing the work he has given me. Don’t you say, ‘Four months more and then comes the harvest’? But I tell you to open your eyes and look to the field—they are gleaming white, all ready for the harvest! The reaper is already being rewarded and getting in a harvest for eternal life, so that both sower and reaper may be glad together. For in this harvest the old saying comes true, ‘One man sows and another reaps.’ I have sent you to reap a harvest for which you never labored; other men have worked hard and you have reaped the results of their labors.”

Many of the Samaritans who came out of that town believed in him through the woman’s testimony—“He told me everything I’ve ever done.” And when they arrived they begged him to stay with them. He did stay there two days and far more believed in him because of what he himself said. As they told the woman, “We don’t believe any longer now because of what you said. We have heard him with our own ears. We know now that this must be the man who will save the world!”

Poetry & Poet:
“Sister Cat”
by Frances Mayes

Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I've filled her bowl.
Wild cat, I say, Sister,
Look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
Against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
A word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
To me. She dips
In her whiskers but
Doesn't drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there's Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
To be sure. She stalks
The room. She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.

A DEEPER LONGING

The story of Jesus encountering the Samaritan woman at the well in the fourth chapter of John is probably one of the most familiar stories in the Gospels. Jesus, passing through Samaria on the way to Galilee, stops at a local well in the little town of Sychar. Tired and thirsty, he initiates a conversation with this ostracized woman, engaging her with a double-layered, veiled conversation about spiritual longing and fulfillment, eventually leading her to recognize him as the Messiah and Savior of the world.

The art works that accompany today’s Scripture emphasize the Samaritan woman’s perspective, how she both misunderstands Jesus’s words and yearns to be seen and loved.  In the song, “Woman at the Well,” the singer dwells on the loneliness and self-rejection this woman must have felt and draws from her particular example to reflect on how more broadly all of us, at some point or another, can experience a similar insecurity and doubt about our own worthiness: “Wondering how someone could love me/When I can’t love myself.” In a different vein, Frances Mayes’s poem, “Sister Cat,” uses a creature to metaphorically express the deeper thirst for “Milk/Beyond milk. World beyond/ This one” (21-23), pointing to the paradoxical truth of how a stated desire might often be an articulation of something unstated and even unknown. Yet Jesus knew this about this woman. He knew her deepest fears and longings, even if she might not have been aware of them herself.  He, being fully divine, yet fully human, understood viscerally the ardent pining for “sometimes” (13) wanting “the light on/When it is on” (14-15).  He can empathize with the very human need of how wanting the thing is also wanting the deeper thing.  It is the human existential condition.

What Jesus shows us in his responses to the Samaritan woman is how he recognizes and affirms her literal thirst but fulfills her spiritual one. Throughout the book of John, Jesus often refers to the physical world as a way to point to the invisible, spiritual world.  Yet often his listeners don’t always grasp the double valence of his words, leading to disappointment, confusion, and sometimes even anger. The Samaritan woman, however, moves from misunderstanding Jesus to truly grasping who he is and who she is in light of his divine identity. In other words, she moves from one layer of understanding to a deeper one, one she probably did not anticipate. Her encounter with Jesus reminds us that sometimes our prayers might be for things in this physical world––relationships, achievement, belonging, a home––all good, worthy supplications. God sees and affirms those desires, but he is always working doubly, both in the earthly and spiritual realms. He cares about our present concerns and is working them out to bring about our spiritual transformation. This may seem like a very simple truth but can become the opportunity for greater self-reflection when those concerns are not met.  When your prayer for something does not happen, ask yourself: Am I thirsting for “milk beyond milk”?  Is my longing for something that I need that I might not even be aware of?

Prayer:
Jesus, you were misunderstood by many and yet you understand us so perfectly––what we need, what we desire, what we truly long for. As we bring our requests before you, help us to better grasp, with spiritual eyes, how you are doing a deeper work in us and to trust you in the process.
Amen. 

Dr. Maria Su Wang
Associate Professor of English
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab