Life Giving Water
March 22 is World Water Day. Most of us probably
did not notice. To be honest I only know because I was looking for resources on
water to help write this. It is easy for us to take water for granted. To get
access to clean life giving water all we have to do is turn on the tap. There
seems to be an endless supply. So it is easy for us to forget that water is
life. But for billions of people getting access to this life giving water, let
alone clean water can be very difficult. For some the line between life and
death is very narrow. Many suffer from the consequences of drinking unclean
water and using unhygienic toilets. Together they are key causes of ill health
and increased poverty as those with the least struggle to pay for treatment.
Global efforts by the United Nations to increase access to sustainable, safe
drinking water are improving the situation for some but similar efforts to
improve sanitation are failing. World Water Day is an opportunity to support
the UN and other agencies in bringing life giving water to all.
All our readings are set in places where water was
not taken for granted. And in each case this deep appreciation for water is
used as a powerful metaphor for God as the source of life.
The people on the Exodus knew how precarious their
situation was. They needed water or they would die. So straight after receiving
manna from God they start grumbling, longing for the good old days of being slaves
where at least they had water. They ask the big question, “Is the LORD among us
or not?” In response Moses is instructed by God to take the staff he used on
the Nile and Reed Sea, and to take them to Horeb. There God would give them
water from the rock. Later Moses would return to Horeb and this time God would
give them the life giving law – living water. We hear echoes of this story in
the Psalm.
Paul describes the source of life as God’s love that
enfolds us all. This love is surges through all the religious rules of
exclusion that mark some out as acceptable and others as beyond all hope. This
love is found in Jesus the Christ.
Water again is the key theme of Johns Gospel. There
is so much that is wrong with this story, so many cultural and religious rules
and expectations broken and set to one side by both Jesus and the woman. As a
result this unnamed Samaritan woman becomes the first to receive one of Jesus’
I Am Statements, “I Am Living Water”. And as with Moses and the Israelites,
Paul and the Romans, and Nicodemus from last week, there are also many things
that stop her and us hearing what Jesus is saying and them recognising the
source of life. Like water for us, we take what is offered for granted. She and
Nicodemus get stuck on the literal and struggle to hear the metaphor of divine
truth present in Jesus. But something clicks, and she moves from outsider to
insider, boldly offering the source of life to all who would shun her.
William Loader offers us these final thoughts. “This wonderful piece of drama has
many levels of meaning. As always in John its central character is God and
God’s gift of life through the invitation to live in the holy space of love,
the true worship in the Spirit, which is also the living space of the Father
and the Son. That love, embodied, cuts across racial and cultural prejudice,
affirms women, engages and loves sinners. In a man’s world a woman is the
supreme example, exercising ministry, but doing so with the fragility and
hesitancy and perhaps inadequacy which happens when ordinary human beings
engage in ministry. That is also cutting across a prejudice of perfectionism
with which we plague ourselves. The fruit of such faithfulness is the setting
free of others from what binds them (including us). It is bringing to birth and
caring with that as the goal. The stereotype, Nicodemus, the teacher, will not
see this either.”[1]
Comments