Jesus asks for a drink

An unnamed woman can’t believe he’s asking.

Jesus says, “If you knew more about me, you’d be asking me for a drink. Of living water.”

She says, in order,

1. You have nothing to draw water with.
2. The well is deep.
3. Where is living water?
4. Are you better than Jacob, our ancestor, who actually watered generations of sheep from this well?

Jesus is making an unorthodox claim and she is trying to figure out what it means. Her responses to Jesus were practical, historical, and appropriate.

Jesus follows up by differentiating between regular water and living water.  With living water you won’t get thirsty. In fact, you will end up with a spring inside that will make you live forever.

That’s what it sounds like. Peculiar.

Unless, of course, you are sitting next to a well in the middle of the morning talking to someone who is coming to the well at a time different than everyone else, perhaps because she is looking for something that will satisfy a deeper thirst.

This unnamed woman, after all, remains involved in the conversation with Jesus. She is tracking through it. It is making sense to her.

How can we tell?

Because she wants some of that water, that soul-satisfying, thirst-quenching, free-flowing water. She asks for it.

It’s easy to forget, steeped in church as we are, lost in structures and steeples and sanctuaries and ceremonies, that Jesus wasn’t selling or recruiting or promoting. He wasn’t convincing or conniving or cajoling.

He was offering what people wanted, deep down, but never hoped that they would actually find.

And he did it without scolding.

How do we know? Because of where this story goes next.

But while we wait for that turn, just a thought:

What are you thirsty for?