Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration.
“I thirst.”
These are some of the last words Jesus said as he hung on a cross despised, as he hung on a cross to die. In the last moments of the atonement, Jesus expressed a very human need. He was thirsty, just as his ancestral family of Israelites were thirsty in the wilderness. But where Jesus was offered sour wine, the Israelites received flowing water from the rock at Horeb. Flowing water, living water, moving water. Water that wasn’t stagnant or putrid, but fresh, holy water with which to drink until their thirst was quenched.
Moses called the place of the miracle fountain “test” and “quarrel”, because it was there that the Israelites of that generation hardened their hearts and demanded that Moses prove that God—the liberator who had led them from Egypt, who had given them the Passover lamb to free them from the grief of losing their first born, who had cared, provided, and been with them in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night—wouldn’t let them parish in the wild country. They didn’t trust the one who gave them living water. Instead, they demanded a sign and a wonder to comfort them. Instead of faith, they faithlessly cried out that it was better if they had stayed slaves in Egypt than to be free and dependent on the goodness of God.
But it is those with hard hearts—we who demand God’s signs in order to believe—that Jesus came to die for. And at that death, Jesus thirst.
In another story, he was hungry—famished—after his 40 days of fasting in the wild lands before the tempter came to offer him everything he was promised, if he would harden his heart and put God to the test. There, Jesus refused, even refusing to alleviate his own hunger rather than putting the Lord his God to the test.
Jesus wasn’t hard of heart, but he did indeed need.
Jesus’ thirst was recorded another time in scripture. In a foreign land (Samaria) Jesus sat down by a well because he was tired. When he sees a woman come to draw from the well, again Jesus says, “I thirst.”
“A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’”
John 4.7
The son of man had parched lips.
The women at the well had a parched soul.
She came to draw water in the middle of the day, when the sun was high in the sky and the air was dry. This wasn’t the time to be out doing manual labor. High noon was a time to seek shelter in the shade, away from the heat of the day. Yet here she was, coming to draw water when others weren’t around, when she would be undisturbed by eyes and whispers and judgments.
She knew she had things to hide, things that others held her in contempt for. She was possible the talk of the town, the rumors that twittered around the alleyways and away from polite company.
They called her a harlot, a woman of the world, a slut. Her many husbands had left a trail of gossip and pain in her life, a pain that led her to come to the well, alone, in the heat of the day, to avoid social interaction and intrusion.
She approached to get her water and return to her life, and Jesus’ thirst interrupted all her plans.
“I thirst.”
How is it that this Jewish man asked her, a Samaritan woman for a drink? It went against all social norms, all cultural institutions. Samaritans and Jews don’t share thing, and men certainty don’t talk to women, unless there is some ulterior motive.
But if she had known who it was that was asking her to quench his thirst, she would have asked him to quench hers. When Jesus points this out, a back and forth begins, a conversation about wells, water, and worship. Jesus keeps turning the conversation on it’s head. She has the bucket, but he’s the one who can give her water. She knows that Jacob, son of Abraham, himself gave them this well. Jesus says he will make a spring of flowing water in everyone who drinks what he is offering.
This gets her attention.
“Give me this water so I don’t have to keep coming here to draw water from the well.” This was her way out of the bind she was in. If she didn’t have to come to draw water, she didn’t have to risk running into someone from the town, someone with an opinion of her, with a rumor about her, with a judgment of her. If she didn’t have to come to the watering hole, she could remain hidden away, keeping to herself, far from the people of the town who all knew her secrets, her shame, her pain.
Jesus lays it all out in the open, “Go, get your husband and come back.”
There is it. Like a deer in headlights she is stunned. Here is the source of her trauma.
“I have no husband.”
It wasn’t a lie, it was just an ommission of what she knew would make judgment fall.
Gently, Jesus presses the scalpel in deeper, “You’re right. You’ve had five husbands, and the one you have now isn’t you husband.”
Harlot.
The memory of the first time she was called that word rose up inside her. Her cheeks flushed, and she did what any creature cornered would do, she changed the subject.
“So, prophet, who’s right? You Jews say you have to worship God in Jerusalem, while we say it’s on this mountain. Who is right?”
Here’s the weird thing: Jesus doesn’t call her out and press in about her pain and hurt, her shame and trauma. Jesus changes the conversation yet again.
“Worship God in spirit and truth. It’s time.”
Nothing about getting her romantic affairs in order or repenting of adulatory. Nothing about leaving the man she was with. Nothing about moralism, just an invitation to come, to worship, to let the truth set her free.
At Meribah, at Massah, where the Israelites hardened their hearts and put God to the test, the people of God failed to worship in Spirit and in truth. The quarreled, wanting to know if God was with them, if God cared from them, if God—full of signs and wonders in the wilderness—was among them. At the mountain of Horeb they received their answer with flowing, living water.
Now, on this mountain, the Samaritan woman wants to know if God can love her with her tarnished reputation and her sordid ways. Jesus gives her her answer with living water to revive and baptize her heart.
This woman who came to the well in shame boldly goes back into the town, in front of her accusers, and proclaims the question, “is Jesus the Messiah?” On the singular basis of her testimony, “He told me everything I ever did,” the people com flocking to see him.
I don’t think this was because she presented Jesus as some fortune teller or psychic master. I think there is an undercurrent here: Jesus told her everything she ever did without judgment, condemnation, or deceit. Jesus told her what she had done, then told her that it was time to come worship God. Jesus laid bare her deepest pain, shame, and trauma, and then told her he was the one come to heal her with the living water he offered, the flowing water of worship.
She was accepted.
There is no question that she had a past. And Jesus didn’t care. He came to invite people into the justice of God, in to the work of God, into the life of God. Jesus came to bring the oppressed liberation and freedom. In this town, this woman was the oppressed. She was captivated by her past, by the gossip and rumors that drove her away from the normal rhythms of social life. Instead of coming to the well in the cool of the dawn or the refreshment of the evening, she came for water, alone, at the scorching heat of the day, all so she could avoid shame. She meets a man who tells her everything she’s ever done and invites her into spirit and truth, into life and wholeness. She goes to tell the very people who shamed her the good news that the messiah is come… all because of the living water that has begun to bubble up in her. Jesus came to set the woman at the well free.
This is the harvest field that Jesus sees. Not souls to save with doctrine and theology, but hurting people in need of acceptance.
People are asking the question, “is God among us?” and when we invite people to worship that God without strings, without condition, without judgment, we are proclaiming to them that God embraces them as they are because we embrace them as they are. This is why our tables need be open. In Eucharist, we are fed, we find drink, and we open the invitation for all who will to come.
When we strike out at the hard rocks of shame and judgment, oppression and injustice, we will break forth living, flowing water that will begin to bubble up in the hearts of all people, bringing life to the dead, and healing to the wounded.
This is the water we thirst for. This is the justice we hunger for.
This is the water Jesus was longing for when he said, “I thirst.”
May we all give Christ a deep drink from our wells and let his springs of life begin to overflow in us.
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