Living Water, Living Hope

This blog post is adapted from a talk given at a youth event in Oxfordshire, UK in September 2021. The Bible excerpt referenced in the talk is found in John 4.

We’re at the beginning of a new term. Some of you might be starting new schools, many of you will be meeting new classmates and new teachers, and all of us are beginning to come out of lockdown and adjusting to a so-called new normal. New beginnings can be nerve wracking because there are so many unknowns. So many ‘what ifs.’ What if I forget my PE kit? What if my teachers are really strict? What if I find my new subjects really hard? What if I don’t make any friends? What if people don’t like me? So many ‘what if’s’.

I don’t know about you but I find that last one really hard.

On my very first day at my very first job, I spent 45 minutes working out what to wear because I was so worried about what people would think of me. Over and over again, I have let the fear that I am unlikable overtake, well, everything. I’ve spent money I don’t have on clothes I don’t really like in order to fit in. I’ve exaggerated the truth to make me sound more impressive or make my stories more exciting. It’s even shaken my faith. Being a Christian wasn’t popular with some of my friends, so I stopped going to church and began to think and act like them. Their opinion mattered more than who I wanted to be and more than God’s love and approval.

Tonight’s theme is ‘living hope.’

Often times when we talk about hope generally out in the world, we talk about the things we want to happen. I hope we’ll have pizza for dinner. I hope it’s sunny tomorrow. I hope Liverpool FC will win the Premier League this year… but we also talk about our bigger hopes and dreams. For me, I hope that my husband will get his dream job. I hope that my loved ones who are poorly will get better. I hope that the world becomes a nicer place, that bullying, discrimination and abuse (to name just a few) will cease. We don’t know if these things will happen but we hope that they will.

In the Bible, we’re told to hope too. But its meaning is somewhat different.

One of the things I love about reading the Bible, but especially the Gospels, over and over again is that I notice something different every single time you read. It can be easy to think that the Bible is a static book and that, once you’ve read it once, you don’t need to read it again. But one of the amazing things about Scripture is that there’s always something new to learn. Even stories I’ve heard or read maybe a hundred times can give me a fresh perspective. When I was first beginning to read the Bible for myself as opposed to hearing it read in church, one of the things that really helped me was reading some familiar stories from Sunday school and asking God to show me something that I didn’t learn before.

You might have heard the story of the woman at the well from John 4 before. I have a couple favourite bits that I only just noticed and learned about recently, which I’m going to share with you because I think they’re really helpful for seeing what God might be saying to us right at this moment.

Right, so I said there were three points to my talk this evening.

“It was about noon.”

John 4:6

The first is this: each of us has, at one point, let someone else’s opinion determine our behaviour. You might be thinking that the verse on the screen has nothing to do with this. When I first read this, I assumed the important thing to take from the fact it was noon was that Jesus might have been hungry. But it actually tells us a lot more about the Samaritan woman.

Have you ever sat outside at the hottest part of the day? It sucks, right? You get sunburnt and sweaty and you can’t see because it’s so bright. And that’s England. I don’t know if any of you have been to Samaria but it is much hotter than the UK.

It might not have been twelve o’clock on the dot. The Gospel writers didn’t exactly have watches to keep track of the time, but the detail that it’s noon indicates that it was the middle of the day and it was hot.

Why is this important?

Well, if you were going to a well to draw water and carry it back to your home, would you do it in the middle of the day when it was blazing hot? Probably not. You’d go in the early morning or late afternoon when it was cooler. But, not the Samaritan woman. This should cause us to wonder why this was the case.

We learn later in the story that this woman has had multiple husbands and the man she is now with is not her husband. Major scandal! It is reasonable to imagine that she was the focus of much town gossip. People were probably talking about her behind her back, whispering and sniggering when she walked past. Has that, or something like that, ever happened to you? Probably not for having multiple husbands but for something else? When it happened to me, it was horrible. People can be really mean! So, even though it was incredibly difficult to do so, I did everything I could to avoid the people who didn’t like me. It makes sense then that the Samaritan woman would do the same.

She came out to the well at noon to collect her water so that she would not have to interact with the mean girls, so to speak.

She let the opinions of others dictate her behaviour. She was protecting herself emotionally, but she was also exposing herself to potential damage, putting her body at risk by going out in the middle of the day to collect water. Sometimes we need to change our behaviour for our own safety. But I wonder how many of us have changed other things because of what other people might say.

When people were being cruel to me at university, I almost quit the clubs I was in because it was simply too hard. I contemplated stopping going to the Christian fellowship groups and church because, yes, Christians also gossip and can also hurt other peoples’ feelings. I almost stopped doing things I loved in order to appease other people.

But it was not just things I did that changed because of things other people said. Since I found out the boys on one of my youth weekend aways ranked me lowest of the girls on a prettiness scale, I have struggled to believe I’m anything but ugly. Since someone in my class at school made fun of my crooked teeth, I haven’t smiled in a photograph with my teeth showing. Since one of my professors at university said it was surprising that I was admitted there given my dyslexia, I have failed to believe I am smart and worthy of my university degrees. I have believed all these things and more because of what someone else has said about me. Sound familiar? 

That day though, the one described in John 4, when the Samaritan woman went to the well, things were different. She ran into this man, Jesus. And, while most people probably passed her by or walked the other way when she came close to them, Jesus starts talking to her. This is extra surprising because Jesus was Jewish and the woman was a Samaritan. And it says in the text: “For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” (John 4:9) The division between Jews and Samaritans is way too complicated to explain briefly now but the important thing to note is that these groups of people don’t talk to each other. At all. And, it would be completely untoward for Jesus to talk to a woman, especially one with such a terrible reputation.

Jesus didn’t let these things faze him. He didn’t ignore the fact she was a Samaritan or that she was a woman or that she had a terrible reputation but he did embrace her where so many others had not. He talks to her and treats her with respect.

It’s not that Jesus doesn’t know about the Samaritan. In fact, he knows her already, telling her the reason for her poor reputation. He knew what people said about her yet spoke over her words of blessing.

And just as Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman, treating her with the respect and dignity the world would not give her, Jesus considers you his precious treasure even if and when the world does not think so. 

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:13-14

Jesus speaks over the Samaritan woman a blessing that each of us are welcome to receive too.

And basically, what that means is that the blessing that Jesus offers us will never run out. The respect and dignity and love with which Jesus loves at you won’t go away the next time you mess up. No matter what you do or what you say or who you become, Jesus will always show up for you and shower you with his blessings.

How though? How can this be? 

Why does it matter that some nice dude in the 1st century spoke to a woman at the well?

Well, because this wasn’t just any man.

There’s some cryptic stuff in the middle of this passage that we don’t have time to dig into now, but there’s one moment towards the end of this passage that I want to draw out. The woman says to Jesus: “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” And Jesus responds telling her, “I, the one speaking to you, I am he.”

The people Jesus was primarily talking to throughout his life were Jewish people waiting for a Messiah. Messiah means anointed one and was the word used to describe the one who would save God’s people. All of us are estranged from God because of sin. We might feel as if we are good people most of the time (or not), but even the kindest, nicest, most good human is still sinful. Sin is ultimately grounded in the decision to put other things above God, and each of us have done that. And we continue to do it, not because we necessarily want to, but because sin has encapsulated our world since Adam and Eve ate the apple in the Garden of Eden, choosing to listen to the voice of the serpent over the instruction of God. The Messiah, the one who Jesus says he is in this passage, was meant to restore the world to its former glory, so to speak, and restore the relationship between God and His people that is constantly torn down by sin.

Jesus says here to the Samaritan woman that he was the person who could do that. He lived a perfect life, healed people, performed miracles, and spoke to the poor and the outcasts. But this is not the thing that saves us. Jesus was more than a good example. Those of us that are Christians profess that Jesus is the Son of God. He is Lord.

And, the saving act of Jesus the Messiah did not come with crashing cymbals and battle charges and dramatic entrances. Jesus came humbly, as a baby. And it ended humbly too.

Jesus, an innocent man, was arrested and put on trial. The crowd of onlookers cried ‘Crucify Him’ so guards flogged and beat him. They put a crown of thorns on his head and crafted a sign that said “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” They nailed it to the cross on which Jesus would die. Crucifixion. The cruellest form of punishment, one which humiliated and tortured its victims until they could no longer breathe.

Jesus cried out ‘It is Finished.’ 

And Jesus’ enemies thought that’s where the story would end. Many of Jesus’ followers ran away and hid, wondering if they’d be next. 

But, when some women came to his tomb three days later, two men (presumably angels) turned to them and said: “why do you look for the living among the dead?”

Jesus had beaten death. The grave had no hold on Him. So, we can proclaim that Christ is risen, He is risen indeed.

So when Christians talk about hope, we’re talking about this empty tomb and the excitement that brings.