Gospel: John 4:5–42

What does your backyard look like? With the popularity of gardening on the rise, many of us are tearing out grass and designing our yards with native and exotic plants. These plants add a texture and a color palette that turf just doesn’t provide. It is a sensual appeal that makes a well-designed garden easy on the eyes and soothing to the soul.

Yet without a centerpiece, many gardens seem disjointed, even haphazard. One popular centerpiece that can bring a garden together and increase the sensual appeal is a water fountain. A fountain adds motion and sound to a gardenscape. It also places its focus on one of life’s fundamental elements, water. Rushing water has a universal appeal, for it represents cleansing, recreation, and nurturing. The bubbling or spray of a fountain adds a dynamic character to a garden, compared to the placid atmosphere of plants. Rushing water seems to bring a garden to life.

In the time of Jesus, rushing water was either the result of gravity, as in the case of a man-made fountain, or underground pressure, as in the case of an artesian spring. Both were rare, but not unheard of sights. Both gave rise to the notion that a dynamic movement of water from a single source was somehow alive. This living water nurtured and cleansed. It was alive and gave life. It’s not surprising that many springs in the ancient world became spas with claims of healing properties.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Because of her presence at noon, when only men did business in gathering places as the well, and because of her own admission of marital status, it’s clear she was a prostitute. Many scholars see the responses of the woman in the scene as coy negotiation. She was playing with Jesus. Jesus ignores her play, and reaches to her heart with an offer of living water, a dynamic flow that would lead to eternal life.

The water was the spirit of God, and the source of the water was Jesus. The spirit would cleanse and nurture a people in a dynamic way. The spirit would lead a people to true worship, not necessarily in Gerizim or in Jerusalem, but in the heart of the believer. And, since the spirit came from God, Jesus identified himself as God. “I AM,” Jesus said, “The one speaking to you now.” In Jesus, God revealed himself to a woman considered unclean by Jews according to race, gender, and occupation.

She was so excited that she spread the news that this man saw who SHE TRULY WAS, and yet showed her who HE REALLY WAS. We all desire a dynamic spiritual life, a place where we can be washed clean and be given a drink of the spirit. Sometimes we are tempted to expect it. When it doesn’t happen, do we grouse and wallow in our spiritual funk? “God, why aren’t you acting in my life the way I want you to?”

This echoes the spiritual morass of those wandering in the desert during the Exodus. They complained about their lack of food and water, but more to the point, they complained about the seeming absence of God in their struggle. “Where are you, God?” They had to be reminded again that God is always present. Moses gave them that reminder when he struck the rock at Horeb and water rushed forth.

We all desire a dynamic spiritual life, but sometimes we are tempted to brag about it. See, see everybody? God’s really working in my life. While witness to the power of God in life is really good, bragging about it isn’t, for bragging assumes that I’m in charge of my spiritual life. That’s wrong. St. Paul wrote the church at Rome that God’s in charge.

He’s the one who sent his Son into the world to die for us. He’s the one who poured the spirit into our hearts. He’s the one who made us right with him, now and at the final judgment.

He is the source of that living water that springs into eternal life.

What does your backyard look like? Have you succumbed to the fountain fad in gardening? I have. I have two fountains in my backyard. There are times that my wife and I simply sit and lose ourselves in the sight and sounds of flowing water.

It’s at these moments that the words of Jesus come to mind. If you knew the gift of God and who said to you, give me a drink, you would ask him and he would have given you living water.

Yes, Lord, give me that water. Please give me your spirit. Give me a dynamic spiritual life and a humble heart that points only to you. But most of all, give me your life, for your life is eternal life.