The Thirst of the Soul

THE THIRST OF THE SOUL
John 4:1 When Jesus left Judea and returned to Cana in Galilee he had to go through Samaria on the way, and around noon as he approached the village of Sychar, he came to Jacob's Well, located on the parcel of ground Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jesus was tired from the long walk in the hot sun and sat wearily beside the well.

Jesus was travelling purposefully through Samaria on his way from Jerusalem to Cana which was unusual for a Jew because Jews always took the longer journey on the flat terrain along the western side of the Jordan river instead of going over the steep area of Mount Gerizim through Samaria. They did this because they always avoided associating with the Samaritans whom they regarded as gentiles. However, Jesus was being led by the Holy Spirit and waiting for whatever purpose his Father had in mind for him in Samaria.

Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus asked her for a drink. He was alone at the time as his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised that a Jew would ask a ‘despised Samaritan’ for anything - usually they wouldn't even speak to them, and she remarked on this to Jesus.
He replied, "If only you understood what a gift God has for you, and who I am, you would ask me for some living water!"
"But you don't have a rope or a bucket," she said, "and this is a very deep well. Where would you get this living water? And besides, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob? How can you offer better water than this which he and his sons and cattle enjoyed?"

Let us look at what is happening behind the words that are being spoken here. Jesus had asked the woman for a drink of water, much to her surprise, and she became defensive about being a ‘despised Samaritan’, but to her further surprise Jesus in return offered her the gift of living water. 
The woman backs away from his offer by commenting that he doesn’t have a rope or bucket and she questions him as to where he would get this living water that is supposedly better than what Jacob’s well has to offer, and she then needles Jesus about thinking he might be greater than their ancestor Jacob. Jesus calmly disregards her awkward reactions and begins to explain to her the difference between natural thirst and spiritual thirst, which leads to the further discussion of the difference between natural spring water and the supernatural living water (zao hydor) of the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus replied that people soon became thirsty again after drinking this natural water. "But the water I give them," he said, "becomes an everlasting spring within them, watering them forever with everlasting life."
At this stage the woman becomes curious about the living words of Jesus and the living water, and she wants to know more. 
"Please, sir," the woman said, "give me some of that water! Then I'll never be thirsty again and won't have to make this long journey to keep getting water."
Jesus had seen into the woman’s heart of unfulfillment and the emotional brokenness of her soul, which was the real thirst in her life.

"Go and get your husband," Jesus told her. "But I'm not married," the woman replied.
"All too true!" Jesus said. "For you have had five husbands, and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now." 
"Sir," the woman said, "you must be a prophet”. 
      
She warily acknowledges that Jesus is a prophet and that he knows everything about her.
Jesus begins to speak to her wounded soul because of her history of emotional unfulfillment with men. She realizes for the first time in her life that she is hearing from the living God - through a man – a very different kind of a man to any she had ever known. 
However she stalls again, and diverts Jesus with a controversy about the Samaritans offering better worship than the Jews. 

Please tell me why it is that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?" 

After Israel entered into Canaan the Promised Land, Joshua erected the tabernacle of Moses on Mount Gerizim in Samaria and some of them, from the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim and Levi chose to settle there and adhere to the teaching of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. They did not follow Joshua and the rest of Israel into the times of the Kings and prophets and poetic psalms, where God set the vision for Israel of the coming of the Messiah and where God directed Solomon to build him a temple in Jerusalem. 

The Samaritans eventually became part of the diversity of nations that mixed among the separated northern tribes of Israel that had split off from the tribes of Judah. The northern tribes were involved in a complexity of political alliances involving Assyria and Persia and Egypt and Babylon and were finally dispersed among the various nations. However, the Samaritans remained and continued on in the land of Israel when Judah was taken into captivity in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. They believed that Samaritanism was the true religion of ancient Israel, and they preserved an Aramaic interpretation of the Torah. 
When Judah had fulfilled their seventy years of captivity in Babylon and God led them back to Jerusalem he instructed the prophet Ezra to reinstruct them in the Hebrew record of the Torah and to remain faithful to his teaching. The Samaritans believed that Ezra altered and amended the teaching of the Torah that was brought back by those returning from the seventy-year captivity and that Israel had lost its way, and this caused the lasting enmity between the Samaritans and Israel.

Jesus then redirects the conversation with her to the difference between external religious worship and the prophetic hidden truth of true worship, where the Holy Spirit joins us to the life of the Father through Jesus. This wasn’t yet a life experience for anyone other than Jesus.

Jesus said. "The time is coming, dear woman, when we will no longer be concerned about whether to worship the Father here on this mountain or in Jerusalem. For it's not where we worship that counts, but how we worship--is our worship spiritual and real?  For God is Spirit, and we must have the truth of the Holy Spirit with us to worship as we should. The Father desires this kind of worship from us. But you Samaritans know so little about the Father, worshiping without understanding, while we Jews know about him, for salvation comes to the world through the Jews” (Actually as the womb and the cradle forJesus the ultimate Jew).

The woman said, "Well, at least I know that the Messiah will come--the one they call the Christ--and when he does, he will explain everything to us."
Then Jesus told her, "I am the Christ!"

This woman received heart to heart counselling from ‘the Christ ‘on that day - from the weary traveler Jesus the living God who did more than just tell her about her past pain and suffering, he created for her a new future with a new hope. When God reveals to us who he is and who we are with him beside us, we forget about everything else. God is at then work and our soul is comforted and at rest.

She had had her emotions confused and damaged through her instinctively seeking emotional comfort and fulfillment in the companionship of men. The Samaritan men that she had known had not provided this fulfillment for reasons of which we are not told, except to note that Jesus did not appear to remark about these things to judge her but to show her that she was important to God as a person and in spiritual need of an emotional healing to her soul. Jesus felt and understood the compassion and love that is ordained for his Father’s daughters, and he cared about the painful details that had emotionally drained her soul dry, and he was offering her a new hope which would give new meaning to her life. 
Deep in the heart of all human beings is the desire for fulfillment through kinship and oneness. Her pursuit of this good desire had failed not because of the desire but because of the desperate way she was pursuing it, and the men with whom she was pursuing it - six men but no husband – why?           
This desire for kinship and oneness is fundamental to humanity because it is born out of that same desire in the heart of God the Father who wants to fulfill each one of us as his child with his love and peace and care and protection. He wants us to place him above all others, and to entrust him with our lives.
True worship is the response of an adoring heart towards the One who is esteemed above all others, and in whom we desire to entrust our lives. And Jesus had spoken to her about this in his discussion with the woman. 
‘For God is Spirit, and we must have the truth of the Holy Spirit with us to worship as we should. Because The Father desires this kind of worship from us.’ 
Jesus was teaching her to respond to the desire of the Father for us to have that kind of trust in him, as it is his desire to fulfill us with his love and peace and care and protection.
She needed to know how the Father saw her in his eyes, and she needed to believe and trust in that, rather than in how she saw herself in her own eyes in her sad desolation. The Holy Spirit had been working to reveal Jesus to her and working together with Jesus for him to reveal the Father to her.

Just then his disciples arrived with the food. They were surprised to find him talking to a woman, but none of them asked him why, or what they had been discussing.
Then the woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village and told everyone, "Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did! Can this be the Christ?" 
So the people came streaming from the village to see him.
She ran off leaving her past behind, as well as her water jar. That day she represented the first utterance of God to the Samaritans in all of history. She had been chosen by God to be given a foretaste of a prophetic message of something that he would later teach his disciples when he said he would send them the Holy Spirit, because he was going to his Father(John14)
After the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost the Apostles prayed continually to keep being filled with the Holy Spirit, and they taught us to do the same, and to believe that we keep on receiving. He is our well, our fountain of everlasting life, the comfort for our weary or wounded souls, and as we sit patiently and still by the well of life with him we drink of his Holy Spirit and are given new hope and joy. Let us continually ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit and let this love and peace and joy satisfy our thirsty souls.