On Line Bible Study - For the Week January 23-29, 2012

Lesson 520

John 4: ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink 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.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

The woman from Samaria has just wondered how it is Jesus - a Jew - could violate the social mores of his day and speak with her, asking for a drink of water. The woman is making two assumptions.

First, she assumes she knows more about Jesus than she actually does. That he is a 'Jew' is hardly all there is to be known about him.

Second, she fails to consider the power of metaphor. Let's take these one at a time...

What can be known about a person from outward appearance and home address? In Sherlock Holmes-fashion we might be able to surmise many things about each other. Dirt or dust on the shoes suggests we've been walking for a while, and not on the pavement. While it is true that this sort of thing can tell us something about where a person is from and where they are going to, it is just as true to say these pieces of evidence might reveal nothing as to a person's true identity.
The woman had to learn something about Jesus that had not entered her wildest imaginings.

Then, there is the fact of metaphor. We live in an age of literalism, and in many situations that works in our favor. I would not want to be a passenger in a plane that could fly 'metaphorically'. However, there are some areas of our lives that must give way to the symbolic in order to be properly understood and appropriated. Nowhere is this more true than in the area of spirituality. All "God-talk" is metaphor.

Early in his Confessions, St. Augustine offers a very long list of divine attributes and characteristics. First, he poses the questions: What are you, God? Who are you, Lord? God is both every attribute conceivable, and none of them.

In her conversation with Jesus, this woman would come to understand how little she understood. He would inspire her to become a witness on his behalf. For, "he told me everything I ever did!" Indeed ... and if we had a hundred lifetimes we could not bear testimony to all that God has done; for every divine "attribute" is metaphor - wisdom beyond the literal and truth beyond the facts.

The woman would have to come to learn what Jesus meant when he said he was "thirsty". From the 'fact' of his thirst we learn the truth of thirst-quenching water. It's not what we go to fetch, but the life-giving stream that is constantly offered to us if we will but partake of it.