The man was a sight to behold, and the woman stared at him in awe. He was dirty, his shoes were covered in the dust of the streets. His beard was thick and matted; his face rugged and tanned, and his thick hair was long and dishevelled. He was tallish, with broad shoulders. All in all, he looked like someone to keep away from. This disreputable looking character did not belong here and the woman wondered why he WAS here, or what he wanted. He looked like a man who hadn't made contact with water and soap for some time and was in serious need of a bath and some grooming. Putting his dirty hands on the edge of the desk, behind which she was, as it were, hiding from him, he said "Great place you have here!" She answered, "Thank you. How may I help you?" Maybe he was lost and needed directions. "Right now, what I need is a long drink if you have one, and a room." She gave him a drink and he gulped it down eagerly. She groaned to herself. Could she submit her other guests to the company of this unsavoury character, a foreigner to boot? What sort of a man was he? "We have one small room at the top of the house", she said. "Thanks, that will do," he replied. And they began talking.

What does that story remind you of?

In the reading from the Gospel of John, he gives us a very human and profound picture of Jesus, the man, so much like that modern 1ay story that it somehow seems to ring true. It could almost be the same in a different setting Asking for a drink? What is more precious in a hot and a rid country than water? Here, in Western Australia, we have been taught to not waste water, because we know how scarce, precious and life-giving water is. Jesus knows how precious it is, too, as he comes to the well in the heat of the day. Bedraggled and dirty, he stops at this ancient well that for centuries has sustained the local inhabitants. He is tired, hot and thirsty.

It is then, when he feels most vulnerable, that he makes himself more so by asking the woman who comes to draw water - a woman, mind you. After all, a Jewish Rabbi did not ever get into religious, or any other, conversation with a woman, so Jesus is breaking a taboo at his point. He asks her for a drink. He throws aside the conventional taboos and pushes the religious and cultural animosity away in order to engage the woman in a friendly talk.

The image of water is so prominent here. Our television screens show us often the way of life and living in the Middle East, and we can imagine (we of the Lucky Country??) how the absence or presence of water meant that wherever there was a well, there a village would grow up, and the women would come regularly for its water.

So Jesus is in conversation with the foreign woman. She must have been apprehensive as she saw him there. She had come to the well at the honest part of the day, because she did not want to meet anyone else. Why? The story gives us the idea that she came from 'the other side of the tracks', in today's idiom. The 'other side of the tracks' suggests distinctive smells and dress, substandard housing, particular vocal inflections, or different skin colour. In other words, the saying is reserved for places and people who are different.

The 'other side of the tracks' also suggests a state of mind. If you watch little children play, you will observe that differences go unnoticed in their games, in their joining together. At the same time, adults DO notice; they feel and respond to differences. 'Never go out alone". 'Don't go out after dark'. 'Never marry one of THEM!' People from the 'other side of the tracks' evoke fear and prejudice.

Yet Jesus met a woman in this category, and note, added her to his list of friends.

Jesus both motivates and directs people like US to reach out in the same way
- to reach out to those on 'the other side of the tracks' who experience isolation and rejection. (Perhaps you were, as I was, fortunate in not being isolated or rejected. Oh, there were times when we may have come up against these motivations, but they were soon over, and we were back in the good places again)

The love of Christ means to reach out. We can see how Jesus handled such situations. Christians need to move beyond one to-one helpfulness. Love, such as Jesus showed, seeks out excluded persons, even as it seeks to eliminate the conditions that lead to rejection, for THAT kind of love shares in the good news of Christ.

Jesus asks the woman, "Give me a drink'. She answers with the equivalent of "You must know better than that!" And they continue their conversation until Jesus talks to her of 'living water. She says, "Sir, give me this water, that I might never be thirsty again, or have to come to the well to draw". Notice that, by the end of the talk it is not Jesus who is asking for water, but the woman and she is offered living water that will become a spring within her heart. We wonder, did she really understand him? For that matter, do we?

The divisions of locality, of region, colour and of class, of 'net worth' are far from unknown to Christianity even now, so that full fellowship is often excluded, even with the sacraments, though they are still called 'sacraments of GRACE!

When we live on these levels we cannot HEAR the word of God. We do not' 'listen' to Jesus, much less 'see' him.
In this chapter from John, a well that runs dry has to be cleared and re-dug, and yet it is raised to an ever-flowing spring. Only Jesus can bring people to rise above inherited or acquired presuppositions. Not only the woman wanted to fit Jesus into her own category, BUT SO DO WE!

We can look on Jesus as a 'guru' or a 'superstar', or a guarantor of success; each of us can name our own category for him. But our tagged, captured, and filed-away Jesus cannot bring the kind of release suggested by the access to living water. When the woman found that in his presence she was able to face HER OWN situation, even to talk about it to others (perhaps for the first time) she discovered a new freedom, a freedom which did not WEAR ITSELF OUT as so many of OUR FADS DO!

Our journey goes on and we tie ourselves down to localising ourselves, but the realisation is that our journey must always be 'open-ended'. We are only anticipating as the new wine of the kingdom is anticipated by the wine of the eucharist; the bread given as daily bread is only anticipated by our arrival at EACH STOP in our travels. We tend to say at each place, "THIS IS IT!", but we cannot limit God. We move to OUR destination, but God's designation moves towards us. It is not this place, or that; not this liturgy or the other, but IT IS IN CHRIST, that we meet God (where we gain the living water). And meeting God means being met BY God, which is not only the true mode of worship, but its end AND its beginning; its functioning AND its goal.

We cannot, like the woman, dismiss such questions on the ground that the Messiah has not yet come. We cannot refuse to act because we cannot act perfectly. It is perhaps a peculiarly Western delusion that all problems must have solutions. BUT CAN WE DECODE GOD? Can the woman say, "I see it all now. This is the place because this is where I had my revelation?" The answer comes direct "Neither in this place, nor in Jerusalem'. We cannot even say, "Our fathers got their water, their faith, in this way" For the father of all faith and worship, namely Abraham, erected a shrine - then left it all behind, to journey on.

We speak of worshipping in spirit and in truth. Spirit and truth are terms which tell of the coming of God. Spirit is his power that creates new life. It is not pure 'spiritual' worship which takes us out of the 'truth' of the real world.

It means that the past is important; it means that bread, wine, water, words, acts are essential vehicles to fill us with the living water, but it also means that words can be just words; that a pew and an altar can be the gates of heaven, precisely because they are only stopping places on the way; it means that God is on the move toward us, and it means he is drawing us ever forward into a new realm of life.

Some commentators see in the movement of this story a movement of wonder to faith, but this is just ONE way a believer takes. It is part of a journey we make over and over again as we encounter Jesus unexpectedly in our lives.

How do we encounter Jesus in our lives today? If we do not, why not? Nicodemus, a high official, did not understand, yet the peasants of that small village in Samaria did. They said, "We no longer have faith in Jesus just because of what you told us. We have heard him ourselves, and WE ARE CERTAIN that he is the Saviour of the world. They believed, just because of a woman's word - and because of the word of Jesus himself.

Have we found the 'living water' of the Spirit with which Jesus waits to fill our lives?

THINK DEEPLY ON THIS AS YOU COME TO THE TABLE OF HOLY COMMUNION !!!

PRAYER: Lord God, you know that each of us, in some way, is like the woman at the well. You know the struggle we have to release our minds to new truths about ourselves. Empower us to overcome any negativity that keeps us from being fulfilled. Help us to claim the possibility of a powerful life, which you offer. AMEN.

Exegetical Notes inspired by "Proclaim' commentary.

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