Water Pouring Forth For Our Salvation

Exodus 17:1-7  John 4:5-40  John 19:35

The family at the Vicarage holds its breath when I decide that it might be time to bleed the radiators for as in many practical things, I do not have a very good track record. And as far as  radiators are concerned, I tend to get carried away rather.

On one occasion I opened up the valve so much that it fell out and would not go back in again and we could only stem the flow of water by me putting my thumb in the hole and my wife ringing in desperation for a friendly plumber.

Once I had got that flow of water going , it simply would not stop.

In our Old Testament reading we find the people of Israel once again moaning and groaning in the wilderness. This time they are thirsty and the lack of water is beginning to cause an uprising in the camp. They cry to Moses and Moses cries to God.

God is indignant that the people failed to trust him to provide their needs but nevertheless, he instructs Moses to strike the rock at Horeb and water flows from it. Enough to quench everyone’s thirst.

In our Gospel reading,  Jesus himself becomes the thirsty one. He is the one who now finds himself in a wilderness sort of place, for Samaria was no holy city, its inhabitants well beyond the pale as far as the people of God were concerned.

“Give me a drink” he cries to a woman who comes to draw water at the well.

But the conversation soon turns away from Jesus’ need for a drink to the woman’s need to taste life giving water and have her life transformed as a consequence.

Jesus has come down into the experience of his people. He shares their need for thirst quenching and yet points onto something far deeper than physical sustenance.

As with so many things, those of us who wish to find answers must go to the foot of the cross and the moment when the soldiers wish to hasten the death of Jesus. There they do a remarkable thing, they strike the body of Jesus with a spear in just the same way as Moses struck the rock.

From the rock gushed forth water to sustain the people on their journey.

From the side of Jesus poured forth blood and water for the salvation of all mankind.

The people of Israel cried out to God because they were parched.

They cried out to Jesus in his earthly ministry because they had become parched of love and healing and freedom.

Jesus enters into their experience and ours by making their cry his own.

“I thirst” he cried as he hung there.

God becomes parched with his people and that which poured forth from him is the thirst quenching love which saves us all.

So it is at the Eucharist wine and water are mixed into the chalice before it is blessed.

Not to water down the wine at this time in the morning, but to remember this sacrifice Jesus has made for us.

Although we take only a sip of this holy mixture at the Communion rail, it is like availing ourselves of that gushing forth which will sustain us for all eternity.

So when Jesus went on to commission Peter to begin the building of His Church we begin to see why he talked of this church being built upon a rock, because he looked for the time when the living water of which he spoke at the well, would come gushing forth in the lives of his followers.

There are times in our lives when we feel as if we are being struck.

It can be painful, hurting and seem destructive – but what if the aim is not our bruising or our punishment, but rather that living water may pour through the wounds others, in their carelessness, have made.

RH 24.2.08