Sunday Musings
The parched world
TODAY IS THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
I often think of this series of Lenten readings as “wet Lent.” Last week, we had story of baptism in the Spirit. This week, we hear of a woman at a well. And next week, the reading is set at a pool.
Water is an ever-present symbol in the Bible. It represents both chaos and cleansing, death and renewal, destruction and liberation.
One thing is clear: We need water in order to live. We can’t do without it.
Perhaps that’s why it is also a powerful image of the Divine.
If you feel brittle or shriveled, come to the well. Drink deeply.
There are some personal updates at the end of today’s post. Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom.
Exodus 17:1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
John 4:5-42
Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
Water plays a central role in the Bible from beginning to end. In Genesis, water is present with the spirit before creation; in the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, life-giving water flows from the being of God’s own self.
Watery images serve both as warning (the flood of Noah or the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, for example) but also carry the promise of God’s kingdom (when the desert shall run with streams and every well be full). Indeed, the power of water as a fertility symbol and the spiritual feminine is evident also in these ancient stories. Three of Israel’s patriarchs – Isaac, Jacob, and Moses met their wives at a well, signaling that their unions will be life-giving and fertile.
The New Testament, written in the first century, is set in what is now Israel, a land then under control of the Roman Empire, ancient home to the Hebrew people, the place God had promised them would be a land of milk and honey. In ancient geography, Israel was part of what was called the Fertile Crescent, an arc shaped cradle of land, home to the watersheds of some of the greatest and most storied rivers of human history. It was in these watersheds that humans first invented and practiced irrigation, making possible the growth of cities and modern agriculture.
They were also susceptible to drought, however, and things like soil and water management were generally unknown.
By Jesus’ time, much of what had been rich farmlands were struggling with desertification, as the moist soils and the rivers that gave them life began to dry. The land was showing the first signs of major climatic change.
The Jordan River, where John the Baptist baptized hundreds of people including his cousin Jesus, was, and remains to this day, one of the region’s major sources of fresh water. The Sea of Galilee, a fresh water lake fed by the Jordan, was where Jesus preached his most important sermon and performed his most dramatic miracles.
But of equal importance for human habitation in Israel is the underground water supply, the springs hidden from view: the fresh water of mountain aquifers accessible for much of history only by deep wells.
At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus meets a woman at one of these wells — a well popularly believed to be “Jacob’s Well” — and strikes up a conversation with her:
“Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:7-15)
I have heard many sermons on this passage; indeed, I have preached a few. Typically Christians cite this passage to prove a unique claim of Jesus — “I am he” — that Jesus is “living water,” a moniker that identifies Jesus as divine.
In the story, Jesus elaborated on the story of Jacob, the Hebrew patriarch who provided the drinking well, a spot most likely deemed sacred by local villagers. Instead, Jesus implies that he is water, not just a well.
As he and the woman talk, Jesus layers spiritual metaphors for water: liberation, yearning for salvation, hospitality, healing, and renewal of life. With each poetic turn, his invitation to these waters becomes more compelling. A Samaritan woman? Transgressing at Jacob’s Well? Jesus asked her to serve him water — in an almost priestly act of refreshment and renewal.
Then he invites her to drink from this now shared cup of refreshment. It becomes a story of mutuality and sharing.
And wisdom, like a spring, bubbles up through his words, his poetic and symbolic insights. Jesus himself drinks water, he gives water, and he is water. I am he.
The encounter is an interesting parallel to the story of Eve. In Genesis, the devil tempts the woman to eat forbidden fruit to gain divine knowledge. At the well, Jesus invites this woman to drink God’s water to gain spiritual wisdom. The entire story is a reversal of disobedience; here, Jesus and the woman re-enact Eden with a different result. The woman’s eyes are opened; she understands.
Instead of being run out of the garden by an angry god; she runs out and tells her friends that she has met the God who is Living Water. She is not cursed. Rather, the woman is blessed and offers blessing. Water is present at creation, and it is here also, at the world’s re-creation through Jesus. The woman becomes the first evangelist, a preacher of water and word.
Commentators have long noted that John’s gospel borrows from and recasts stories from Genesis. The first chapter of John is essentially a creation narrative — a reflection on the Genesis creation — that poetically tells the story of the New Creation of the cosmos through Jesus the Christ. The first creation is amplified, expounded, and expanded. The New Creation doesn’t replace the original genesis. Instead, the New Creation widens the aperture of the first creation beyond earthly Eden toward its universal scope — a revelation of divine vastness and infinite imminence of God-with-us — God-with-everything-everywhere-through-all-time — as diffuse as light and as renewing at water.
The woman at the well, however, isn’t the New Eve. John 4 foreshadows John 20, the account of Mary Magdalene and Jesus on the morning of the resurrection. There, the reversal of Eden becomes complete when, in a graveyard — a garden of death — the curse of death itself, the curse of Eden, is defeated in the tearful reunion of woman and man as friends and co-workers. She is sent out — not cast out — to proclaim new life birthed into the world. “Christ is alive!”
But it is still Lent. Not yet Easter. This is the season of foreshadowing, when we live — like the Samaritan woman — under the veil of prejudice, oppression, and injustice. We know what it is to be cast out, unloved, judged, and unaccepted for who we are and the mistakes we have made.
Yet, Jesus invited her to serve him. And in the cup she offered, he returned water to her, blessing it as the giver of life itself. This act of mutual service and hospitality lifted her shadow of suffering, if only for a moment. She serves; she drinks; and she runs out eager to announce that salvation is at hand.
But it is still at hand. We are at the well in the desert, not at some eternal spring. The graveyard is ahead — the garden beyond even that. There is work to do. The well may be deep, but the world is parched. Water must be drawn and the thirsty given drink.
Offer the cup. And receive the living water in return. All our fears and sadness will be slaked.
(Today’s reflection is drawn and adapted from Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution, pp. 74-77). A different version of it appeared in the Cottage in 2023. Several paragraphs have never before appeared in print.
INSPIRATION
In this late season, who is the woman at the well
drawing water, reflecting on the woman at the well?
Millennial fissures in the well-rim, weed-choked cracks
where brackish water rises for the woman at the well.
At the bottom of the well shaft, the sky’s reflective eye
opens, closes on the shadow of the woman at the well.
Where are the rains of bygone eras? Preterite weather
yields more rusted bucketsful for the woman at the well.
Ancestral well of Jacob, where a weary traveler rests,
where Jesus asks for water from the woman at the well.
Oh plane trees of Samaria, in whose shade a stranger
speaks of artesian fault lines to the woman at the well!
Chaldean fountains, oases of date palms and minarets—
how they flourish in the dreams of the woman at the well!
Mirages of marble, pomegranate flowers, cedars of Baalbek
shimmer in the sight of the woman at the well.
On the night of destiny, the angel Gabriel descends
and hovers by the footprints of the woman at the well.
Jacob’s ladder leans against the door of heaven—
on the bottom rung, the woman at the well.
Women of Sychar, women of Shechem! Draw aside your veils,
reveal the features of the woman at the well.
Wise ones, why do you weep? Do you fear your fate
tips a mirror toward the woman at the well?
Oh artisan of sorrow, mystery’s precision, sit down
beside your sister, second self, the woman at the well.
— Carolyne Wright, “Ghazal: Woman at the Well”
You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places.
“Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory — what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding.”
― Toni Morrison
This week, we got good news from the doctors regarding the medical tests I’ve been undergoing: the most dire diagnosis has been taken off the table.
I do, however, have a chronic condition. This involves more (but less intrusive) testing over the next two weeks and developing a medication, wellness, and lifestyle plan to address ongoing concerns and issues.
There is a further journey ahead, but one that should lead toward health and a better quality of life. Thank you SO MUCH for your prayers, kind notes, and encouragement. I’ve learned more than I could have imagined in the last month — and I’ve discovered how I’m a “soul and science” person! Both spiritual practices and scientific expertise have amazed me and revealed a deeper sense of the love and care that truly surrounds us all.
Continued prayers are welcome that we’ve arrived at the correct diagnosis, that upcoming testing will be helpful, and that medication and management will work to bring relief and to heal.
My dog, Paddy, has proved himself to be one of the most empathetic creatures I’ve ever met! We brought him home as a puppy three years ago this weekend. He has been a sweet companion in these difficult weeks. I mean — just look at those eyes!
God said to Moses,
“I will be standing there in front of you
on the rock at Horeb.
Strike the rock, and water will come out of it,
so that the people may drink.”
— Exodus 17.6
Unexpected refreshment
flows from an act of service,
a mystery hidden
in an ordinary deed.
Acting in trust
for the sake of life and healing
releases the infinite grace
already present
in even the most unpromising situation.
Faith is not knowing,
but striking the rock.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Strike the Rock”
So grateful to hear that there is hopeful and healthy outcome before you. Thankful you’ve been loved and held by this community, your family, of course, and your precious pup. 🐶
A spiritual director friend recently asked me how my faith informs and supports me these days and I pointed to your substack.
I rejoice with this body of readers/listeners at your good news, Diana! You are truly a vessel, a conduit of spirit and hope. Joining my prayers and subscription with others that you can keep body and spirit together. So much gratitude for the insight and inspiration you bring!