Give Me a Drink

Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." (John 4:9-10)

I am listening.

I am thirsty to know God, to know truth.

I want to see and know for myself more of the real truth about God here.

Jesus was thirsty. But here He seemed to use that more as a means of connecting with someone else who was very spiritually thirsty more than trying to satisfy His own need.

Is Jesus going to come along and ask me for a drink in order to draw me out and surprise me with an unexpected encounter with Him? I think I would like that. But what if I don't recognize Him when He shows up?

This woman was taken by surprise because Jesus violated many of the social assumptions that she expected Him to follow. When people meet there are always quite a number of norms and expectations and assumptions that each person expects the other to be aware of and to follow without explanation. Whenever someone ignores or violates our expectations it grabs our attention. Our reaction to that person's behavior and the way they are trying to relate to us outside the norm depends on our own attitude and previous experiences. Our reactions and choices in that moment reveal a great deal about us, much more than we might imagine.

That concerns me greatly. Far too often I find myself giving in to social pressures and roles in my encounters with those who appear in need before me. This woman was willing to engage with Jesus openly and to dialog with Him. I'm afraid that I may not be that bold. It is so much easier to walk past that homeless person, to indulge in the disdain of that pimp or such similar people. The urges to view them and treat them differently often go right past me in my fears of what others might think about me. But am I missing chance after chance to encounter Jesus and experience something new and different because I am living too much from fear and prejudice instead of seeing people as children of God?

This woman revealed a lot about her expectations and assumptions in the words that she used in response to Jesus' request. I suspect that her body language also conveyed even more things about her feelings but we don't have record of any of that except at the very end of the story. But in these initial words she reveals shock or surprise that a man who is a Jew is acting so very differently than men and Jews were always expected to act toward women and Samaritans.

This is unexplainable to her. She cannot come up with any logical reason on her own why this might be happening. She searches all of her internal library of previous life experiences and teachings and comes up empty with anything that would fit to explain this strange behavior. But instead of becoming afraid, intimidated and running away, she further reveals more about herself by choosing to engage in conversation with this person who should never have initiated a conversation to begin with from her perspective. But since He started it she is willing to continue it and launch herself into the fascinating unknown of what might transpire between them.

Her first words are those of curiosity and a desire for an explanation of what seems so bizarre to her. She decides not to ignore the strangeness of this situation but to immediately seek to find out from this stranger what motivates Him to act to kindly, so openly, so uninhibited toward someone to whom He should never be doing this according to all social norms. She decides to try to learn directly from Him what makes Him tick, why He is acting so differently than everyone else she has ever known. She seeks to go directly to the source with boldness and see if her question might elicit an answer which she cannot find within her own mind.

In essence, what I am now starting to see here is that she is actually seeking light through a new insight, trying to get information from the outside by acknowledging that she doesn't have a satisfactory answer of her own. She could have simply chosen to fabricate her own explanation for this based on her internal filters by making assumptions based on her own conclusions about people without resorting to getting more information. Sometimes I do that. I decide not to ask why someone did something or treated me in a strange way. I just jump to my own conclusions and run with that without asking for input directly from the other person.

But this woman chose to take the risk of going ahead and talking with this man who was also a Jew and in public. She was not too afraid to experience something different and new and unusual. She chose to express her curiosity and open herself up to a different explanation of this relationship than the only ones she had on file.

“How can you do this? Why are you doing this? Please explain your unusual treatment of me.”

This gives Jesus the opportunity that He wanted – an open invitation to redefine their relationship and roles. He was painfully aware of the deep prejudices and bigotry of nearly everyone else who was both male and a Jew against people like this woman. But He did not share in any of that and was always eager and ready to connect at the heart level with anyone willing and ready to do the same. Being led by the Spirit of God all of the time just as it is our privilege to experience if we are willing, Jesus already sensed that this woman was more ready for the real truth about God than were most other people. Because of that He also knew that she was ripe for allowing Him to reveal to her the radically new kind of relationship that God was seeking to have with any humans who were willing to allow Him to reveal Himself to them. She was ready and unconsciously eager to embrace the real gospel, the incredibly good news about how God felt about her.

So upon her request (and implied permission) to explain why He was treating her with such respect and honor, Jesus takes the opportunity to challenge her assumptions and perceptions of both of their identities. He states rather plainly that her assumptions are faulty, that most everything she believes about how men should treat women and how Jews should treat non-Jews were all up for serious question. If she is willing to suspend her own long-held beliefs based on years of experience through abuse by men and from Jews, then she may see the door Jesus is opening for her to step through and experience a relationship like none she has ever imagined could even exist.

Jesus begins to fill in information about this new potential relationship by talking about God and about a gift and about some strange idea of “living water”. Of course, in her thinking water is generally associated with satisfying fundamental needs in her life. So the idea of living water – whatever that might mean – only fueled her curiosity into an even greater intensity. He also suggests that if she just knew the information that He knows, then instead of expecting Him not to even speak to her she would have initiated the conversation herself and reversed their roles as far as who was asking for a drink.

Jesus entices her to be bold enough to ask Him for a drink instead of the other way around and declares that she will receive what she asks for without hesitation. This may highlight the current situation that she was in fact not doing anything herself to satisfy His request for water while they are standing here carrying on a conversation. But instead of making her feel guilty for not helping a stranger in obvious need, He demonstrates in His own attitude and words that He is willing to share with her something even more satisfying than the water found in this well – at least if she is interested and willing to ask.

But more importantly, Jesus is helping her to see that their identities are not what she has assumed them to be. He is implying that the fact that He looks like a man and is identifiable as a Jew is not the most important thing about their relationship. Also He wants her to know that the fact that she is a woman and happens to be a Samaritan also is not the most important thing about their relationship. Since she invited Him to explain to her why He is treating her so differently, He takes her up on that offer and challenges her to suspend her own assumptions and allow Him to paint a completely different picture of what their relationship and identities might look like if she allowed Him to redefine them.

The implications are pregnant with meaning for us today, for myself. There are so many things I am starting to see in this story about my own relationship with God.

Am I willing to challenge my assumptions and prejudices and preconceived ideas about relationships, especially with God?

Am I willing to allow God to redefine who He is to me and who I am and how we can communicate and view each other?

Am I willing to ask Him to supply something I have never known or experienced before but that promises to satisfy my deepest thirst?

Am I willing to experience such a radical paradigm shift of reality that it appears absurd to everyone else who still lives in the world of social norms and restrictions and prejudices?

Am I willing to enter into a dialog with Jesus and challenge Him to explain Himself to me?

Am I ready to embrace His answers to me even when they may sound so strange and different that they don't fit anything I have known or experienced before?

And am I willing to go even farther and actually think about doing something that might actually bring satisfaction and joy to God's heart – like providing a drink for Him when He is thirsty?

That last one may at first sound absurd until I remember the words of Jesus Himself.

"And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." (Matthew 10:42)

For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in....

The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' (Matthew 25:35, 40)