The Baby in the Manger #17: Living Water

Living Water (heb: mayim ḥay, grk: ydōr zaō)

“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."   (Jeremiah 2:13)

‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks 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.’   (John 4:13)

Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:36-39)

Today's 'name' is 'Living Water'.  Now, when looking at the teachings of Jesus himself using this image, one could split hairs and say that Jesus never referred to himself as 'living water', using the analogy more to describe something he gives us, something he causes, or the Holy Spirit (who is God, but not specifically Jesus, God the Son!)  On the other hand, Jeremiah refers to God himself as 'Living Water' twice (Jeremiah 2:13 and 17:13).  So let's dive briefly into a handful of passages that use this phrase.

When I was 17 I read the Bible cover to cover for the first time.  As I did so, I wrote down passages that struck me.  Jeremiah 2:13 was one of those passages: “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."   I was an avid student of Geography and had been constantly learning about how things were far less sustainable when human beings worked against nature, and so I loved what this image said about the deeper issue of sin: of our broken relationship with the one who is not only our Creator, but, like water, our Sustainer.  In determination to go our own way, or in ignorance, or in some complex combination of the two, we have walked away from the source of life itself.  I wrote about 'Life' on day 7 - the animation of inanimate matter, the endurance against decay and death, and what it means to truly 'live' - only this comes from the Living Water himself.

But Jeremiah's words detail two sins.  The second is this: that we try to recreate this life-source ourselves, but it never works, in broken cisterns that cannot hold water.  Purpose and belonging here on earth, safety from death and decay, and eternal and everlasting life - those things are hard to find and yet human beings will try everything to seek them.  Our cisterns may hold water for a while - in some cases they may even sustain us for a lifetime - but they cannot hold water forever, and they are disconnected from the source of living water.  They will run out - either in this life, or as we meet death itself.  Eventually, we will know the thirst - not of not having had a drink for a little while, but of the well being empty, and there being nothing left.

But fast-forward to the words of Jesus...

Jesus is talking to a woman who has come to draw water from a well.  It's almost an everyday scene, except that for some reason she's come at midday when the sun is at it's hottest, rather than dawn, when women would usually gather to collect water (and as the story unfolds, we have a strong suspicion it's due to being a bit of a social outcast, possibly due to her lifestyle of living with a man outside wedlock...).  Jesus asks her for a drink, which is even more strange, as she is a Samaritan, and the hatred of Jews and Samaritans towards each other is intense, and that's not to mention that he's a man talking to a woman).  He then goes on to say to 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.’ (John 4:10).

He continues:  

whoever drinks 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 (John 4:13).

As I imagine this conversation between the Samaritan Woman and Jesus, I imagine the heat of the day, the back-breaking and never-ending work of collecting water, the racial divide and prejudice, and the loneliness of the woman who is lost and trying to seek fulfilment in men, and daren't go to the well when everyone else does.  Into this comes the promise of Living Water.  Suddenly it's not about collecting actual water anymore (although that's the woman's first hope!).  Suddenly it's about the promised Messiah, and eternal life, and being known.  It's about life.

But there's more.  Jesus doesn't just give Living Water.  He promises that the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:13).  John records him saying similar a few chapters later at the Festival of the Tabernacles: Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them (John 7:38).   When we 'drink' from the Living Water, life itself, like rivers of living water, will flow from us!  We become not just passage recipients, but conduits, and rivers, and part of this living water.  John helps us make the link when he comments on Jesus' words - this is the Holy Spirit: the person of the Trinity who moves our hearts to convict us of sin, to turn to Jesus, and to gradually become more like him.  

And we see this played out in real life if we go back to the story of the Samaritan Woman at the well.  Suddenly, a woman who came to well alone is going back to tell everyone she knows that she's met the promised Messiah, and many in her town believe.  By telling her story, rivers of living water flow from this woman as she brings the Good News to many.  Barriers are broken - social, gender, racial - but most of all the barrier between people and life itself.   This Samaritan Woman now knows life - a purpose in this one, and eternity in the next - because she has come to the Living Water.