Readings: John 4:5-42 and MANY OT Texts!
It is common to hear scholars speak of Christians in one breath with Jews and Christians as “people of the Book.” And, indeed, we honor the Scriptures (including the Old Testament) deeply, as did Jesus, who, along with the religious leaders of his day, began with the presupposition that “the word of God cannot be broken!” St. John the Golden Mouthed reminds us of the magnificent treasure and mighty flood that we find in this holy library:
Reading the Holy Scriptures is like a treasure. With a treasure, you see, anyone able to find a tiny nugget gains for himself great wealth; likewise, in the case of Sacred Scripture, you can get from a small phrase a great wealth of thought and immense riches. The Word of God is not only like a treasure, but is also like a spring gushing with overflowing waters in a mighty flood…great is the yield of this treasure and the flow of this spiritual fountain. Don’t be surprised if we have experienced this: our forebears drank from these waters to the limit of their capacity, and those who come after us will try to do likewise, without risk of exhausting them; instead the flood will increase and the streams will be multiplied (Homily 3.1).
We might be tempted to repeat the Jewish reflection for Passover—Dayenu! (“That would have been enough for us!”) Indeed, we might think it more than enough to drink deeply of the waters of the Scripture. Yet, in John 4 (our gospel reading for this Sunday), when Jesus came to St. Photini as the Incarnate Gift of God, he promised to give “living water,” the Holy Spirit who is the empowering and enlivening Gift of God to the Church. Frequently in the west, Christians have objectified “grace” as though it were a “something” separate from God himself, a substance that can be given in measure, parceled out and sent to us. But the Incarnation astonishes us: God will not, in the end, allow us to divide “grace” from himself. God’s greatest gift to us is HIMSELF. He is our salvation; he is our sanctification. And so we come to that other particularly Christian meaning of “Gift of God,” the objective genitive — it is the Gift of GOD, that gift who is God. God-among-us, God-with-us, Immanuel! I go back to my early childhood, when I often sang the words penned by an unlearned nineteenth century Christian, Charles Coller, who worked as a lay musician and clerk in the Salvation Army “Trade Store”:
From the heart of Jesus flowing
Cometh Heaven’s peace to me,
Ever deeper, richer growing
Through the Cross of Calvary
Passing mortal understanding,
Yet to seeking ones made known,
And for all the race expanding,
Gift of God unto his own.
Chrysostom suggests that reading Scripture is like trying to drink from a fire hose; Coller reminds us how much more exhilarating is the reception of the very Spirit of God! God’s plan is not to make us people of the written Word, but sons and daughters resembling the Incarnate Word, God himself. We are not primarily people of the Book, but sons and daughters of the Father, people of Christ our God. Theosis is a daunting calling, but not beyond the purview of the One who calls into existence the things that are not, and who says, “Be holy, as I am holy!”
Jesus’ speaks luminous words to St. Photini about the gift of God and living water: “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…. [W]hoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (4:10, 14). Then, later in John’s gospel, to the gathered worshipping pilgrims on the last day of the feast of booths, Jesus proclaims, “If any one thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (7:37-38). The evangelist then quickly adds that the time of this flowing had not yet begun, for Jesus had not yet been glorified, and the Spirit had not yet been poured out upon believers (7:39). (But we heard Jesus’ words this past week, in the mid-point of the Paschal Feast, and know the outcome of the story!) Finally, at John 19:34, at the point of Jesus’ crucifixion, much is made of the piercing of his side, from which there rushes out “blood and water” (19:34). The event is told in a detailed fashion, punctuated by an affirmation of truth, and enriched with quotations from Scripture (19:35-6). The first epistle of John also reflects upon the coming, life and death of Jesus in these words: “This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ…And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree” (1 John 5:6-8).
What is going on here? So much that we can hardly stop the tide. However, let us collect some of the water so that we may be refreshed. First, we have to work a little bit to understand the Master’s mind when he promises living water. St. John Chrysostom queries, “But where has Scripture said, that ‘rivers of living water shall flow from his belly’? Nowhere!” We need, then, to search the Scriptures, to understand their pattern in fullness, so as to make sense of Jesus’ words. There is no proof text, but a story in the Old Testament that includes the flow of living water that never ceases to run, and the heart of One who is generous to give that ever-increasing stream.
The vision of Zechariah, for example, spoke of the “coming of the Lord …God and all his holy ones with him, ” and declared: “On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter. And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one” (Zech 14:8-9). Centuries after Zechariah, the recreating waters of God streamed from Jesus himself, that one who summed up in himself all of what God had intended Israel to be. As Paul put it, Jesus was “the new Israel.” As Jesus hinted, he was the servant who was to suffer, and the embodiment of that Son of Man, whom Daniel saw receiving from the almighty a kingdom and a glory unsurpassed. But there is no water without the rock being struck, no glory without suffering. Throughout the ancient Scriptures was reference to this great river from God, flowing from the eschatological temple (Ezek. 47), coming from the Wisdom of God (Baruch 3:12). But there was also the suggestion that God himself was this stream, as in Jeremiah 2:13, where the compassionate God complains, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
The water, then, comes from Jesus, the true fountain: Pentecost follows Pascha and Ascension Day. This overwhelming presence of God is intimated throughout the Old Testament. Consider Isaiah 55:1-11:
Ho, every one who thirst, come to the waters;
And he who has no money, come, but and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…
Incline your ear, and come to me;
Hear, that your soul may live;
And I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
My steadfast, sure love for David…
Behold you shall call nations that you know not…
Because of the Lord your God…
For he has glorified you.
Come to the waters, live, receive a sure loving covenant, become a light for others, seek the LORD, be inundated, inseminated and changed by God’s living word. Consider also Isaiah 44:2-5: “Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you….I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your descendants…They shall spring up like grass amid waters, like willows by flowing streams. This one will say, I am the LORD’s…and another will write on his hand, “The LORD’s.” Here is the same marvelous dynamic seen in chapter 55 – God’s word comes as water on thirsty ground, his Spirit come among them, bringing life, and God’s people are confirmed in their identity.
The prophets glimpsed from afar what the eyes of new Israel, God’s own, you and I, have seen. They glimpsed a new creation made possible by the intimate presence of God among his own sons and daughters. The prophets spoke about the Spirit and the Word of God coming among God’s people, and so renewing them and the face of the earth. What they glimpsed from afar, we have seen—“From the heart of Jesus” flows God’s peace, God’s shalom, the Gift of God himself. As St. Paul puts it, “God, who said, ‘let there be light’ has shone in our hearts to show us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus.” (2 Cor. 4)
As we return to Jesus’ promise about living water flowing from the heart, we might ask, from whose heart, or belly, is the water flowing? Translators have quarreled over the proper rendering, some saying that the water must be flowing from Jesus, others saying that Jesus promises it will flow from the heart of the one who trusts in him. The quarrel is unnecessary! From the Old Testament promises about new life, and from the Gospel account about God among us, we see that God sends to us no life-force, no substitute fountain, but a Person who is himself our life, our refreshment. The living water comes from God, from the one who is both divine and our representative, and so from us in turn. From Father first, but through the Son to us, among whom the Holy Spirit dwells. Let us cry out with St. Ambrose, “Who will give this fountain to my breast? Let it spring up in me, let what gives eternal life flow on me. Let that fountain overflow on us and not flow away…” (On the Holy Spirit, 1.16.180-181).
Edith M. Humphrey 