Ours is a story that begins and ends with a life-giving flow of water. Genesis begins with it: “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers (Gen. 2:10 ESV).” Revelation ends with it: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Re 22:1–2 ESV).” Our story begins and ends with this flow of living water.
But in between, we and our world are parched. We’re parched for many reasons. John 4 highlights some of them. What blocks this flow of living water for many are the dehumanizing realities of sexism and racism. In John 4, a weary Jesus rests at a well in Samaria as his disciples go to find food. A Samaritan woman makes her way to the well and Jesus speaks to her. The woman is shocked:
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) (John 4:9 ESV)
And, later, the disciples who return and witness this are shocked:
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman (John 4:27 ESV)
Samaritans were considered secondary. Women were considered worth-less. And so, without question, a Samaritan woman was devalued.
What’s all the more tragic is that this sexism and racism were playing out within religious communities. “Good godly people” were guilty of prejudice rooted in gender and race. And, for this woman, this racism and sexism became like debri blocking the flow of life-giving water.
But Jesus stood up against this divisiveness with the promise of a “flow of living water”:
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14 ESV)
Crossing gender and racial barriers, Jesus promised to be a source of a never ending flow of life giving water that would quench her deepest thirst, a thirst ignored by the men of her life and dismissed by the majority race in her life. This water was for “whoever” desired it.
Later, Jesus extended the same promise to all:
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:37-39 ESV)
The gift of the Spirit is the gift of the flow of never-ending life-giving water. The gift of the Spirit is the removal of all obstacles and the restoration of access to the stream of life flowing in the first Eden and the water of life flowing in the New Heavens/ New Earth. The gift of the flow of the Spirit is or “anyone” who “thirsts.”
Gender, race, ethnicity, class, age and sexual preference are used today to block access to resources, even life-giving resources. The flow of life’s most critical supplies are often diverted in ways that favor those who are in power and those who possess privilege. But Jesus has come to redirect heaven’s waters to those so long-denied. This flow of living-water will be for all.
May the Spirit find his way to all whom our society has lost. May his flow be restored to all whom our culture has denied. And may we, the church, create the kind of communities where this all-access flow is expressed and experienced.
