An Unlikely Missionary

We are in the season we know as Lent, a 40 day journey to Easter where we will celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. And as I shared with you last week, you can’t get to the resurrection without first going to the cross.

It was on the cross, in the midst of His crucifixion, Jesus utters the words, “I thirst.” Our text today has much to do about thirst and the quenching of that thirst.

Just prior to our reading this morning, in vs. 6, we read of the reason Jesus stopped:

John 4:6 ESV

Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

This is where he encounters the Samaritan woman and the conversation ensues. This is a very familiar story for many of us. We know Jesus asks her for a drink, and immediately the difference between Jews and Samaritans is brought into the light.

St. Augustine in his treatise on John said,

“A woman came. She is a symbol of the Church not yet made righteous but about to be made righteous. Righteousness follows from the conversation. She came in ignorance, she found Christ, and he enters into conversation with her. Let us see what it is about, let us see why a Samaritan woman came to draw water. The Samaritans did not form part of the Jewish people: they were foreigners. The fact that she came from a foreign people is part of the symbolic meaning, for she is a symbol of the Church. The Church was to come from the Gentiles, of a different race from the Jews.”

International Commission on English in the Liturgy. (1975–1992). The Liturgy of the Hours with Supplement (Vol. 2, p. 212). Catholic Book Publishing Corp.

The woman doesn’t recognize all that is happening, but she continues in the conversation. Jesus says to her, John 4:13-14

John 4:13–14 (ESV)

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.”

Oh, she wants this water.

John 4:15 ESV

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

And this is where the conversation turns. “Go, call your husband, and come here.” It’s getting personal now.

“I have no husband,” she replies and now she is exposed.

John 4:17–18 (ESV)

Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

And what does one do when they are exposed? Change the subject, and that’s exactly what she does. She changes the topic from her to theology and the proper place of worship. After Jesus answers we read her response:

John 4:25 ESV

The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”

And Jesus reveals himself:

John 4:26 (ESV)

“I who speak to you am he.”

So what did she do? She went and told her neighbors, and

John 4:39 ESV

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”

Think about that. She was exposed, 5 husbands and the one she was now with was not her husband. This is in a time when the penalty for adultery among the Jews was death. In essence, she is admitting to it, and yet no doubt her neighbors already knew.

There is so much here, and I’ve only touched the surface.

There is irony that the first missionary is not a part of God’s chosen people, the Jews, but instead is from Samaria the very people that the Jews hate! For Jesus to ask a Samaritan for a drink from the people who’s utensils a Jew would never touch was breaking boundaries already. But a Jewish man would also not speak to a woman in public, yet Jesus crossed both of these boundaries.

So it is a woman of another race that becomes the first person to actually to bring others to Christ recorded in the Gospel of John.

This woman went to others, she went to where the people were to share what she’d learned with them. She took the light that was now in her where she went.

John 4:29 ESV

“Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

She invites them to come and see for themselves.

This passage of scriptures all begins with Jesus weary from his journey, stopping by Jacob’s well in Samaria and asking for a drink. I began this morning speaking of our Lenten journey to Easter and that journey taking us to and through the cross.

On Ash Wednesday I often use the Scripture Galatians 2:20

Galatians 2:20 NIV

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Jesus was on the cross when John records John 19:28

John 19:28 ESV

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”

There is no mention of Jesus’ hunger, only his thirst. Thinking on that, have you ever wondered why? It’s doubtful he’s been able to eat since being arrested, beaten, taken from one kangaroo court to another, sentenced, scorged and now crucified. I get that it fulfills Scripture and yet the very next words from Jesus mouth are from John 19:30

John 19:30 ESV

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

This takes me back to our Scripture this morning, actually a part of the chapter that we skipped over. It’s when his disciples return from buying food and they try and get him to eat something.

In John 4:31 and following.

John 4:31–34 (NIV)

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

It is that last verse, 34 I want you to think about.

His food, that which satisfies his hunger is to do the will of God who sent him.

We read in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:6

Matthew 5:6 ESV

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

I submit to you that Jesus in that moment on the cross Jesus, had fulfilled scripture by quenching his thirst, and that the reason he wasn’t hungry was that his hunger was fully satisfied because his food was to do the will of him who sent him and to finish his work, which he had done.

So here we are the church. As devout Christians I have no doubt that we hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is clear that Jesus went outside the religious order of the day and turned his love outward. How are we doing that?

We have opportunities:

Franciscan House

Food Bank

Ukrainian Support

And more. The point here is that we cannot as a church be only focused on what is going on inside these doors. We must have an outward incarnational focus. We have to recognize that we are sent.

How will you go? How are you sent? Isaiah’s call comes to mind:

Isaiah 6:8 ESV

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”