Lent is a Time of New Journey!
February 27, 2023
Human Thirst and the Response of Jesus
Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent- John 4:5-42
In John 4:14, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, ‘Everyone who drinks of this Water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the Water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The Water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’
Jesus is the source of the Living Water, and he declares it. No one else in history has ever made such a claim and has fulfilled it. Jesus Did. And He continues to do it today. Our thirst, like that of the Samaritan woman, is not quenchable by anything or anyone else. And the Water that Jesus gives is like the ever-new water of a flowing river. It is living,ever new, and revives and revivifies you. It can never fail to satisfy you, whatever your personal thirst is. This Living Water stems from God’s ultimate personal love for each unique person. It fulfils every aspect of your nature, temperament, and idiosyncrasies. It is like the manna in the desert- it suits the taste of the one who consumes it. Every gift from God is tailored to suit our uniqueness.
What Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman is seen later seen accentuated in John chapter 7:37: On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” ’ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Here John, the gospel writer, identifies who the living Water is: the person of the Holy Spirit. True to His nature, the Holy Spirit cannot be contained. He is meant to flow out and unite people in God’s love. This Living Water now satisfies the one who drinks and flows out of them to others, quenching their thirsts. Indeed, no one who is in the Holy Spirit can shut Him up within oneself. The Holy Spirit will flow out, sometimes even burst out, paving new ways for God’s intervention in the world.
