Once again the Gospel of John uses an encounter to advance some metaphors, and again the Lord Jesus opens the conversation with wordplay, and again the wordplay is missed. When he says “living water” the woman takes him literally, not metaphorically, because “living water” was the term they used for spring water as opposed to standing water in a cistern.
I had an Aunty Betty and she had a key to a spring of living water. She was my mom’s older sister; her Dutch name was Bartje, but she went by Betty. She lived in Haledon, New Jersey, an old suburb of Paterson. And over on Tilt Street was the Haledon Spring. The water was very good, especially compared to the local tap water, which was rather bad. The Haledon Spring had been enclosed in a concrete shed, for which you needed a key. And my Aunty Betty had a key.
Haledon is a Democratic town. My other relatives were all Republicans and did not live there. Haledon was mostly Roman Catholic and pro-union and it allowed liquor stores and bars, and stores were open on Sundays. My Aunty Betty was a Democrat. She had been the wild one, growing up. She was pretty, and always had boyfriends, and not from church. My mom remembers her dating a rich guy with a convertible.
And then she went and married a Catholic. They had four kids. She didn’t go to church, but she sent my cousins to the Presbyterian Sunday school, not Dutch Reformed, and we looked down on them. But my Aunty Betty had that key. So I remember that my other relatives would bring her their empty bottles and she would go and fill them up for them.
The Samaritan woman is the first evangelist in the gospel. Her relatives and her neighbors got the benefit of the fountain that started welling up in her, and Jesus had the key that opened up her heart. The fountain flows out of her when she tells the villagers to “Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did.” But all he had said about her life was just one thing, just that embarrassing comment about her five ex-husbands and her current boyfriend. When he said that she tried diverting their talk away from herself, and towards theological disputes, and mission, and the Messiah coming.
He surprised her. “I am he!” And that’s what opened her up. The whole truth of her life welled up inside her, and the truth made her free. He did not have to tell her much to tell her everything. He just used his key. Her life rose up in her, and poured out for the other villagers.
Her name we are not told. But she’s one of the five women in the Gospel of John who are a big part of the story. She, and Martha, and three Mary’s: Mary his mother, at the wedding in Cana and then at the cross; Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, raised from the dead; and Mary Magdalene, who on Easter Day met Jesus in the Garden, whom the later tradition suggests had been a prostitute, although the Bible never says that.
This woman-at-the-well seems more like Mary Magdalene than Jesus’ mother. But she is like the Virgin Mary in giving birth to a new life that has been conceived in her by the Holy Spirit. She is a model for you all. As I said last week, to be “born from above” is for you to give birth to the new you whom the Holy Spirit has conceived in you. You are simultaneously the new you in the old you, your new nature conceived in the womb of your old nature by the Holy Spirit and being born again. Each one of you is a Virgin Mary, even if you think of yourself as a Mary Magdalene or a Samaritan.
Jesus does not require that you deny your past, nor does he help you escape it. Your old nature lives on in you. What he does is free you from the guilt of your past and the grip of your old nature, and the Holy Spirit makes your old nature the virgin mother of your new nature. All your sin and your pain and your frustration and mistakes and loneliness and suffering give birth to your character and your hope and your love. Not the stagnant pools of love you thought you had to accept, but God’s love, poured into your heart and overflowing out.
The woman has tried to love, apparently, maybe too much, and in her frustration given up, and her current lover is a lover only physically. The sign of her frustration is her coming to the well alone, at noon, not sociably in the morning with the other women. She’s not respectable.
This well is the well of Jacob—Jacob who came as a stranger to a well and asked a woman for a drink and then it got romantic. She knows that story. And here is this stranger who is crossing all the social boundaries, who wants to put his lips upon her jug, and she thinks, “the story of my life.”
She doesn’t serve him silently, she engages him. Not done! Their engagement would have been seen as flirtation, and the disciples are embarrassed. But her flagrant openness allows her to run back to her village and shamelessly tell her neighbors to “come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did.” “But we already have a good idea of everything you ever did!” How close to the old self is the new self.
Your two natures always come together and they are both in everything. They are as distinct as life and death but they also are as inseparable as life and death. Don’t look at yourself and say, “that good thing I did there was my new nature, and that bad thing there was my old nature.” There are both of you in everything, no matter which of the two is at the moment in control. So you have to believe in the new one. Your old nature claims all the evidence, so you have to believe in your own new nature when you believe in Jesus. Believe in it and go with it. The villagers believed in her and went with her, they could sense new water rising up in her.
What’s the key? The truth that Jesus told about himself, which propelled the truth about herself that he told her. When he told her to go get her husband she answered him with a half-truth, but he responded with the whole truth. That’s when she diverted the conversation to theology. Jesus patiently goes with her, but still engages her. He does not judge her to condemn her, but as he talks about his mission she can sense the judgment in his words. Spirit and truth. Energy and solidity. Vitality and fidelity. Movement and commitment. Novelty and faithfulness. That’s her issue. She recognizes herself. She thinks, “the story of my life,” but now in hope instead of resignation. His talk of himself is what unlocks her. That’s what Jesus does. He tells his truth, for us to learn our truth.
People say they “tell the truth in love,” but the deepest truth is the love, the truth about the world is the love of God for the world and for every one of you within it, no matter how Jesus finds you at the well. The deepest truth about yourself is the love God has for you. Whatever else you say about yourself when you talk about yourself, the deepest truth about you is the love of God for you.
Our family had moved from New Jersey to Long Island, and to finish our year in high school, we needed a place to stay. There was no question, she took us in. I came to learn her generosity, her sense of humor, her candor and her openness, how direct she was and without pretense, and how, unlike everyone else in our family, she was not always judging everybody all the time. I learned the other side of her. I came to love her.
Years later my Aunty Betty went back to church, where she was the only Democrat, because it was the very conservative church of her childhood, which meant that she had to forgive those people of all their years of judging her. She had to believe in her own life, and I think she could do that because she believed in Jesus.
She died a few years ago, and I am still proud of her. To me, she’s an example of what St. Paul says, that suffering produces endurance, and endurance character, and character hope, and hope does not disappoint us, for God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Copyright © 2020, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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