“For everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst; the water that I shall give people will become in them a spring welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)

To desert people a well is a vital part of everyday life. A well is a provider of life. A well of life sustaining water becomes a social centre where people gather and a sacred space reminding the desert dweller of the providence of God.

City dwellers by contrast have a rather limited experience of wells. I have only three significant images or memories of wells. The first is a well my Dad experienced when he was a boy. In his holidays he would spend time on an Uncle’s farm in the Adelaide Hills and the well on their property presented an opportunity to catch frogs. The sides of the well were shored up with wooden boards and a steel pipe ran down its centre, to which a pump was attached. Dad and a mate or two would take turns at sliding down the pole “a yard or two” by hand with feet finding a purchase on the wooden walls. The well was actually built upon a natural spring and to one side of the well there appeared a reedy opening from which excess water seeped downhill to a nearby creek. Hovering above the water with one hand grasping the pipe and the other held just below the water’s surface, Dad would wait several minutes in absolute quiet. A frog would usually appear on the surface and with his hand beneath the water he would swiftly raise it up to achieve the catch. However, I remember my Dad also saying that it didn’t occur to him at that time that just as he could prey upon frogs so another creature may also lay in wait to prey upon frogs for a living. My Dad would discover this the hard way.

The occasion of the discovery was the last time he ventured down a well. As usual he waited in perfect silence. Suddenly, out of the reeds to the one side of the well and across his outstretched arm with hand waiting beneath the water, swam a very large, fully-grown black snake. Stunned for a moment, he made his quickest exist up the pipe and out into welcome sunlight. One wonders who received the biggest shock, my Dad or the snake? The well was an attraction and a danger to a young boy.

The second memory of a wells is of one outside our Bamboo hut where I lived and worked with a colleague for a short time on the Thai-Burma border with the Karen Christians. It was in 1996 and the situation on the border was tense and violent. Refugees continued to find their way over the mountains into Thailand and people continued to disappear. The Burmese dictatorship’s genocide against its indigenous peoples seemed to go on unabated. Yet the on-going resistance by the Karen and other Burmese groups for democracy and independence was inspiring to witness. Here I was, a Westerner, from amongst the wealthiest and most powerful minority group the world has ever seen, being shown the most extravagant hospitality by a refugee people – people without land and without basic human resources and without basic human rights. Yet they fed us and protected us in our time with them of mutual support and encouragement. Here in the midst of the poorest people of the world I found the Christ in their midst – I found him in their passion, wisdom, simplicity, grace and hospitality. The well nearby became for me a powerful symbol of the reality of Jesus amongst us. The well was a focus of community and survival. Without wells the camps could not survive in the rocky mountainous terrain. The well gave us water for washing, for drinking, for cooking, for cleaning, for cultivating, for constructing and so on. The well gave a constant supply of fresh water. The community was built around the well. People congregated there to talk, to meet, to refresh in the hot sun from hard work and sometimes even to play. Children often played with each other by the well, watched on by their mothers. There was something sacred about this well.

A third memory of wells is one drawn from my study of the experiences of indigenous Australians with the white invasion of their lands and their subsequent life under colonial rule. Water has always been an issue for human survival on the dry continent of Australia. In the earliest days of contact with whites, despite initial concerns that these whites were “spirits of the dead” (because Aboriginal corpses turned a whitish colour), indigenous peoples often assisted the whites in finding scarce water supplies. For this hospitality they were soon to be repaid by whites poisoning their water holes and perpetuating other forms of crimes against humanity. For instance, on June 10th 1838, stockmen murdered indigenous men, women and children at Myall Creek. It was one of many such massacres. In Tasmania, in 1830, martial law was imposed against Aboriginal peoples as a final solution. Eventually the entire indigenous population of Tasmania would be exterminated. There were to be many killing fields in Australia’s white past until recent times. Sometimes the army was employed and when they could not defeat certain tribes, then chemical warfare was used. In December 1838, the Sydney Monitor made the benign observation that mass poisoning of blacks with strychnine, phosphorous and arsenic “is much safer.” In Queensland, the main theatre of extermination, the Native Mounted Calvary (a specially employed colonial extermination squad) used Snider rifles against indigenous peoples. These rifles had a wide bore that tore victims apart. It has been estimated the more people died on the Queensland killing fields than were killed in the wars in Korea and Vietnam. The poisoning of Aboriginal water holes, the natural wells of their lands, is a poignant reminder of the human capacity to violate the sacredness of life.

Wells were meeting places for friends and strangers alike in Bible lands and it is somewhat surprising that there were not more such encounters reported in the Gospels. Nevertheless, the encounter in John 4 is an instructive one. The disciples go off into the nearby village and Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well. And so the account begins: “For everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.” Here is a:

CRAVING THIRST

We gather that this woman was a victim and survivor of many love affairs. Indeed how relevant this story is for our time and postmodern culture of relative relationships. The woman had had many sexual partners and yet she had not found fulfilment in life. There is indeed a type of sexual relationship that never satisfies because of the tendency of some to use others for their own gratification. The old English poet Chaucer touched on this theme in his “Troilus and Criseyde.” I will translate it a little so that it is meaningful to the contemporary ear:

“If there is no love, why feel I so?

And if there is such love what can it be?

If love is good how do I know this woe?

If it is bad ’tis a wonder so to me

When ev’ry torment and adversity

That comes of it is pleasant to think

For I thirst the more that I do drink.”

A certain love can be a craving thirst and can extent beyond people to things, whether accumulating money or possessions or power and so on. So a well can be an attraction and a danger. A well reminds us of our need to return again and again to a physical replenishment or fulfilment, yet we will thirst more. Jesus directs our attention to a well that will meet all the longings of the human heart, mind and body. It is a well of water that will satisfy the soul. To the woman, Jesus said: “But whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst.” Here the water has an:

ETERNAL TASTE THAT SATISFIES

The woman at the well was not satisfied with her life; there is a wistful regretfulness about her. And Jesus knows the longings of her heart to be at peace with herself and the world.

James Ryder, one of the principal characters in Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited, stood upon the threshold of life. He went to Oxford and thrilled at the social and academic surroundings. Through it he came into contact with the aristocratic Flyte family and subsequently he began to learn that wealth, glamour, fame and religious heritage could produce boredom, unease, disappointment and finally even hatred. Through these experiences he came to examine himself and at one illuminating moment in the narrative he says: “I am a small part of myself pretending to be whole.”

Here is a young man, educated, intelligent, talented who reached the point of knowing that there was no truly satisfying taste to his life. So too with this woman Jesus meets at the well. Yet Jesus offered her the very quality of life she sought – a living spring of spiritual water, a taste of the eternal. Jesus went on to say:

” … the water that I shall give people will become for them a spring welling up to eternal life.” Here Jesus offers us an:

EVERLASTING TESTIMONY

The search that is within us all, that small part, as the young man in the novel articulated it, is for wholeness. Human sinfulness has shattered the perfect image, the image of God in which human beings have been fashioned. We can look into a well and see our own image, calm and unbroken. We wait, poised, suspended above the well of life ready to swiftly rise up and achieve the catch. How we long for the image in the well to truly reflect our lives. Surely what mars our lives is not only the threat of death but the manner in which we live our lives. But what Jesus came to bring is that wholeness, that peace, that assurance, that unconditional love, that satisfaction, for the human condition, in order that life does not become a nightmare and death becomes an eternal fulfilment for our completeness in God. Jesus’ death upon the Cross of Calvary and his Resurrection is the great testimony to God’s spring of living water. Let us live our lives in the light of this everlasting testimony – that Jesus gives us eternal life when we begin to drink from the water of his well.

Helen Keller was one of those who learned to drink deeply from the well of the Christian life. But I would remind you that this remarkable saint, scholar and humanitarian was born blind, deaf and dumb. As a child people would despair of her predicament. However, she had a teacher of great understanding and wisdom. There came one day when at a water fountain, as the water ran through Helen’s fingers, the teacher spelled out the word WATER using the language of touch. For the first time language and life took on meaning for Helen. The water fountain became the sacred space for the beginning of the journey of healing and wholeness. Helen became an everlasting testimony to the power of the human mind and spirit to confront and overcome life’s difficulties. Her life has inspired many others to find the wellspring of life. This wellspring of life Jesus offered to the woman at the well and she later testified to her neighbours: “Come and see a person who I met who knows everything about me. Could this be the Christ?” (4:29).

What a testimony this woman must have given to her fellow Samaritans. For who in those days would believe the testimony of a woman, let alone one with such a tale, let alone one like this woman who had a reputation. It would have been quite a scandal. Yet here is the miraculous power of the wellspring of life at work in a person’s life! Her testimony must have been a powerful and convincing one. She was a changed person and people must have been convinced that she was speaking the truth. Indeed many Samaritans came to have faith in Jesus once they too had encountered him. But all this because one woman shared of the wellspring she had found. May we too lead others to the well of life in Christ.

Blessings in Jesus’ name

KIM THODAY, Hewett Community Church of Christ, South Australia

http://www.hewett.com.au