“Night and day, you are the one
Only you beneath the moon
Under the sun…”
The lyrics of the great Cole Porter song are appropriate to this week’s Gospel text in so many ways. “Night and day,” can describe the contrast between Nicodemus and the Woman at the Well:
An important, named Jewish man, a religious leader of Judah, with a solid reputation, comes to Jesus secretly at night, in the dark. And, from start to finish Nicodemus never quite understands what Jesus is telling him and revealing to him (John 3:1-17).
An unimportant and unnamed Samaritan woman with a scandalous past and present, from a region viewed as religiously unclean, who encounters Jesus in the glaring sun of noontime. And, although she initially does not quite grasp Jesus’ meaning, the encounter is one of deepening understanding, until she evangelizes her hometown, and for the one-and-only time in John’s Gospel Jesus is called “savior” (John 4:5-42).
As the encounter and dialog between Jesus and the woman progresses, she is able to discern that the water that Jesus is speaking of is not the kind of water contained in the well they sit beside. Even Jesus’ reference to “living water” can have a temporal meaning. This is basically the Jewish description of water that moves, as opposed to still water that may be stagnant. Jewish men used such living water in ritual bathing pools (mikveh). And living water was thought to have healing properties. In John 5:1-8 Jesus encounters a sick man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. The man tells Jesus that he has no one to assist him to enter the pool when the water is “stirred up.” Jerusalem limestone soaks up water, which can reach such a level that it bursts out of the rock. This spontaneous movement of water was thought to indicate the presence of an angel of the Lord and be curative. By the time the sick man made it to the water, it had become still again, and his hope for healing was gone. Jesus simply tells him, “Stand up, take your mat, and walk,” and he is healed. (This high water content in the limestone in which Jerusalem is built even today, also accounts for the destruction of the city by the Romans, who set fire to the buildings, which not only burned but exploded when the water in the stone boiled.)
Finally the woman perceives the truth (theōreo means to arrive at an intellectual perception) that Jesus is speaking spiritually – something Nicodemus conspicuously failed to comprehend! In doing so, the old debate between Jews and Samaritans about the location of the presence of God is fully answered by Jesus. God is not restricted to Mt. Gerizim (Samaritan) or Jerusalem (Jew) but instead is to be worshipped in “spirit and truth” (vs. 23). In a climactic statement about the Messiah, Jesus reveals who he truly is. In verse 26, which is usually translated as “I am he, the one who is speaking to you,” Jesus literally says, “I am is the one speaking to you,” using the revealed name of God from Exodus 3:14 (Ehye ašer ehye, or I am that I am).
The woman’s broken relationship with men is clearly no hindrance to her evangelization – for in John’s Gospel, sin is less a moral failure than it is a state of unbelief – and the woman believes!
By the time the passage ends, the citizens of the city declare Jesus to be the savior – the fullest meaning of the living water that ends thirst forever. Jesus is the living God. Or, as Cole Porter would put it, “Only you beneath the moon, under the sun…”
