If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that
is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would
have given you living water. [John
4: 10]
This complex story is the Gospel lesson for
next Sunday. Jesus is in Samaria, in
transit as we would say these days, on his way back to Galilee. At midday he asks a Samaritan woman at a well
if she can give him a drink of water.
The woman is amazed, first because he has spoken to a woman in public at
high noon, and also because she is a Samaritan and therefore to the Jew an
outcast. When she expresses her
surprise, he enigmatically suggests that she should have asked him, and he
would have given her living water – υδωρ ζως – the image is flowing, clear,
sparkling, cool water, in contrast to a bucketful of doubtful water fetched up
from this well.
We find the image of living water again in
chapter 7. Jesus is in Jerusalem at the
temple. It is the Feast of Tabernacles, Succot,
the harvest festival. Jesus announces to
the crowd, Come to me… and drink… Out of
your heart will flow rivers of living water. The Greek actually says, out of your
belly. I suppose the translators thought
heart sounded nicer. Belly is more
earthy, it is what the writer wrote, and I prefer it.
Rivers of living water, however, does sound a
little like hyperbole. It is not the experience of most people, most of the
time. Our inward and deep response to
Jesus is generally more hidden and subtle.
But teachers through the centuries have pointed to an inner place, which
is there whether we know it or not. Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow calls it the Spirit’s secret cell. Thomas Keating calls it the centre. St Paul among many refers simply to the
heart. The French Benedictine, Henri le
Saux, writes of the cave of the heart.
It is there and it is a place we enter.
It is not a place we build or develop, not something we improve or
decorate like our lifestyle or our state-or-the-art kitchen, even with smart spiritual
methods. It is not a place we control.
It is there.
And the point of contemplative prayer is choosing, consenting, to go to
this place, or at least to turn towards it, through all the hesitations, fears
and distractions. It is a place of
presence, God’s presence and ours. And
so it is a place of truth, love, simplicity, light – and like the picture given
us in the Book of Revelation, far from being static, a river runs through
it. So there is change in this place,
constant renewal, God making all things new.
Living water.
This is the polar opposite of the spirituality
which places me at the centre, my requirements, my helpful holy thoughts, the
saccharine, self-indulgent, spiritual messages which sell popular spirituality
without pain to so many today. The cave
of the heart is not accessible to my public ego or to my years of devoted
service. We leave all that stuff outside. It is open to me, the person God already knows
and invites, and loves.
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