Pastor John Eich

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

Alma, MI

Jesus is Your Living Water

Sermon for 03.08.26 John 4:5-26

He sits near you every Sunday. She sits across from you in class. You see him every day at work. Rarely do they start a conversation. From what you can tell, things are going well. Yet, day after day he struggles with depression. A list of things he has done wrong swirls in his head. His marriage. Her children. His job. Her home life. It is overwhelming. It is said still waters run deep and, if you were to start an honest conversation with that person, you would find that true. Beneath his calm demeanor, lies a depth of depression troubling his soul. Yet deeper still runs the Word of God. So deep that it has the power to restore your soul as the psalmist writes, “He leads me besides the still waters, He restores my soul.” Jesus is our Living Water.

So, this Samaritan woman came to draw water at the hottest time of day. Normally women would draw water in the cool of the morning or evening. But this woman came during the hot time, probably to avoid the sneers and whispers of the town gossips about her sordid past. The well wasn’t a faucet or pump like we are used to. You had a clay jar which you lowered 30 feet into a hole. You let it submerge and fill with water. Then you had to pull it back up by a rope. And you had to do that multiple times to get enough water for the day. It was hard work. Hard work made harder by the burdens she carried. The men she had known. Or rather, the men who had known her, had used her, and had divorced her.

So marked was she by all these failed marriages, that she was now living with a man who was not her husband. He was just one more man in a line of men, using her, and leaving her, each time a little less human in the eyes of others. She came to the well wanting water to quench her thirst. But what she needed was someone to restore her soul.

The Samaritan religion was a mix of Judaism, paganism and nationalism. She has a vague understanding of the Scriptures. The kind you get from T-shirts and coffee mugs. And she had an even more vague idea of the Messiah. With her patchy knowledge of God, she also faces a dilemma in her personal life. She knows she is wrong to be living this way. She’s ashamed of it. Yet she can find no peace. Her vague religion leaves her with Band-Aid fixes for her sin, like coming to the well when nobody is around so she doesn’t have to confront her issues. Workarounds and excuses lead to more workarounds and excuses, until you’re tangled in this knot you can’t untie. It’s like having to draw water from a well day after day: the task will never be finished, and she will never have her thirst for peace quenched.

How does one restore a soul? The body can be healed. A surgeon’s hands can open your chest, reach in and actually touch your beating heart. But your soul is a different matter. It cannot be seen. It cannot be touched by human hands or examined on the operating table. Yet it feels the traumas of life. Abuse that ends one’s childhood too early. A miscarriage that abruptly ends one’s parenting. Divorce that tears marriage apart. These things cut deeper than any surgeon’s knife, touching your soul. Making it restless. Longing for life as God meant it to be.

Augustine said, “You made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” So, this woman at this well is not the only one who longs for restoration. We all have moments of restlessness. It could be 3 am, as you lie there in bed, awake and unable to stop yourself from thinking. It could be 3 pm, as you worry about going home to a fractured family, wondering if it will ever turn around. Restlessness flows like an undercurrent through life, pulling us, dragging us downward, making us weary of living even as we go through the normal motions of a day.

When Jesus speaks with her, He doesn’t address her behavior. Jesus addresses the condition of her heart: Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. You are thirsty, dear woman. Not just in the bodily way. Your soul is parched.

Ask yourself what thirst(s) do you have in your life? What has sin caused you to be thirsty for? Better yet, ask yourself what people, places, and things have you attempted to use to satisfy your thirst? Was it in human relationships, real or imagined, like the Samaritan woman that had been married five times? The world tells us that it has what we are thirsty for is more everything--more money, more fame, and the latest one of these or the newest one of those. And then in our sinful nature we think we can satisfy our own thirst, which leads to pride, selfishness, and addictions of various kinds. But, of course, all those things leave us thirsting for more. Nothing in this fallen world will quench our thirst.

King Solomon attempted to satisfy his thirst with everything this world offers. But he was left thirsty! And he tells us why in Ecclesiastes 3:11, He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Then he concludes, 13 This is the conclusion of the matter. Everything has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments. For mankind, this is everything (12:13). When you get down to the deep recesses of the human heart the only thing that will satisfy our spiritual thirst is a right relationship with God. He offers that to us through the living water of salvation found in Christ alone

To this woman, to you, the Shepherd comes.

John does not speak of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in this passage but that is what I see: A shepherd who knows when a sheep is weary and comes to offer care by sharing the water of life. The Lord is my Shepherd, we have learned to say. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. Today, we see Jesus, coming as a shepherd, offering still waters, restoring a soul.

The water He offers does not come from any well. It comes from Him. Jesus is the source of all living water. His life, His death, and His resurrection are a life-giving stream. Only in the gospel of John does Jesus cry out, I thirst, at His crucifixion. He becomes the thirsty one, longing for life. Bearing our suffering. Enduring our shame. He enters the depths of Hell itself and dies in our place that He might rise and offer us His eternal, life-giving stream. God’s grace to us in Christ is flowing. It does not run out. It is active and moving and life-giving.

Jesus sits by the well as a shepherd, coming to offer this woman a life giving stream-God’s grace, forgiveness power and the Holy Spirit who gives new life. What He gives makes her a child of God. The life she finds in Jesus is a gift that will never go away.

He still sits there, our Shepherd, by the well where, with a splash of water and God’s word, you are made a child of God. It is that fountain of living water that is held before us in the sacrament of baptism. Long after the water has dried from our heads we are assured that the Holy Spirit leads us and directs us; that he empowers us and encourages us and enlivens us to live the way of Jesus. Be assured today that this living water can and will sustain us through the driest and weariest days.

Confession. Most of us do not like to admit our faults, our sins, even to ourselves or our Savior. What God’s Word says about our favorite vices may make us angry, ashamed or afraid. Yet this Samaritan woman didn’t hide the fact that she was living in sin. However, God’s call to repentance is one of love. Jesus didn’t confront this woman to harm her but to love her.

Absolution: For us, repentance or turning from sin and to Christ is no theological abstraction, but a concrete practice of Christian living. Pastors restart our crushed hearts with Jesus’ words of ultimate love: I forgive you all your sins.

Holy Communion. Eating and drinking His Body and Blood refreshes us. Through this Sacrament, we experience God’s love in the resurrected body and blood of Jesus in the bread and wine.

The words of our Lord run deep, deeper than any of your troubles, deep enough to conquer Hell itself that He might rise from the depths with life for you. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden, I will give you rest Jesus cries. Today, Jesus comes to restore your soul.

Is your soul parched from thirst today? Is your spirit longing for a place of acceptance and healing? Do you have holes in your life through which your life is draining away? Jesus says, “Come to me, come to the well spring of life and received God's gift of living water. It's yours for the asking.”

There's an old song that says it well, “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.” The cross is God's own fountain of living water, refreshing, and gushing for all eternity. Come to the cross today and drink deeply of the gracious forgiveness offered there to you. Claim the great promise of God's Word, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).

When we face the thirsts caused by sin, as long as we live in this sinful world, we repeatedly need to drink the Water of Life—salvation found in Christ alone!

And our thirst is quenched. Amen.