Drink Up

During my annual physical, my doctor was going through his checklist.

He asked if I was having any problems with eating.

I said no, but maybe I don’t drink enough water.

According to articles I’d read, I should be drinking a hundred ounces a day.

And I probably drink fewer than eight.

I should be taking in more than ten times as much as I do.

He said, don’t worry about it.

Your body has a built-in mechanism to ensure that it gets the right amount of water.

It’s called thirst.

When’s the last time you experienced more than a mild thirst?

It’s pretty rare for us today, in America, to have a strong, prolonged thirst.

All variety of drinks are right at hand for our immediate satisfaction.

Coffee, soft drinks, beer, juice, tea, milk, energy drinks.

We’re seldom more than a few steps away from a faucet, a water fountain, or water bottle.

There may be times when we’re thirsty.

Some medical conditions may keep us thirsty.

Or we might have some brief, temporary thirst while traveling.

Or during some medical preparation or procedure.

There might be other times.

But, for the vast majority of us today, serious thirst is a rare experience.

Water for drinking hasn’t always been so accessible.

People died of thirst.

They still do in some parts of the world.

The Jews in the desert knew thirst.

In our first reading they grumble against Moses.

Why’d you bring us out here to die of thirst in the desert?

We could have died a lot more comfortably back home in Egypt.

[A touch of Jewish dry humor.]

Thirst was probably still familiar to Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

When they met at Jacob’s well, Jesus was tired from his journey.

The woman was making her routine trip to fetch water.

Jesus said Give me a drink.

But she didn’t draw any water for him.

Instead, she gave him a verbal jab about the rift between his people and hers.

And that led them into a remarkable conversation.

A conversation in which:

Jesus offers her a spring of living water welling up to eternal life.

He demonstrates that he’s a prophet.

And explains that Jews and Samaritans will someday worship God together.

That The Father [actively] seeks [a united] people to worship him.

He goes so far as to assure the woman that he is the Messiah.

Some scholars say that in using the words I am, he was actually stating that he was God.

There at the well, who was thirsty for what? 

Throughout the ages the idea of thirst has been applied to more than just physical thirst for water.  The Oxford Dictionary defines thirst as A strong desire for something.

We thirst for freedom, justice, knowledge, understanding, and love.

And when we find a source, we drink it in.

The woman didn’t say she was thirsty.

Maybe she didn’t even realize that she was.

But as they talked, her thirst for knowledge and understanding grew.

She drank in all Jesus had to tell her.

And then ran off to tell the townspeople about him.

Jesus didn’t get the drink of water he asked for.

But he got a drink of what he wanted even more.

His greater desire was his thirst to do the will of the Father.

To spread his truth.

To draw the Gentiles to himself and the Father.

To bring unity.

And he succeeded in drawing in the woman and many of the townspeople.

It was their drinking he wanted most, not his own.

Their drinking in the truth and knowledge of who he was.

And of what the Father wanted from them.

In a few weeks when we hear the reading of the Passion,

We’ll again hear Jesus call out, I thirst!

Even as he hung upon the cross.

And he’s still thirsting—for the fruits of his mission.

We can help quench his thirst and, at the same time, our own.

Jesus is waiting for us just as he waited for the woman at the well.

Waiting for us to enter into a conversation with him.

To bring our questions to him.

Waiting to give us greater understanding and knowledge.

Waiting to assure us that he is who he said he is.

And that he truly does have living water and eternal life to give us.

In these remaining weeks of Lent,

Let’s reacquaint ourselves with the sensation of thirst.

Let’s take that thirst to God in prayer.

And then listen to him, and drink in all he has to tell us.

With a sharper alertness to our spiritual thirst,

We could start drinking in more than ten times as much as we have been.

Third Sunday of Lent

Jn 4:5-42           Read this Scripture @usccb.org