78. Monday after Third Sunday after Epiphany.
Lord, thy river is full of water;
we pray thee, give us to drink.
John 4, 6-14. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
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Jesus was wearied with his journey. He well understands our weariness. As the omniscient God he knows how we feel, we who are tired in body and soul; but he also knows it as one who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. The woman of Samaria, also, was weary, weary of her worldly and sinful life; but she did not know herself, and did not quite understand what it was that ailed her sick heart. Many, alas, who call themselves Christians, as well as many downright infidels, walk the treadmill of worldliness and sin, and are at bottom heartily tired of it; but they have put the yoke on, and do not see their way clear to shaking it off; and so they give up trying, and sink to a still lower level. From the depths of the soul a sigh for freedom continues to rise up many a time and oft; but it dies aborning, and nothing comes of it. Here it is the business of the church with its word in the service of the Lord to come to the aid of the soul, offer it deliverance, touch the proper heartstrings, wake the soul out of its torpid state, and bring its yearnings out into the light of day. This is what the Lord does in the case of the woman of Samaria. He forgets his bodily thirst in the stronger desire to awaken in her the soul’s thirst after righteousness. Does he not say, with reference to the salvation of the Samaritans, that his meat is to do the will of his Father? He takes the condition of this woman into careful account. This we also should do when we have to deal with the heathen or with heathenish Christians. He asks her to give him to drink; and then he speaks to her these heavenly words concerning the water of life. Words such as these, every syllable of which is a gem of paradise, are not by him regarded as too precious to be spoken to this wretched heathen woman, sullied by foul sins. Then there is awakened in her a sense of the weariness of her soul, weariness with her miserable life in sin, weariness with the emptiness and soullessness of the world; a sense, however, in which there is more of accusation against God and against others than against herself, more of defiance and despondency than of humility and hope. For there is as yet but little depth in her knowledge of sin. Therefore she says to Jesus: “Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.” But the Spirit of God has begun his good work in her, and he shall perform it.
Lord Jesus, speak to our hearts, also, of thy thirst and of thy water of life; and give us grace so to hear that we may thirst; and give us to drink of this water, that it may be in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Amen.*
See, the streams of living waters
Springing from eternal love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters,
And all fear of want remove.
Who can faint while such a river
Ever flows their thirst to assuage?
Grace which, like the Lord, the giver,
Never fails from age to age.
[TLH 469, listen here; or LSB 648, listen here; or ELH 214, listen here]
* Here the head of the family says a short morning or evening prayer in his own words, and closes with the Lord’s Prayer and the Benediction. This is to be done every day. If the stanzas are not sung, they may be read in their proper place before the impromptu petition and the Lord’s Prayer.