In a desert climate like ancient Judea and Galilee, one always had to be aware of water; where would your supply of water come from that day? Was there a source nearby, and did you have access to it? Cities and villages sprang up around secure water supplies. Conflicts often arose around water. To give an example, in Genesis 21, Abraham digs a well for the use of his flocks and it is seized by the servants of Abimelech, a local ruler. The result is a protracted negotiation (both sides want to avoid bloodshed) that culminates in the signing of a covenant. There are many other places where we can go to look at the importance of water in the Bible, but a clear sign of its importance is how often metaphors of water and thirst recur in the poetry of the Psalms and Prophets.
Our sermon text this past Sunday contained a very famous example of this. The opening stanza is a lengthy injunction for God’s people to come to the Lord to find water and food: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters!” The Lord offers himself as a source of unlimited water that could be had without cost. In a land where every drop of water was precious and came with a price (implicit or explicit), this was a vivid metaphor to use. In the Gospel of John, Jesus will pick up this metaphor and use it during a very dramatic moment in his ministry. For today’s blog post, therefore, I wanted to walk through the Gospel of John and look at how water appears as a metaphor and image. John and Jesus are drawing upon the prophets to present Jesus as the fulfillment of the water metaphor.
In John 1, John the Baptist describes his initial encounter with Jesus, when he greeted him (using another metaphor) as the Lamb of God, and then baptized him in the Jordan River. John states his own mission as being “sent to baptize with water,” and this is what he does to Jesus. But upon baptizing him, the Spirit descended from heaven and remained on Jesus. Jesus now will baptize not with water, but with the Holy Spirit. This is a connection to keep in mind—baptism with water is a sign of baptism by the Spirit—water and the Holy Spirit are intertwined throughout John.
Jesus picks up this thread in his own discussion of baptism in John 3. Speaking with Nicodemus, Jesus says that a man must be “born of water and the Spirit” or he cannot enter the kingdom of God. The words here are somewhat ambiguous, and there is some question as to what Jesus means by “born of water.” Some have suggested that he is referring to two births—a natural birth from our mothers (born of water), and a supernatural birth from the Spirit (born of Spirit). The Greek word used in the famous phrase “born again,” however, has a disguised ambiguity in it—it has two meanings, and it is likely that John is playing on these two meanings and intending both. It can also mean “born from above,” and if we read this contextually, John’s own discussion of baptism stays in mind, and it seems likely that we are again seeing a connection being drawn between water and Spirit—water appears as the sign and the Spirit the substance.
It is in John 4, however, that the thirst metaphor really comes to the foreground. Here the whole encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman revolves around the issue of water and thirst; the inciting incident in the story is a woman going outside of her village to draw water from a well. When Jesus meets her, he invites her to ask HIM for a drink, promising in return to give her “living water.” The woman is confused by the phrase, and so Jesus explains—“everyone who drinks of this [well] 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.” Water is something that continually needs to be taken into the body in order for life to be sustained. Human life is always in danger of slipping away and needs to be constantly maintained. Jesus paints a picture of water that, after being drunk, will become a sort of spring inside the person that never runs dry and never needs to be replenished.
The woman is understandably intrigued by this offer, and when she asks for the water, Jesus seems to change the subject, asking her instead about her husband. It seems that the woman is on her fifth “husband” and is living with a man who is not her husband. Is Jesus connecting her “thirst” to her seeking after safety and pleasure in her many husbands? This is how it has often been interpreted, and it seems to be a safe conclusion. But for our purposes we should point out that what Jesus offers is something that will stay permanently in us, and be a source of ever-renewing life, something that cannot be found in the other places where we tend to seek for it.
In John 6, Jesus feeds the 5000, and then following this has a lengthy discussion about the meaning of his miracle with the crowds that followed him. Although water is in the background in this discussion, the metaphors are of course closely related. Jesus presents himself as the satisfaction of their hunger—the bread of life that is sent down from heaven and satisfies their hunger: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Isaiah 55 is in the background here, alongside Exodus and the manna supplied by Moses in the wilderness. This is an explicit interpretation and contextualization of the prophet’s words. While Isaiah says simply “Come and eat,” Jesus says “Come to ME and eat.” The invitation God had issued in the prophets finds its fulfillment in Jesus.
The final place we should look for the development of the water metaphor in John is in John 7, and here is where it is finally explained in detail. I mentioned this story in my sermon, but Jesus goes up in secret to Jerusalem during the Feast of the Booths in order to present himself in the Temple Courts. He does it in secret out of concern that his enemies will attempt to kill him. When he is publicly revealed and heralded by the people, they are for the moment at least unable or unwilling to arrest him. The opposition has not yet fully hardened, and they are overawed by the crowds. At the climax of the festival, on the “great day” of the feast, Jesus stands up and repeats more explicitly the invitation from Isaiah 55: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).
Again we see how Isaiah 55 is contextualized and interpreted by Jesus. When the Lord says “come,” Jesus modifies this to “come to me.” He is the one who has been promised as the “well” or “spring” from which God has summoned his people to drink. And the effect of the drinking will be an overflow in the heart of “rivers of living water.” John, probably figuring that now is the time to explain this recurring metaphor, helpfully explains in the next verse that the water Jesus is talking about here is the Spirit. To drink the water was to receive from heaven the gift of the Holy Spirit. The connection that had been drawn before between water and the Spirit is completed.
From this point, the Gospel of John turns to other metaphors from the Old Testament that are presented as fulfilled in Jesus; water fades into the background.