“The teaser”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Tuesday, March 14, 2023

John 7:37-52 (Forward, p. 44) CEV p. 1110

Teasers: they are something that the advertising industry uses a lot. It is the practice of ‘using intriguing headlines, eye-catching images, and suspense to create a ‘buzz’ about some new product or service and build excitement about it.’ Quite frankly, this is often manipulative and somewhat subversive. Jesus knew well how to use this tactic, even if it was not being used in this fashion, and even if it was not given this label.’

We see an almost identical example of this both in Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman and in today’s speech at the Festival of Booths or Tabernacles, called in Hebrew Sukkot. With the Samaritan woman, this encounter took place at a well outside the Samaritan city of Sychar as the woman had come to get water. Jesus initiates the conversation by asking a favour of the woman, namely a drink of water. Surprised, the woman raises an obvious question, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, are asking this of me, a Samaritan woman, of all people?’ (For normally, the two groups had nothing to do with each other). Here it is that Jesus comes out with His ‘teaser’: “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) Or, put another way, ‘the water that gives life.”

For a woman that is deeply troubled, anxious about life and searching for meaning and purpose, this is incredibly attractive and compelling. Surely she has to know more.

In today’s passage we hear Jesus say something similar, “If you are thirsty, come to me and drink! Have faith in me, and you will have life-giving water flowing from deep inside you, just as the Scriptures say” (verses 37-38). Here, however, the context is different. Here it is no longer a desperate, shunned, village outcast that He is speaking to but a festival crowd of observant Jews. With them there were certain expectations associated with the festival, and with its last and most important day in particular. The entire festival was a reminder of God’s providential guidance and provision of Israel during its forty-year sojourn in the desert, but its last day had an even greater significance. It was a reminder of how God poured out His glory upon Israel, showed Himself, there at Sinai. And so, there was the expectation, the hope, the dream, that this might happen again, right there in their midst. Furthermore, at this festival there was a custom wherein the High Priest would fetch water from the Pool of Siloam—a spring fed pool, hence ‘living water’ as opposed to something still or stagnant—and then pour it out as a visible and public libation, as a reminder that it was God who had provided water for them in the desert and that it was God who hopefully would soon be sending the much-needed fall rains, needed if the harvest was to ripen properly.

And so the entire festival was both a reminder and a call to renewed faith. It served as a ‘cattle prod’ to arouse in them an expectation that God might be wanting to do something new in their midst. And so, Jesus words, which were essentially a declaration of Himself either as the giver of this living water, this life-giving water, or as the water Himself, played right into this.

And how much more than this is this announcement to us, for we know how Jesus is indeed that life-giving, life-sustaining, life enhancing and changing, presence, but more than that, how the Holy Spirit He promised to give can become the very presence, not out there somewhere, but deep inside us. So, that presence that the Samaritan woman so desperately yearned for and that the Jerusalem crowds looked forward to, is a living reality deep within each of us. And so, it is more than ‘just’ a teaser, but reality. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Forward notes: “They replied, ‘Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee’” (verse 52).

“I once accepted a call to a church in the South, far away from where I had been serving in California. The new call became a challenge when rumours spread that I was trying to bring California to the southerners. California sensibilities are not the same as southern sensibilities.

“The people in this southern congregation were generally good, decent people. Unfortunately, though, most of us hold to the same settled default position. We cling to old, comfortable ways. The new and unexpected scares us. To be sure, new is not better just because it is new, but sometimes it is better. In fact, when it comes to matters of faith, new is the default posture of God. In Christ, everything has become new! (2 Corinthians 5:17b)

“The Pharisees fear the new and unexpected. As they debate among themselves, Nicodemus argues that Jesus is entitled to a fair hearing. Others rebuff him, concluding that scripture does not say a prophet will come from Galilee. Yet, there he is, right in front of them, only they are blinded by their old, settled expectations.”

MOVING FORWARD: “Where are you blinded by old, settled expectations?”