I have already pointed out the lovely contrast between the two
pictures, the beginning and the end of this incident; so I need not
dwell upon that. The disciples wondered when they found that Christ
desired and needed none of the homely sustenance that they had brought
to Him. And when He answered their sympathy rather than their
curiosity—for they did not ask Him any questions, but they said to Him,
'Master, eat'—with 'I have meat to eat that ye know not of,' they, in
their blind, blundering fashion, could only imagine that some one had
brought Him something. So they gave occasion for the great words upon
which we have been touching.
Notice, however, that Christ here sets forth the lofty aim at
conformity to the divine will and fulfilment of the divine Work as
being the meat of the soul. It is the true food for us all. The spirit
which feeds upon such food will grow and be nourished. And the soul
which feeds upon its own will and fancies, and not upon the plain brown
bread of obedience, which is wholesome, though it be often bitter, will
feed upon ashes, which will grate upon the teeth and hurt the palate.
Such a soul will be like those wretched infants that are discovered
sometimes at 'baby-farms,' starved and stunted, and not grown to half
their right size. If you would have your spirits strong, robust, well
nourished, live by obedience, and let the will of God be the food of
your souls, and all will be well.
Souls thus fed can do without a good deal that others need. Why,
enthusiasm for anything lifts a man above physical necessities and
lower desires, even in its poorest forms. A regiment of soldiers making
a forced march, or an athlete trying to break the record, will tramp,
tramp on, not needing food, or rest, or sleep, until they have achieved
their purpose, poor and ignoble though it may be. In all regions of
life, enthusiasm and lofty aims make the soul lord of the body and of
the world.
And in the Christian life we shall be thus lords, exactly in proportion
to the depth and earnestness of our desires to do the will of God. They
who thus are fed can afford 'to scorn delights and live laborious
days.' They who thus are fed can afford to do with plain living, if
there be high impulses as well as high thinking. And sure I am that
nothing is more certain to stamp out the enthusiasm of obedience which
ought to mark the Christian life than the luxurious fashion of living
which is getting so common to-day amongst professing Christians.
It is not in vain that we read the old story about the Jewish boys
whose faces were radiant and whose flesh was firmer when they were fed
on pulse and water than on all the wine and dainties of the Babylonish
court. 'Set a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite,'
and let us remember that the less we use, and the less we feel that we
need, of outward goods, the nearer do we approach to the condition in
which holy desires and lofty aims will visit our spirits.
I commend to you, brethren, the story of our text, in its most literal
application, as well as in the loftier spiritual lessons that may be
drawn from it. To be near Christ, and to desire to live for Him,
delivers us from dependence upon earthly things; and in those who thus
do live the old word shall be fulfilled, 'Better is a little that a
righteous man hath, than the abundance of many wicked.'
'GIVE ME TO DRINK'
'… Jesus saith unto her, Give Me to drink…. Jesus saith unto her,
I that speak unto thee am He.'—JOHN iv. 7, 26.
This Evangelist very significantly sets side by side our Lord's
conversations with Nicodemus and with the woman of Samaria. The persons
are very different: the one a learned Rabbi of reputation, influence,
and large theological knowledge of the then fashionable kind; the other
an alien woman, poor—for she had to do this menial task of
water-drawing in the heat of the day—and of questionable character.
The diversity of persons necessitates great differences in the form of
our Lord's address to each; but the resemblances are as striking as the
divergencies. In both we have His method of gradually unveiling the
truth to a susceptible soul, beginning with symbol and a hint,
gradually enlarging the hint and translating the symbol; and finally
unveiling Himself as the Giver and the Gift. There is another
resemblance; in both the characteristic gift is that of the Spirit of
Life, and, perhaps, in both the symbol is the same. For we read in one
of 'water and the Spirit'; and in the other of the fountain within,
springing into everlasting life. However that may be, the process of
teaching is all but identical in substance in both cases, though in
form so various.
The words of our Lord which I have taken for our text now are His first
and last utterance in this conversation. What a gulf lies between! They
are linked together by the intervening sayings, and constitute with
these a great ladder, of which the foot is fast on earth, and the top
fixed in heaven. On the one hand, He owns the lowest necessities; on
the other, He makes the highest claims. Let us ponder on this
remarkable juxtaposition, and try to gather the lessons that are plain
in it.
I. First, then, I think we see here the mystery of the dependent
Christ.
'Give Me to drink': 'I am He.' Try to see the thing for a moment with
the woman's eyes. She comes down from her little village, up amongst
the cliffs on the hillside, across the narrow, hot valley, beneath the
sweltering sunshine reflected from the bounding mountains, and she
finds, in the midst of the lush vegetation round the ancient well, a
solitary, weary Jew, travel-worn, evidently exhausted—for His disciples
had gone away to buy food, and He was too wearied to go with
them—looking into the well, but having no dipper or vessel by which to
get any of its cool treasure. We lose a great deal of the meaning of
Christ's request if we suppose that it was merely a way of getting into
conversation with the woman, a 'breaking of the ice.' It was a great
deal more than that. It was the utterance of a felt and painful
necessity, which He Himself could not supply without a breach of what
He conceived to be His filial dependence. He could have brought water
out of the well. He did not need to depend upon the pitcher that the
disciples had perhaps unthinkingly carried away with them when they
went to buy bread. He did not need to ask the woman to give, but He
chose to do so. We lose much if we do not see in this incident far more
than the woman saw, but we lose still more if we do not see what she
did see. And the words which the Master spoke to her are no mere way of
introducing a conversation on religious themes; but He asked for a
draught which He needed, and which He had no other way of getting.
So, then, here stands, pathetically set forth before us, our Lord's
true participation in two of the distinguishing characteristics of our
weak humanity—subjection to physical necessities and dependence on
kindly help. We find Him weary, hungry, thirsty, sometimes slumbering.
And all these instances are documents and proofs for us that He was a
true man like ourselves, and that, like ourselves, He depended on 'the
woman that ministered to Him' for the supply of His necessities, and so
knew the limitations of our social and else helpless humanity.
But then a wearied and thirsty man is nothing of much importance. But
here is a Man who _humbled Himself_ to be weary and to thirst. The
keynote of this Gospel, the one thought which unlocks all its
treasures, and to the elucidation of which, in all its aspects, the
whole book is devoted, is, 'The Word was made flesh.' Only when you let
in the light of the last utterance of our text, 'I that speak unto thee
am He,' do we understand the pathos, the sublimity, the depth and
blessedness of meaning which lie in the first one, 'Give Me to drink.'
When we see that He bowed Himself, and willingly stretched out His
hands for the fetters, we come to understand the significance of these
traces of His manhood. The woman says, with wonder, 'How is it that
Thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me?' and that was wonderful. But, as
He hints to her, if she had known more clearly who this Person was,
that seemed to be a Jew, a deeper wonder would have crept over her
spirit. The wonder is that the Eternal Word should need the water of
the well, and should ask it of a poor human creature.
And why this humiliation? He could, as I have said, have wrought a
miracle. He that fed five thousand, He that had turned water into wine
at the rustic marriage-feast, would have had no difficulty in quenching
His thirst if he had chosen to use His miraculous power therefore. But
He here shows us that the true filial spirit will rather die than cast
off its dependence on the Father, and the same motive which led Him to
reject the temptation in the wilderness, and to answer with sublime
confidence, 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word from
the mouth of God,' forbids Him here to use other means of securing the
draught that He so needed than the appeal to the sympathy of an alien,
and the swift compassion of a woman's heart.
And then, let us remember that the motive of this willing acceptance of
the limitations and weaknesses of humanity is, in the deepest analysis,
simply His love to us; as the mediaeval hymn has it, 'Seeking me, Thou
satest weary.'
In that lonely Traveller, worn, exhausted, thirsty, craving for a
draught of water from a stranger's hand, is set forth 'the glory of the
Father, full of grace and truth.' A strange manifestation of divine
glory this! But if we understand that the glory of God is the lustrous
light of His self-revealing love, perhaps we shall understand how, from
that faint, craving voice, 'Give Me to drink,' that glory sounds forth
more than in the thunders that rolled about the rocky peak of Sinai.
Strange to think, brethren, that the voice from those lips dry with
thirst, which was low and weak, was the voice that spoke to the sea,
'Peace! be still,' and there was a calm; that said to demons, 'Come out
of him!' and they evacuated their fortress; that cast its command into
the grave of Lazarus, and he came forth; and which one day all that are
in the grave shall hear, and hearing shall obey. 'Give Me to drink.' 'I
that speak unto thee am He.'