Downstream from Eden

Excerpt from Chapter 14 . . .

14.6 The Story of Grace Jacobson
“Sometimes you meet the strangest people at the water cooler.

I’d never seen him before. We could have been any two thirsty people coming for a drink. How could he have known that behind my mask I was forever searching for love in all the wrong places? Five times my dowry returned, I’d forgotten who I really am. I’d given up the formalities, and even worse, the hope of ever finding my true love – or my true self. I came at noon to avoid the whispers of the gossips.

I could see right away that he was a Jew, and I braced for the sting of his slur. But he merely asked for a drink. “What, no racist epithet?” I asked. But he simply said that God is generous and that if I knew who was talking to me and asked him for a drink, he’d be more than willing to give me a drink. I stared at him. How he thought he’d collect water with his bare hands I had no idea.

I asked him if he thought he was better than old Yakov who gave us this water that has served our village and my ancestors for these past 18 centuries. (Isn’t it great when you come up with the perfect comeback?)

“Oh,” says he, “Yakov’s water is fine as long as it lasts, but my water will satisfy your thirst the rest of your life. The water I give you will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life."

Now he was talking my language. I didn’t know if he meant solving my never-ending trips to fetch water or if he meant that other thirst that runs way deeper than the throat, deep down inside where your soul aches and sadness turns to sobbing sometimes. But I could use an ‘artesian spring within’.

“I’d go for some of that,” I said. “I’d love to never have to come back here for water.” Then without even looking up he said it. I should have seen it coming, but I was so used to hiding my scars. He told me to bring my husband.

“Sorry, not married,” I told him, but he just nodded and started reciting my marriage resumé back to me – the entire saga of my nightmare. Busted! I had nowhere to hide. But I wasn’t ready to surrender. So I asked him a question about religion. That’s usually a safe place to hide your true heart. It makes you feel like you’re being virtuous while you avoid being real.

He just said “you’ve been waiting forever for this moment, and it’s finally come, when what you're called doesn’t matter and where you worship doesn’t either. It's who you are and the way you live that count before God.” He said that God is a Father who is looking for people who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.

Where he got all that from, I had no idea, but I told him that I would wait ‘til the Messiah came and sorted everything out. To which he said “I am He”. That was it. “I am He.”

I was completely overwhelmed – confused – elated and afraid all at the same time. I ran back to town – even left my pitcher behind. I had to tell the others about him. He found the woman behind the mask and offered me living water. How could he have known? He put his finger on the deepest pain in my life. He exposed my fear of being found out and my aching desire to be truly found.

He stayed with us for two days and we got to know him a lot better. And what he promised has been so true. He quenched that deep thirst inside me; he is a living spring of water in the very core of my being day after day. As a triple outsider - as a Samaritan, a woman and with a string of failed marriages behind me, he was the generosity of God to me. Like I said, you never know who you might meet at the water cooler. ”

The name Grace Jacobson, of course, is a contrivance. Hearing her story in the first person helps us feel the intimacy of her encounter with Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John, Chapter 4. As a descendent of the patriarch Jacob and one who drank deeply of God’s grace, Grace Jacobson could well be her name. It is obvious that God’s lavish and indiscriminate love flowed deep in Jacob’s extended family.

14.7 Thirst-Quencher
One of the all-time highwater marks of the Bible’s entire witness to water and the grace of God happened during the annual Jewish Festival of Tabernacles. This late summer festival looked back in history to Israel's exodus and God’s provision of water in the desert, and it looked ahead to the dream of Israel’s restored honor among the nations as predicted in Zechariah 14:16. Every year pilgrims came to Jerusalem from every direction in what Josephus called as “a most holy and most eminent feast.”

Every day during this eight day festival, priests marched in solemn procession carrying water from the Pool of Siloam up to the temple and pouring it out at the base of the altar in remembrance of God’s gift of water from the rock in the desert. On the highest day of the festival, the high priest poured out the water with a special prayer for rain, since the autumn rains are desperately needed to soften the soil for planting.

This water ceremony also recalled Zechariah’s tantalizing prophecy that “living water will flow out from Jerusalem” (Zechariah 14:8) and “a fountain will be opened to … the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 13:1). The prophets Joel and Isaiah had made similar prophecies about life-giving rivers of blessing that will flow among God’s people, depicting the abundance of God’s salvation, forgiving sins and healing the scars of sin and misery. This was all implicit in the ritual that evolved for the Feast of Tabernacles.

Throughout the centuries people in every culture have created rituals and practices that respond to the thirst in their parched souls. Western consumer culture works as hard as any other to quench this inner thirst, just as the temple-obsessed Jews of the first century did. Where I live in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, we celebrate Oktoberfest – surpassed only by Munich as the largest beer-fest in the world. Ostensibly Oktoberfest is a kind of German-Canadian harvest festival that indulges the desire to drink cheerfully and with impunity. Such is the spirit of the event. The reality is not always as jovial or innocent.

Jesus was deeply moved that year as he watched the water ritual unfold, knowing that he himself was God’s gift of living water sent from heaven to quench our thirst. He held back until he could restrain himself no longer. Then he shouted at the top of his voice, "anyone who is thirsty, come to me and drink!” John 7:37-38.

It sounds completely audacious that someone would claim that he personally is the answer to every human being’s inner thirst. Audacious, yes, but through the centuries, millions have come to him and found his promise completely true. Ask Grace Jacobson, ask the former blind man dancing his way back from Siloam, ask the scarlet woman in this next story. Oh, yes, they’ll tell you, Jesus is the great Thirst quencher the whole world has been waiting for!