Ian Sweeny - Woman at the Well

Adventist Radio London, inspiration for the sun. Reading the Gospel of John chapter

four, verse five, and following in some area he that's Jesus came to

a town named Psycha, which was not far from the field that Jacob had

given to his son Jove Zip Jacob's will was there, and Jesus, tired

out by the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw some water, and Jesus said to her,

give me a drink. His disciples had gone into town to buy food.

Being born and bred in the United Kingdom, water is something very familiar

to us, inasmuch as, more often than not, a topic of conversation

when you meet someone is the weather, and in the United Kingdom it's often

raining. It's interesting because I've visited other parts of the world where water is

somewhat more scarce, and indeed Australia has had at one time become a little

bit of a second home to me. And one of the things that you'll

notice about Australia very much is it is hot, well, very much so

in the summer. But if you go away from the cities, which are

generally all coastal and you go inland, it's somewhat largely desert or outback as

they call it, and many a European has and people who are unfamiliar with

the landscape have lost their lives when they've wandered off into the outback and going

on a walk about, taking too little supply of water, and then finding

themselves in very deep and indeed deadly trouble. When they've run out of water,

they dehydrate and they die. We take water for granted, it's forever

raining and water for us is just the turn of a tap away, although

we have to pay some people too much money for it, we might argue.

But in this story that Jesus, that Jesus was involved in some two

thousand years ago, he met a woman who would religiously make her way to

the outskirts of town to get water for her daily needs, and people have

estimated that she possibly traveled about one mile every day just to get water for

the home. So different to just going to a tap and in getting water,

she wasn't just going for a cup of water to drink and then go

back home. She was actually taking water that would have been needed for her

daily life. And she would have had to carry somewhere in the region of

ten to twelve liters of water. And if any of us have ever been

shopping and we've bought a lead of let's say, fruit juice or something of

the sort, ten to twelve liters is rather heavy. But not only that,

she wasn't picking water off a shelf in a bottle. She was actually

having to let down a bucket into a well which may have been one hundred

feet or so down. This would have been a deep well, and she

would have needed a great deal of strength not only to carry the water,

but to actually lift the water up from the buckets into whatever receptacle she had

to carry it home. And that water would have been used for bathing,

cooking, drinking, etc. And I can only imagine what it would be

like to have to actually travel every day a mile just to get water.

And indeed, as I'm sure we're aware, in some parts of the world,

that is still the case where water is not so freely available. This

lady, however, she had no choice. She had to live, and

water was part of her daily route, and she would have to make this

one mile or so round trip, and oftentimes the ladies, and it was

often the ladies that did this work would have to go each day morning evening

to collect water. But it seems to me, when I look at the

story a little further, her daily pursuit for water was actually, in a

sense a parallel of her life, because the story goes on to tell us

that she had been married to five different men, and by the time we

come to the story, she was with a sixth man, whom she hadn't

married, but she was living with. And it seems to me that the

issue for her wasn't whether she was a good wife or just chose bad men,

etc. Et cetera. I'm sure all of that was in the mix,

but it just seems to me that what she was seeking to find,

she was never going to find it. She was clearly looking for her ideal

man, her ideal husband, but in six different men she had vainly tried

to find fulfillment. And so like with pursuing for the water for her daily

leads, she was chasing after something that would fill a longing, an emptiness,

a quenching of her thirst. In her own life, she wanted to

be loved. I would suggest, yeah, you should well Okay. Some

people might say, well, she was after the men for the money,

but that's not in the story. I don't think that's there. I think

she was after happiness, after acceptance, after being longed for and wanted.

But what she didn't realize that in every failed relationship that she went through,

she was trying to satisfy in marriage, in relationships which are good, but

she was trying to provide a satisfaction to something that actually only eternal values could

fulfill. I've been married now for thirty one year years this year, and

as much as I love my wife, and as much as my wife loves

me, there's something that this story has shown me, and that is simply

this, relationships, even marriage, are not for always, because we're all

subject to death, even our love. And I was at the bedside when

my father and my late father died, and my mom was there of course,

and other family members, and I just remember the words, and I

said to mom, this is how the successful weddings or marriages end up.

Because many of us who've been through church services, we say words and their

prophetic words in the church service, but because we're so much in love,

we often don't even realize what we're saying. And so I said, you

know, some thirty one years ago, I call upon these persons here present

to witness that I do take thee to be my lawful wedded wife, to

have to hold from this day well forward, for better, for worse,

for richard, for polars, in sickness and in health, to love and

to cherish. And here is the words, and we say it are the

happiest day of our life, till death do us part. And so it

seems to me that the irony of marriage is that the successful marriages ends with

the words earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, till

death do us part. What this lady was looking for was not bad,

a wonderful relationship, a happy relationship. One of the most successful programs on

t ev or, one of the most watched and discuss programs on television right

now is Love Island, and it's about relationships, and that is good.

Healthy relationships, fulfilling relationships are good. But maybe, like this lady who

was drawing water day after day, what she was actually seeking could not even

be found in that relationship. What we later find out and what emerged,

is that the most fulfilling relationship we can ever have is the one that goes

beyond death. That is the relationship we can have with Jesus Christ. Adventist

Radio, London inspiration for the song