Although the Sacred Scriptures certainly credit God the Father with the creation of the world, in fact, the whole universe, one important natural element might have gotten the jump on God Himself. The first lines of Genesis reveal one feature present even before God flexes his creating finger: In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters...” So, water was there even at the beginning! God would later divide the waters into those on the earth (rivers and seas), those under the earth (wells and springs), and those above the earth (rain and mists). One might say that water was a witness to creation, there from the start. And water would later play a vital role in religious history as the sacramental waters of Baptism initiate the believer into the New Creation.
As the first reading from Exodus at Mass this Sunday testifies, water provided a dramatic blessing for the Jewish people on their lengthy desert sojourn. At one point, bereft of all water, they pleaded with their leaders to provide this vital element. The Book of Numbers (20:10) gives a similar account: “Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly in front of the rock, where he said to them, “Just listen, you rebels! Are we to produce water for you out of this rock?” Then, raising his hand, Moses struck the rock twice with his staff, and water came out in abundance, and the community and their livestock drank.” God the Father had drawn all creation from the primeval waters at creation. Now Moses here provides abundant water from the wilderness rock to refresh and strengthen his people for the trek to their new homeland. Jesus, the source of the New Creation, Jesus, the new Moses, will offer living water in this Sunday’s Gospel account that will satisfy and fortify the soul through baptism’s sanctifying waters.
God the Father fashioned the glories of the natural world out of a shapeless mass of deep water. God through the mission of Moses sustained the Jewish nation with abundant water from a rock allowing them to continue their journey to the Promised Land and form a new people. Now Jesus at a Samaritan spring which was a source of water in the natural world promises a source of “spiritual” water that will reform each soul, establish a new community, and eternally satisfy all believers. As a new believer, the Samaritan woman forgets about her task in the natural world, no doubt leaving her jugs and buckets behind, to attend to a new mission of sharing her discovery of the Messiah. “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?” Through the encounter with Jesus which began with a discussion about mere water, she and others have come to believe in the supernatural identity of Jesus. “Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I have done.”
Water is clearly a scriptural and sacramental emblem for Divine activity. Water is frequently cited early in St. John’s Gospel account as the setting for Divine action. The wedding feast at Cana boasts an abundance of water: “Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons.” Christ advises the hesitant Nicodemus that believers must be born again of “water and the Spirit” if they wish to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Readers are next informed that “John was also baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was an abundance of water there, and people came to be baptized.” A later chapter places Jesus at a prominent fountain in the Holy City: “Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.” Water will sadly make its last appearance in the fourth Gospel account when St. John announces, “But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.”
This week’s lengthy Scriptural readings are certainly a reminder of the believing community’s own renewal through the waters of Baptism. But these Scriptures must also lead all earnest believers to share their spiritual resources with the surrounding world as God did at creation, as Moses did at the rock and as the woman did at the well. By a worthy prayer life, by sharing spiritual insights, by embracing the truth, by communal charity, and by a healing presence in even today’s secular world, like the Samaritan town, may “begin to believe in him.”
