Exodus 17.1-7; John 4. 5-42
The New Testament often refers to key events and stories in the Hebrew Scriptures as being types and shadows of Christ – that is, as prophetic images of his work of salvation. For example, in the gospel last Sunday, Jesus himself says that, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, he must be lifted up upon the cross, so that all who trust in him may not perish but have everlasting life.
Perhaps the most sustained example of these kind of types and shadows is found in the epistle to the Hebrews, where the elaborate structure of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the complex ritual of the Day of Atonement, are shown to prefigure Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension into the heavenly temple.
What this means is that there are rich echoes and allusions to the great narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures hiding in plain sight among the pages of the New Testament. Think, for instance, of the parable of the prodigal son, and its many parallels with the dramatic and moving story of Joseph and his brothers, which ends with Joseph being reunited with his father, Jacob, whom God had re-named Israel. In both stories, the father embraces the son that was lost, and falls upon his neck and kisses him.
The figure of Jacob, or Israel, is in the background of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in today’s Gospel.
As we hear in this passage, the Samaritans and the Jews were estranged from one another, an ancient feud that went back to the division of the kingdom of Israel after Solomon’s death in the tenth-century B.C. The southern kingdom of Judah and Benjamin became what we now know as the Jews, and the northern kingdom of the other ten tribes became what was known as the Samaritans. Fundamentally, this was a split over worship practices, and it drove a lasting wedge between the twelve tribes of Israel, which traced their ancestry back to Jacob’s twelve sons.
Now, Jesus, from the tribe of Judah, meets the Samaritan woman by the well that their forefather Jacob gave to Joseph. Moreover, this was the well where Jacob met Joseph’s mother, Rachel, Jacob’s future wife, a story which is told in Genesis chapter 29. Both stories involve an outsider coming into foreign territory, meeting a woman at a well, identities being revealed, the woman rushing back into town to get her family and neighbours, discussions about marriage, and the man eventually returning home.
Indeed, marriage imagery saturates the early chapters of John’s gospel: in the first sign of water into wine at the wedding in Cana in chapter two; in John the Baptist’s proclamation in chapter three that Jesus is the bridegroom of Israel; and now the encounter in chapter four with the Samaritan woman, who has had five husbands herself. We might say that all of this is ultimately rooted in the imagery of the opening prologue of John’s gospel, in which the marriage of humanity and divinity takes place as the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.
It is as if St John is saying in his gospel, Jesus is the true Jacob, the true Israel, the bridegroom figure, who will re-unite, not only the twelve tribes, but all the families of the world, into the Church, which will offer worship in spirit and truth to the Father.
If St John is saying that Jesus is the true Israel, then this opens up an interesting way of looking at the first reading we heard this morning.
This is the story of the descendants of Israel wandering through the wilderness for forty years after their exodus from Egypt, a few centuries after the time of Joseph and his brothers. The people quarrel and complain that there is no water, and that they have been brought out of Egypt by God only to die in the desert. In response, Moses says, ‘Why do you test the Lord?’ Nevertheless, God provides water for them, from the rock struck by Moses.
This episode should remind us of Jesus’s second temptation by the devil after he had spent forty days fasting in the wilderness. The devil says to him, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the Temple, for surely the angels will protect you, so that you do not even dash your foot against a stone or rock. But Jesus replies, ‘It is written: “do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’
St Paul looks back to the rock struck by Moses and says that this rock was a type of Christ, one of those prophetic foreshadows of his death upon the cross. Indeed, St John describes water and blood flowing from Jesus’s side after it has been pierced by the Roman soldier’s spear.
In Jesus’s second temptation, it is as if the tempter is saying to him, don’t take the way of the cross; avoid the path of suffering; if you are God’s son, surely he will provide another way; throw yourself down from the temple and see how God will protect you from harm.
But as Jesus will go on to say in John’s gospel, his body is the true temple, which must be destroyed, and re-built in three days. For he is the true temple, foreseen by the prophet Ezekiel, from which a river of water flows to bring life to the dead places of the wilderness.
And so, the place where the children of Israel failed, when they put God to the test, is the place where Jesus, the true Israel, triumphs over evil. Because, and this point is so crucial, Jesus did not go into the desert for his own benefit. It wasn’t a kind of gap year. As the collect for the first Sunday in Lent in the Book of Common Prayer puts it, ‘O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights…’
Jesus goes into the wilderness as redeemer and saviour, because he is drawing the whole drama of God’s salvation history with Israel upon himself, so that where God’s people failed, he comes as saviour and redeemer, to destroy the works of the devil, and to forge the way of the cross, which, as today’s collect puts it, is the way of life and peace.
In Lent, we are reminded that our lives upon earth are a wilderness wandering, poised between our exodus from slavery in sin, and the promised land of heaven on earth. And in today’s readings we are reminded that Christ has walked this path before us, and has conquered the evil that casts its shadow over its steps.
He knows our hunger for bread, and our thirst for water, our desire for comforts which never quite satisfy. He knows our fear of suffering, and our longing for control. He knows our vulnerability to pride and vainglory, and our tendency to make idols of God’s good gifts. He knows these our weakness, but he has triumphed over these temptations, just as he has triumphed over even our death.
And more than that, in the gift of his Spirit, he has placed a font of living water within each one of us at our baptism, gushing up to eternal life. And so, in this season of Lent, we do not need to achieve anything; we need only to create the space, and hush the noise of our lives, so that we can discover the full depths of what God has already given to us.