The problem with buckets

Reading:  John 4 - The Samaritan woman at the well.

There are some conversations you expect to have in life, and some you really don’t.

You expect to talk to the person behind the checkout. You expect to talk to the neighbour over the fence.  You expect, occasionally, to talk to someone who wants to tell you at length about their new knee.  Every congregation contains at least eight people with a knee story. Sometimes they travel in threes and compare them.

But there are also conversations that catch you completely off guard.  And the Gospel this morning begins with one of those.

Jesus is tired. That’s how the story begins. Not preaching. Not walking on water. Not performing miracles. Just tired. Sitting down by a well in the heat of the day.  Which is already encouraging for those of us who occasionally arrive at church feeling slightly underpowered.  If you’ve ever sat down in a pew thinking, Honestly Lord, I’m running on about forty per cent this morning, take comfort: our Lord once began a significant moment of evangelism by sitting down because he needed a rest.

Then a woman arrives to draw water.  Now to us that may sound fairly ordinary. People meeting at wells, chatting about hydration. But in the social world of the time this was about as awkward as it gets. 

First problem: Jesus is a Jew. She is a Samaritan. And Jews and Samaritans did not get along.  Second problem: she is a woman, and men didn’t normally strike up conversations with women they didn’t know.  Third problem: she has, shall we say, a complicated reputation.

So when Jesus opens with “Give me a drink,” the woman is basically saying what everyone listening to the story is already thinking. “Hang on… why are you talking to me?”  And Jesus replies with something mysterious.

“If you knew the gift of God… you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  And the woman replies with what must surely be one of the most gloriously practical lines in the whole of scripture:

“Sir… you have no bucket.”  It’s magnificent.  Jesus is speaking in sweeping spiritual poetry about eternal life.  And she’s essentially saying, “Yes, dear, lovely idea — but logistically you appear extremely under-equipped.  You have no bucket. The well is deep.”

Which is the Bible’s gentle reminder that whenever God starts talking about eternal life, at least one human being will immediately start worrying about the exact equipment required.  Church history is basically the story of that continuing.

God speaks about life. We start worrying about buckets. And to be fair, churches have always been quite good at buckets. Committees for buckets. Policies about buckets. Possibly even a subcommittee for the appropriate storage of buckets.

Somewhere in every church cupboard there is a mysterious bucket whose purpose nobody remembers but nobody dares throw away. You know the cupboard I mean. Three flower vases, half a banner pole, something left over from a harvest display in 1998, and a plastic bucket that looks faintly reproachful.

Nobody knows what it’s for. But nobody throws it away either. Because the moment you do someone, usually called Sandra, will say, “That was for Maundy Thursday. You idiot”

But Jesus isn’t talking about equipment.  He’s talking about thirst.  The deep human thirst that sits inside all of us.  The thirst for meaning.  The thirst for forgiveness. The thirst to be known and not rejected.

And here is the astonishing thing.  Jesus offers this living water not to the respectable religious insiders. He offers it to someone on the edge. A Samaritan. A woman. Someone with a complicated story.

In other words — exactly the sort of person religion sometimes quietly hopes will slip in at the back and leave before the notices; preferably without messing up our nice tidy liturgy. 

But this woman becomes the first evangelist in the story. She runs back to the town and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”  Which, when you think about it, is quite a risky marketing strategy.  Most of us would prefer that Jesus remain politely unaware of several chapters of our life.

If Jesus stood up after coffee and said, “Right then — shall we just have a quick review of everybody’s search history?” the congregation would empty faster than the biscuit plate at a committee meeting.

But the woman has experienced something extraordinary. She has been fully seen… and still welcomed. Fully known… and still loved. And that changes everything.

Because the problem in this story isn’t really the bucket. The problem is the container.  Jesus says the water he gives will become “a spring… gushing up to eternal life.” It doesn’t stay politely in the bucket.  The woman is thinking about drawing water. Jesus is talking about becoming a source of life. God offers living water. And we say, “Yes, but will it fit in the bucket I brought with me?”

Will it fit into my preconceptions, my traditions, the things I’m quite sure about even without evidence.  And the answer, of course, is no. 

Because buckets hold a fixed amount.  The life of God does not. It flows.  Which, if we are honest, is both wonderful and slightly alarming.  Because we rather like containers in church life. We like things organised. Contained. Predictable. Preferably with a rota.  But the life of God has a habit of spilling over the edges. And perhaps that is why this story ends the way it does. 

The woman speaks.  The townspeople come. They listen. And they say, “We know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.” And it all began with a tired man sitting by a well and asking for a drink.

Which tells us something important about the way God works. Not always through grand speeches. Not always through dramatic miracles. Very often through ordinary conversations.  Conversations at wells, or in our case, around urns and washing up bowls.  Through moments of honesty. Through people discovering that they are known — completely — and still loved.  And perhaps that is the invitation of Lent. To recognise our own thirst. Because the truth is we all carry buckets.  Buckets of worry. Buckets of regret. Buckets of trying to prove that we are good enough.

And Jesus says, very gently, “You don’t have to keep hauling those forever.”  There is another kind of water. A deeper life. A spring that does not run dry. And it very often begins exactly where this story began. With an unexpected conversation at the well.

Amen.