On Water and Wisdom

and this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us (I John 3:24).

Remain in Me, and I will remain in you (Jn. 15:4)

Jesus told the woman at the well: whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (Jn. 4:13).

Later, at the Feast of Tabernacles, which lasted for a week, Jesus stood up on the "last and greatest day of the Feast and said in a loud voice:" If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.  By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive (Jn. 7:37).

The written accounts of Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well and His more public and "loud" announcement at the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem are separated in John by three chapters, but they are very closely related.  The best way to see the connection is to study the Book of Sirach in the Catholic Bible (a book not included in other translations). 

Chapter 24 of Sirach is the Praise of Wisdom, personified as a woman who "comes forth from the mouth of the Most High and mistlike covers the earth" (v.3).  Although Wisdom "holds sway" over every people and nation, she seeks a "resting place" and an inheritance on the earth.  The Jews have a legend that before God chose Israel, He went to every nation and asked whether He might dwell on earth among them.  Every nation refused Him except Israel, the "smallest of all nations."  Sirach 24 says he who formed me chose the spot for my tent, saying, "In Jacob make your dwelling, in Israel your inheritance."

In singing her own praises, Wisdom says this:  He who eats of me will hunger still, he who drinks of me will thirst for more ...the first man never finished comprehending wisdom, nor will the last succeed in fathoming her/ for deeper than the sea are her thoughts; her counsels, than the great abyss (24: 20; 26-27).

In extolling Wisdom and her gifts, the writer says this:

All this is true of the Book of the Most High's covenant,

the law which Moses commanded us as an inheritance for the community of Jacob.

It overflows, like the Pishon, with wisdom...

It runs over, like the Euphrates, with understanding...

It sparkles like the Nile with knowledge (24: 22-25).

Now here is the connection between Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well and His public announcement at the Feast of Tabernacles, or as it is called today, "the Feast of Booths," which celebrates God's "tabernacling, or dwelling" among His people while they were in the desert, on their way to the Promised Land.  The "last and greatest" day of the Feast was the Feast of Water, celebrating the event in the wilderness where Moses struck the rock and water ran out to satisfy the thirst of the Israelites encamped in the desert.  Scientists and archeologists are still today attempting to explain the great miracle of Water in the Desert---enough water to satisfy the thirst of the entire encampment of twelve tribes of Israel.  When Jesus stood up and said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink," He was "blaspheming" in the very worst and most public way.  He was saying that He Himself was the Rock out of which the water flowed. 

To the woman at the well, He promised a "spring bubbling up to eternal life;" to the crowds in Jerusalem, He promised "streams of living water" flowing outward from the belly of those who came to Him.  A spring is for individual use, bubbling up to satisfy the thirst within; streams of water, on the other hand, flow out of us toward the thirst of others.  Sirach 24 makes clear the process:

Now I, like a rivulet from her stream,

channeling the waters into a garden,

Said to myself, "I will water my plants,

my flower beds I will drench;"

And suddenly this rivulet of mine became a river,

then this stream of mine, a sea.

Thus do I send my teachings forth shining like the dawn,

to become known far off.

Thus do I pour out instruction like prophecy

and bestow it on generations to come (Sirach 24: 28-31).

When we connect Jesus' invitation to ask Him for living water and to come to Him and drink with the words of Sirach concerning wisdom, we realize that as we drink to satisfy our own thirst and to water our own garden, this Spirit He pours out on us fills our inner man to the point of spilling out of us to others.  As our own thirst is deeply satisfied with the Spirit and Wisdom of the Most High, streams of living water flow out from us to others also.  As we begin to take sips from the well of Wisdom, we are both satisfied and desire more, and the more we are filled with living water, the greater our capacity to give what others need from us.