WHEN JESUS SAID “I THIRST”
Art’s Easter Word for 2008
“Jesus was exhausted from traveling, so he sat down on the edge of the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman comes along to get water, Jesus asks her, ‘Give me a drink.’” (John 4:7)

This is an unlikely Easter text. I don’t remember ever hearing it used on Easter. You’re getting something fresh. This is remembered as the story of the woman at the well, more renowned for the fact that she had many husbands. So, how do I claim it for my Easter text?
There are several things that Easter texts have in common. One - they were all written from stories told after Easter. In the case of John the stories are quite a long time after Easter. In fact, most of the texts of the New Testament bear the imprint of Easter.
For another thing - this story has the woman not knowing who Jesus was. That sounds like a reasonable possibility, but it is a characteristic of most of the “recognition” of the risen Jesus by people. Mary, who knew Jesus well, mistook him for the gardener. Two men on the road to Emmaus walked and talked a long time before concluding that the stranger was their friend Jesus. Fishermen were called to shore for an Easter breakfast by the fire, only recognizing who it was when they began to break the bread.
A third hint that this might be a resurrection appearance story - when the woman concludes that this thirsty man by the well must be the Messiah, we have another clue that this is really an Easter story, especially when Jesus wasn’t known as the Messiah until some years after he was crucified.
There are many “layers” to this old story by the time it finally appears in John. Several stories tie together. It is hard to sort out what the original story must have been. I choose the theme of the well and the water and the change of the meaning of “thirst” as a basis for my words.
There are other sources for the word in the gospels. Tradition planted the words “I thirst” on Jesus’ lips as he died. One of the stories attributed to him includes a question from the disciples, “When did we see you thirsty and give you drink?” Jesus answered, “As often as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” The word also appears in the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitudes where Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness…”
There are many of things people thirst for that are not water. We understand what it is to thirst for something if we’ve ever been thirsty. Jesus told the woman at the well that after drinking water from that well she would still be thirsty. It’s true. I drank water from that well (along with probably 100 billion microbes) one hot day and was soon thirsty again.
March 22 was National Water Day. I doubt anyone noticed, especially in the Midwest floods, or even here in Oregon where water flows abundantly most of the time. The same day, we received a brochure in the mail telling all about the Corvallis water supply. It’s very safe, they report. I’m glad for you who live in town. Many of us out here drink well water. In the same mail came a packet from Church World Service. I suppose we donate more to Church World Service than anything else. It was about water. There is a picture of a child getting water from the same well we talked about in our scripture. Church World Service fixed up the well to make sure the water was safe to drink. One in five people don’t have clean water. 25,000 people die every day from drinking unsafe water. It is common around the world for people to say “I thirst.”
There’s another story that I think deserves to be placed among the Easter stories. It is the story of Mother Teresa, the Saint of Calcutta. In her youth she believed she heard Jesus say to her “I thirst.” As years went by and she took vows to become a nun, she became sure that the words were for her. Her call was to the streets in the slums of Calcutta. She spent her whole lifetime answering that call.
What few knew was that all during her life, especially after she started her Missionaries of Charity, there was a terrible darkness in her life. This has only become known recently when “The Private Writings of the ‘Saint of Calcutta’” were published by one of her confessors. She had requested that all her letters be destroyed, but several confessors saved them. So we hear the repeated anguish of her cries over a long span of years. The Christ who spoke from the Cross in a most personal way was silent.
Her confessions sounded like this:
“I call and there is no answer…darkness is so dark and I am all alone, unwanted, forsaken…where is my faith?...I have no faith…if there is a God.”
“In my soul I feel just a terrible pain of loss – of God not wanting me – of God not being God – of God not really existing…Heaven, what emptiness – not a single thought of Heaven enters my mind – for there is no hope.”
One of the reported sayings of Jesus quotes a Psalm that says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Mother Teresa knew the feeling.
Does she stop her work for lack of faith? Does she let darkness stop her from being a light? Does spiritual dryness and thirst keep her from seeking to relieve the thirst of others? Her life vow and mission from the beginning was to go
“...into the homes and streets and slums, among the sick, dying beggars, and little children.The sick will be nursed as far as possible in their poor homes. The little children will have a school in the slums. The beggars will be sought and visited in their holes outside of town or on the streets.”
She kept at this mission tirelessly through doubt and darkness. She recruited sisters to follow her example in the Missionaries of Charity. They expanded through Calcutta and India into at least 77 countries. They established more than 350 homes world wide that sent more than 1000 women out each day seeking those who thirst.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Secretary General of the United Nations once called her the most powerful woman in the world. She was a tireless letter writer. One went to Presidents Bush and Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War:
“I come to you with tears in my eyes and God’s love in my heart to plead to you for the poor and those who will become poor if the war we all fear and dread happens.”
I call hers an Easter story because Christ rises again and appears in her to offer living water to those who thirst. She invites others to listen to the words of Christ in behalf of all who suffer, “I thirst.” As she instructed those who served with her she also instructs us:
“Be the one who satiates the Thirst. Instead of being the one to say, ‘I thirst,’ be the one to do whatever you believe God is asking you to do…”
Thirst and need are everywhere. On the streets of Corvallis as well as Calcutta. Our friend, Barbara, called just before I drove out for this service telling me she had to go to tend to one of the homeless people she works with. The shelter will close on March 30, turning these men back into the streets at night. Two have died this winter and one is in the hospital. I don’t know the need that called her out, but answering the call means doing whatever you believe needs doing. That’s what Barbara was doing. In fact, Nancy is doing something of the same thing for her mother today.
Jesus said that “When we do this to the least of these”…to anyone in need…we do it to him.
And Mother Teresa has taught us that we can do it with or without faith, with or without light. My friend Dick Wing wrote in a letter just this Saturday thanking me for my blue sheet article, “The Saint of Darkness.” He says
“I think it is one of the most marvelous testimonies in the world that the greatest saint among us was a person who lived with huge doubts and darkness her entire life. And then she said, “the hell with it, I’ll do good work anyway."
I don’t know that she actually said, “to hell with it,” but she didn’t let loss of certainty about Jesus or God keep her from living out the very spirit of Jesus among the lost and the least. May we be among those who do the same.
─ Art Morgan, Easter 2008