Jesus is a River

John 7:33-49, CEB

Therefore, Jesus said, “I’m still with you for a little while before I go to the one who sent me. You will look for me, but you won’t find me, and where I am you can’t come.”

The Jewish opposition asked each other, “Where does he intend to go that we can’t find him? Surely he doesn’t intend to go where our people have been scattered and are living among the Greeks! He isn’t going to teach the Greeks, is he?  What does he mean when he says, ‘You will look for me, but you won’t find me, and where I am you can’t come’?”

On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and shouted,

“All who are thirsty should come to me!

     All who believe in me should drink!

    As the scriptures said concerning me,

        Rivers of living water will flow out from within him.”

Jesus said this concerning the Spirit. Those who believed in him would soon receive the Spirit, but they hadn’t experienced the Spirit yet since Jesus hadn’t yet been glorified.

When some in the crowd heard these words, they said, “This man is truly the prophet.”  Others said, “He’s the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ can’t come from Galilee, can he?  Didn’t the scripture say that the Christ comes from David’s family and from Bethlehem, David’s village?”  So the crowd was divided over Jesus.  Some wanted to arrest him, but no one grabbed him.

The guards returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked, “Why didn’t you bring him?”

The guards answered, “No one has ever spoken the way he does.”

The Pharisees replied, “Have you too been deceived?  Have any of the leaders believed in him? Has any Pharisee?  No, only this crowd, which doesn’t know the Law. And they are under God’s curse!”

                This lengthy reading reinforces some themes introduced earlier in John gospel.  Again, we see people unable to make sense of Jesus’s words because they are taking them so literally.  Jesus states that people will longer be able to find Him and everyone misses that He is indicating that He will die and return to the Father.  If anyone should be able to perceive the cosmic significance of what is going on with Jesus, it is the pharisees, but they see Jesus as nothing more than a dangerous and deluded teacher leading people astray.  John seems to savor the irony that some of the uneducated crowd perceive that Jesus is the Christ while the most-learned Pharisees conclude that everyone there, including the their own temple guards, have been deceived.  

                At the heart of this passage though is Jesus’ statement concerning “rivers of living water.”  Earlier in John, while interacting with the woman at the well, Jesus self-identifies as the source of “living water” – water that quenches an everlasting thirst.  Now, on the last day of the Festival of Booths, Jesus picks up that theme again.  The last day of the Festival was marked by a traditional ceremony where water was collected from the Pool of Siloam and processed to the temple.  The priests would then pour the water over the altar.  This symbolizes a prayer for rain, but also looks forward to both the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and the coming of the Messiah.  John expects his readers to see that Jesus is proclaiming in his pronouncement that He is both Messiah and the one who will pour forth the Spirit. 

                An image from the Old Testament that brings all this symbolism together is the prophetic vision in Ezekiel 47.  The prophet reports seeing a river pour out from the Temple to bring to life all the lands even including the Dead Sea, where no organic life can survive.  Here in John, Jesus is portrayed as that river of life.  Over two thousand years later, the truth of that metaphor persists. All those who thirst are invited to have that thirst quenched by the Spirit that flows from within the person of Jesus. 

Questions:   In what ways is your soul thirsty?  How have you invited Jesus to quench that thirst?

Prayer:  Lord, pour out your Spirit to meet the deepest needs of our spirit.  Amen.

Prayer Focus:  Spend some time praying about needs you have that maybe you have avoiding thinking about for a while.

Song:  Testify – Needtobreathe