Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
God Provides Water from a Rock(A)
17 The whole congregation of the Israelis set out from the desert[a] of Sin, traveling from place to place according to the command[b] of the Lord. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.
2 The people quarreled with Moses: “Give us water to drink.”
Moses told them, “Why are you quarreling with me? Why are you testing the Lord?”
3 But the people were thirsty there for water, so they[c] complained against Moses: “Why did you bring us up from Egypt to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?”
4 So Moses cried out to the Lord: “What am I to do with these people? Just a little more and they’ll stone me.”
5 Then the Lord told Moses, “Go over in front of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I’ll be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. You are to strike the rock and water will come out of it, so the people can drink.” Moses did this in front of the elders of Israel.
7 He named the place Massah[d] and Meribah,[e] because the Israelis quarreled and tested the Lord by saying: “Is the Lord really among us or not?”
Worship and Obedience
95 Come! Let us sing joyfully to the Lord!
Let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us shout with songs of praise to him.
3 For the Lord is an awesome God;
a great king above all divine beings.[a]
4 He holds in his hand the lowest parts of the earth
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea that he made belongs to him,
along with the dry land that his hands formed.
6 Come! Let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel in the presence of the Lord, who made us.
7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture
and the flock in his care.[b]
If only you would listen to his voice today,
8 do not be stubborn like your ancestors were[c] at Meribah,
as on that day at Massah, in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested me.
They tested me,
even though they had seen my awesome deeds.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation, so I said,
“They are a people whose hearts continuously err,
and they have not understood my ways.”
11 So in my anger I declared an oath:
“They are not to enter my place of rest.”
We Enjoy Peace with God through Jesus
5 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have[a] peace with God through our Lord Jesus the Messiah.[b] 2 Through him we have also obtained[c] access by faith[d] into this grace by which we have been established, and we boast[e] because of our hope in God’s glory. 3 Not only that, but we also boast[f] in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 5 Now this hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
6 For at just the right time, while we were still powerless,[g] the Messiah[h] died for the ungodly. 7 For it is rare for anyone to die for a righteous person, though somebody might be brave enough to die for a good person. 8 But God demonstrates his love for us by the fact that the Messiah[i] died for us while we were still sinners.
9 Now that we have been justified by his blood, how much more will we be saved from wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life! 11 Not only that, but we also continue to boast about God through our Lord Jesus the Messiah,[j] through whom we have now been reconciled.
5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the piece of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s Well was also there, and Jesus, tired out by the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.[a]
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus told her, “Please give me a drink,” 8 since his disciples had gone off into town to buy food.
9 The Samaritan woman asked him, “How can you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” Because Jews do not have anything to do with Samaritans.[b]
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Please give me a drink,’ you would have been the one to ask him, and he would have given you living water.”
11 The woman[c] told him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket, and the well is deep. Where are you going to get this living water? 12 You’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it, along with his sons and his flocks, are you?”
13 Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will become thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never become thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become a well of water for him, springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman told him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I won’t get thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go and call your husband, and come back here.”
17 The woman answered him, “I don’t have a husband.”
Jesus told her, “You are quite right in saying, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ 18 because you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
19 The woman told him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet! 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain. But you Jews[d] say that the place where people should worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, dear lady,[e] the hour is coming when you Samaritans[f] will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You don’t know what you’re worshiping. We Jews[g] know what we’re worshiping, because salvation comes from the Jews. 23 Yet the time is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit[h] and truth. Indeed, the Father is looking for people like that to worship him. 24 God is spirit,[i] and those who worship him must worship in spirit[j] and truth.”
25 The woman told him, “I know that the Anointed One[k] is coming, who is being called ‘the Messiah’.[l] When that person comes, he will explain everything.”
26 “I AM,” Jesus replied, “the one who is speaking to you.”
27 At this point his disciples arrived, and they were astonished that he was talking to a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want from her?”[m] or, “Why are you talking to her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to town. She told people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done! Could he possibly be the Messiah?”[n] 30 The people[o] left the town and started on their way to him.
31 Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi,[p] have something to eat.”
32 But he told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one has brought him anything to eat, have they?”
34 Jesus told them, “My food is doing the will of the one who sent me and completing his work. 35 You say, don’t you, ‘In four more months the harvest will begin?’ Look, I tell you, open your eyes and observe that the fields are ready[q] for harvesting now! 36 The one who harvests is already receiving his wages and gathering a crop for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who harvests may rejoice together. 37 In this respect the saying is true: ‘One person sows, and another person harvests.’[r] 38 I have sent you to harvest what you have not worked for. Others have worked, and you have adopted their work as your own.”
39 Now many of the Samaritans of that town believed in Jesus[s] because the woman had testified, “He told me everything I’ve ever done.”
40 So when the Samaritans came to Jesus,[t] they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there for two days. 41 And many more believed because of what he said. 42 They kept telling the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, because now we have heard him ourselves, and we know that he really is the Savior of the world.”
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