In many ways this seems like a simple story. It’s a familiar story, and it all feels so straightforward:

Jesus is travelling with is disciples.

He stops at a well to drink and meets a woman.

They have a conversation about living water.

Eventually she comes to believe he’s the messiah.

Straightforward. Most of us have heard it before. We know the shape of this story.

But something we might miss – or something that we might neglect – is the fact that everywhere in this story there are moments of tension. We can say there is a kind of heaviness that appears in the narrative here and there. I’d like to start out this morning by simply naming a few of tension, or places of heaviness in the story. Continue reading →