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You Have Nothing To Draw With

Keraza Magazine issue 41-42 October 24, 2014

The Samaritan woman described the Lord Christ as having "nothing to draw with." It is clear from her words that this puzzled her, since she knows a bucket’s necessity to all who come to draw. How can a person be refreshed without it?

The bucket is closely connected to the well. Naturally, the well would be full of water, and so the bucket would be for drawing out water, but if the well dries, it needs to be filled from an outside source by means of the bucket. Such is the case with humans who were originally created full of all the glory of the image of God, to overflow from within onto all creation, but the Fall marred the image of God in humans, inverting the situation, and making the inside full of empty wells seeking to be filled by means of the bucket. What are these wells but personal and physical shortcomings and needs that continually nag, seeking satiation. In a person’s life are many buckets that seem indispensable and vital, considered necessary for satisfying the moral and material needs. Each bucket is for a specific need: there is the psychological support bucket, the security bucket, the emotional intimacy bucket, the subsistence and physical needs bucket, etc...

The Lord Christ, being without lack or need, truly has no need for something "to draw with" (John 4:11). As for us, we can best be described as: "The well is deep" (John 4:11), and, "broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13), but God, in His love and curative Economy, wants to restore us to the image of His glory. He intentionally deprives us of the buckets by planning incidents in our lives to make "the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well" (Ecclesiastes 12:6). He "takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock and the store, the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water; the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the diviner and the elder; the captain of fifty and the honorable man, the counselor and the skillful artisan, and the expert enchanter" (Isaiah 3:1-3). In this process of taking away the stock, He seems to be bruising instead of binding, and wounding instead of healing (Job 5:18); He does not leave us until He has divested us of every bucket we depend upon, so that our seed of wheat falls to the ground and dies. When it dies, it produces much fruit, becoming of intrigue to many who ask: "Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?" (Solomon 8:5). Then the angels, to whom we have become a spectacle, answer joyfully: "This is every soul that is likened to her Bridegroom, of Whom it was said that He has ‘nothing to draw with,' so that, to her He became all in all."

Bishop Youssef
Bishop, Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States