The divine is in the detail

Luke 22;10  He replied, "As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters.

The story of Holy Week is so familiar to us that we can struggle to see anything new in it but today it was as though this verse jumped off the page at me and begged me to look again.

I suddenly saw that the man carrying the water was a whole story in himself.  I knew that men didn't carry water in Bible times.  So who was he and why was he mentioned in the story?  Nothing in the Bible is there by accident, or as a 'filler' .  It set my imagination whirring.

The custom of carrying water in the Holy Land is ancient. However, it was and is the woman’s job to go to the well or spring with a pitcher and carry water to [her] home. When the Gibeonites deceived Joshua (9:3-27), he judged them and made them servants to chop wood and carry water. This punishment may seem mild to us, but how humiliating it was to a man—carrying water in public—a woman’s job! This helps us to better understand how easy it was for the disciples to identify the man carrying the water pot when Jesus sought an upper room [in which] to eat the Passover. It was not a question of seeking one man out of many carrying a water pot—this man would stick out above all others, in that he alone would be carrying one . . . A man may carry a water skin, but seldom does one carry a water pot (Boyd 1991, 122).

So why might a man in those times be seen out in the middle of the day carrying water through the streets?  Presumably this was a man who did not have a wife.  Or perhaps his wife was sick and not able to get water.  Perhaps he had never married through circumstance ( unacceptable in those days) was a widower ( suffering the pain of loss ) was gay ( not married by choice) was ' unmarriageable' ( suffering from some disease or disability which made him undesirable).  We don't know.  But we can surmise that the very fact that this chap was carrying water through the streets meant that he was unusual - and not in a good way in the society of that time.  This man goes into a house which is not his own - so perhaps he is a servant carrying water to the house in readiness for the passover meal.   Interestingly in the New Testament the times that male servants are mentioned is in connection with the Romans.  The centurion asks for prayer for his male servant.  So perhaps the owner of the room in a Roman.  It's all very intriguing isnt it?

So why is it important? Well, I think its just another tiny tantalising insight into the nature and character of God.  Jesus clearly knew where the last supper was going to take place.  He could have just told the disciples the address.... but instead He gives them a sign. And there has to be significance in the sign itself.  The man with the water.  Jesus Himself is the man with the water of life.  Jesus is about to be rejected by the religious and political rulers of His day ; possibly this water carrier was a symbol of religious and social rejection.  Jesus was a servant. Maybe this man was too. And lastly Jesus shows the way - this servant was a signpost for the disciples. 

What I love about this tiny detail of the story is that it gives this faceless, nameless man a central place in the unfolding events of Holy Week.  However difficult and painful his life had been to bring him to the place of carrying water through the streets of Jerusalem, he was picked out by Jesus as someone significant and necessary.  How many of us are humbly trudging the dusty road burdened by our heavy loads thinking that God doesn't see us, has no purpose for us and couldn't possibly ever really use us?  Mothers carrying the burden of caring for tiny kids.  Devoted children carrying elderly and frail parents.  Employees working hard for little appreciation and less pay.  Creatives dreaming marvellous and inventive dreams in hidden corners.  Ordinary, average people leading unremarkable lives.   But God....

But God knows us, sees us and can use our everyday, mundane, ordinary lives to help tell the story of redemption He is working out on the earth today.   As long as our pots are filled with living water who know what He can do with them and with us?