I felt like Pierre in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, sitting at home, after the war, with a plate of potatoes before him, and feeling like it was the first time he had ever tasted their simplicity and warmth. I had bought some potatoes, fresh from the earth, washed the red soil off them, and my wife cooked them with butter. I went immediately back for seconds, but could had asked for thirds and fourths. I’m not sure what cold storage and transport does to a potato, but obviously something not good.

The people who encountered Jesus’ preaching and teaching found a similar experience. He taught not as those whose theology had come from cold storage, but with authority and vitality and freshness. And how different it tasted. They had been so used to second-hand food that had been diminished by its handlers and by its handling. But this food was fresh from the earth, and tasted like heaven.

That’s how it must have been for the Samaritan woman whom Jesus met by a well. For years she had been living on old potatoes that retained not a skerrick of taste. I dare say that she had not only got used to them, but felt her life to be like one of them. But then He opened the conversation and spoke of living water. And she took up the offer and drank from his heart, and for the first time tasted the simplicity and wonder and warmth of real life.