March 15, 2020
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
John 4:5-30, 40-41
We are thirsty creatures. At first our thirst
is for milk and water. As we develop, and that thirst is quenched, we begin to
sense a deeper thirst, a longing within us that aches to be filled. Often, we
don’t understand what it is that we are really thirsty for. And so we try to
quench that thirst with things that may work for a time, but which generally
increase our thirst in the long run.
In our society we offer an amazing array of
drinks loaded with caffeine, alcohol, carbonation, and sugar. Yet these drinks
actually reduce the net fluids in our bodies. Bottled water sells amazingly
well, especially considering most of it is filtered tap water; but all the
plastic bottles take energy to make, and energy to dispose of or recycle, and
they pollute and add to our carbon footprint. And none of it has any lasting
power to satisfy us.
There are so many other ways in which we try to
fill the void, or to distract ourselves from the thirst we feel. Whether we
look to books, film, television, or video games; sporting events, concerts, or
Disney vacations; we may feel good for a time, but the thirst returns.
Our parents and grandparents were thirsty too.
And they sought out ways to quench that thirst. They ventured into buildings
with crosses on the roof, stars or crescents on the walls, and incense,
candles, and Hebrew, Arabic, German, or Latin inside. They tried to drink from
the deep waters of tradition, to sit by the well and hear the stories and sing
the songs. And they made offerings and said prayers in order to bless the wells
and make the waters sweet and healing and powerful. And for a time their thirst
was satisfied.
We too have sought out the wells that will
quench our thirst. We have gathered by candlelight on Christmas Eve, marked our
foreheads with ashes, and listened as the choir sang of hope and joy. We have shared
tacos and bunches of lunches, and talked over meals in Fellowship Hall. We have
celebrated lives that have ended and lives just beginning. We sometimes get a
taste of that living water. And it is refreshing beyond our imagining. Like a
drink from Jacob’s well in the desert of Samaria, it cools us. Like an
overflowing table, it nourishes us. We have tasted that living water, yet we
still thirst. I know I don’t drink from the holy source every day, no matter
how hard I try, and the water flows away.
One of my favorite musicians, David Wilcox,
wrote a song that talks about the cup inside us that holds love. “There’s a
break in the cup,”[1] he
writes. No matter how much we try to fill our cups, or to fill the cups of
others, “that little break’ll let it run right out.” And so “we must go to the
waterfall.” We must continually seek out the source that never runs dry.
One of the most amazing things about the living
water is that there are many ways to find it. You may find one source and I may
find another. There are many wells, many sources for that which will sustain
and nourish us at the deepest level. However, one thing I have observed is that
we, as a culture, have a short attention span when it comes to our faith.
We spend a lot of time and energy moving from
well to well because we feel the waters are too stale to satisfy our thirst. We
dig new wells, or seek out the latest fashion, or travel to distant lands which
feel exotic and exciting, but rarely do we remain long enough to drink deeply
from any well. A wise person once said, “If the water is sixty feet
underground, you won’t reach it by digging six ten-foot wells.” There are some
of us who doubt that there is water in the depths at all. Some dig into the
earth until they are sore and discouraged, sipping frantically at any bit of
moisture they find, then assume that there is no more water to be found at that
well and run off to dig somewhere else. The water is often deep underground, my
friends, and it takes perseverance to find it.
We may also make things more difficult for
ourselves if we spend a lot of time digging alone. The well must often be deep,
and if we have others with whom to share the labor, our burden is lighter. When
we are drawn to the well, we find that there are others there who are also
thirsty. The living waters of spirit, hope, and meaning not only sustain us as
individuals; coming to the well is a communal experience. The church is our
“village well.” We come not only for the water but for the company. My wife has
a wall-hanging called “Women at the Well.” On it is written this story:
Told
that most North American women pipe water into their homes, a Nigerian woman
grew somber. “How do the women speak to one another? If I didn’t talk with the
women at the village well, I wouldn’t know about their lives.”
It helps to meet with others who share our
journey, who thirst for the same water that we seek. Together we may find what
none of us could find alone. We can be a check on one another, steering each
other away from drinks that fill us up but don’t quench our thirst. We can
celebrate alone when we find the water, and we can even splash and dance
around. But my children will tell you, it is much more fun to splash others
with the water, I mean to have others to splash with!
And so, this woman found Jesus at the well.
Jesus shows up in a lot of unexpected places, and there he was clearly in a
place where one would not expect to find a Jew. “Jews do not share things in
common with Samaritans.” The Jews and the Samaritans have shared ancestors,
like Jacob, but they are estranged. There are many different, complicated
reasons for it, but suffice it to say, there were long-standing hostilities
between them.
The woman is also unexpectedly there. She
picked an unusual time of day to visit – at noon when no one else is around.
The other women would have visited during the cooler hours of the morning or
evening. Perhaps she has reason to want to be alone, as we discern from the
discussion about her husbands. She has a questionable past, and the other women
may have been cruel toward her. Additionally, there were rules about how men
and women should interact. The two strangers should not have been alone, and
certainly they should not be talking with one another. And yet, this
conversation is the longest one-on-one Jesus has with anyone.
What do they talk about? Jesus talks about the
basic things of life: water and bread, salt and light. He has wandered in the
desert, and he knows what it feels like to hunger and thirst, and what it means
to resist temptation. He has felt pain, and he knows what it is like to be
betrayed. Now, tired and thirsty, Jesus talks about water. But Jesus takes this
simple, every-day, ordinary element and uses it to reach into that longing
within her. He teaches her about “living water.”
At first, she thinks in concrete terms: how
heavy that clay jar is each day on her way home. But she quickly grasps that
he’s talking about something even more central to her well-being and more
necessary for her life than water itself. The living water of which Jesus
speaks will satisfy the deepest longings of her soul. She has a thirst that she
had not understood before, a thirst for love and grace and acceptance. Jesus
knows about her past, yet he does not scorn her or turn away. He accepts her,
just as she is, and offers her “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Now, in this moment, when the water floods
through her, she begins to recognize who he is. And then he invites her to go
deeper. Jesus, the Jewish man, and the Samaritan woman talk theology. She asks
him about a question that divides the Jews and Samaritans: where is the proper
place to worship God? And Jesus gives her much more than the answer she’s
looking for.
“The hour is coming,” Jesus says, “and is now
here – when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will
not matter.” What matters is who you are and the way you live. You must engage
your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people God is looking
for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before God in their worship.
Most of us already know that God accepts us and
loves us and showers us with grace, no matter who we are or where we are on
life’s journey. We have been blessed by our encounter with God through this
congregation. Worshiping God together, simply and honestly, as our true selves,
can transform our lives just as surely as meeting Jesus transformed the life of
that solitary woman by the well. But we must be willing to drink the water from
the well.
When a person is not ready to take a close look
at themselves, they will avoid the well at all costs. We all know people who do
this. Jesus knows the woman at the well in all her human frailty. Somehow she
is able to put aside her shame and allow him to love her just as she is. Many
of us are not ready, not yet. We dabble in the shallows of spiritual life,
sometimes for our entire lives. Perhaps we know that venturing into the deep
waters will expose our own shame, our fears, mistakes, weaknesses, and
insecurities. Deep water can be dangerous.
But there he sits. Jesus says to us “Give me a
drink.” Will you come to the well with me? Will you dare to ask for living
water? This water that Jesus offers will spring up into eternal life for all
who drink, and share. Amen.
[1] David
Wilcox, “Break in the Cup” on Big Horizon, 1994.
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