February 24, 2008 Third Sunday of Lent. To the Thirsty. Isaiah 55:1-5 Romans 5:1-3 John 4:5-42

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1 February 24, 2008 Third Sunday of Lent To the Thirsty Isaiah 55:1-5 Romans 5:1-3 John 4:5-42 The woman said to Jesus, Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty. John 4: 15 My paternal grandmother, Mabel Williams Forester, was born January 1, 1900 so it was always a cinch to remember her birthday. In most every respect she was a woman of her time. When she died in 1981 she d seen conflicts in Vietnam, Korea, and two World Wars and sent a son off to fight in the second one. She managed her household with an austerity that would have made even my Scottish ancestors look like spend thrifts. Somehow even through the Great Depression she was able to feed a husband and two ravenous teenagers and keep the home they owned for 60 years near the corner of Parkway and Union in Memphis. My grandfather was a CPA who had his own accounting practice for most of his life. But in the 1930 s there were no clients -- so he took the only work he could find, at the Tennessee Brewing Company. On those occasions when the company couldn t pay the staff in cash they would give my grandfather and the other employees some of the beer they made. My teetotaling temperance-minded grandmother would promptly dump the stuff down the sink which must have been hard to watch. Memphis has some wicked hot summers. Even into her later years she allowed herself few luxuries with one exception: Coca-Cola. She always kept some cold in the frig. At the end of the hot, dusty drive up from Atlanta, we could be certain that there would be cold bottles of Coke waiting for us. My grandmother never drove a car; she never learned. When I was old enough it became my job to drive her to the grocery store. This was a big event. She was meticulously prepared with list and coupons. Along about that same time Coke introduced some new flavors: Sprite, Fresca, Tab. I remember the torment it was for my grandmother to make the decision: Which to buy? To this day when I walk down the soft drink aisle at Publix and see all those sizes and varieties of soda I wonder: What in the world would my grandmother think of this? When I m thirsty I can buy Coke in 8 ounce glass bottles or 16 ounce cans, 67 ounce two liter plastic bottles or special, Super Bowl commemorative cans. I can get Diet Coke, Cherry Diet

2 2 Coke, Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke, or Caffeine-free Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke Zero Free, or something like that. There s soda water, mineral water, tonic water, flavored water, vitamin water, sports water, artesian springs water, mountain springs, water imported from Poland, France, Italy, Japan and Maine, fizzy and not so fizzy. There s grape juice, apple juice, orange juice, raspberry cranapple juice and a few other combinations you re better off not knowing, but they taste good. Beer and wine in glorious variety and coffee options, ah If I were to name those you would probably all jump up and run over to Starbucks. So let s just agree there are many, and they are delicious! It s a very, very long way from 2 strangers and one bucket beside a well in a remote part of Samaria. Their talk began with water and thirst. It was noon beside an ancient well along a dry, dusty desert road. Don t miss the detail. Jesus stopped to rest at the well because he was tired. Imagine that: the Word of God, One-through-whom-all-things-came-into-being and Withouthim-not-one-thing-was-made got hot, tired and thirsty. That s incarnation: God-with-us. She was as parched too, thirsty but in a different way. She d come out to the well at noon by herself for some reason, probably because she wasn t welcome in the company of women who came in early morning. She was thirsty for God and burning with questions that no one would answer. Women aren t supposed to be concerned with such things. How many Christian women today have heard that same message? You can t go there! Does it surprise you that today in the majority of Christian churches women cannot be ordained or serve in areas of major leadership. It s very hard to understand that, when you look at Jesus. I think it was Gandhi who asked, Why is it that Christians are so unlike your Christ? If you ve ever studied this passage or even heard a sermon you know that all odds were against this conversation ever taking place. It could only have been conceived in the mind of God. It could never have happened by chance. For one thing, Jews almost never traveled through Samaria. To the Jews Samaria was a bad neighborhood. One commentator noted there was intense historical animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews. Fact is, they hated each other. Like the modern day residents of the Middle East, they were distant relatives, which of course made things worse. Any ordinary rabbi would have gone miles out of his way to avoid an encounter with a Samaritan. But Jesus was no ordinary rabbi. The story says that the disciples came back and were astonished to see him talking to a woman. I ll bet they were. While sexism is a huge problem for us and a painful one, in Jesus day Jewish leaders simply didn t talk to women. A rabbi wouldn t even acknowledge his own wife in a public place. There was a prayer that many pious Jewish males in Jesus day would say every day: Thank you God that I am not a woman or a gentile or a sinner. A well-respected

3 3 group of Pharisees known as "the bruised and bleeding ones" came to be called that because they closed their eyes when they saw a woman coming down the street, and kept them closed, even if that meant walking into walls or falling into ditches. I m serious. They did. Yet Jesus talks to the woman at the well longer than he does to anyone else in all the Gospels-- longer than he talks to any of his disciples, longer than he talks to any of his accusers, longer than he talks to anyone of his own family. She is the first person he tells that he is the Messiah. When she goes back as his messenger to her village, she becomes his very first apostle. Please, Never let me forget how far outside acceptable social conventions Jesus stood. Never let me forget how much he was willing to risk to value and include people that others considered valueless. Never let me forget that -- when Christians start judging others as adequate or inadequate to serve Christ in the church, Never let me forget when we presume to tell Jesus whom he may welcome into his circle and whom he should exclude, Please, please, Never, never let me forget about his sweeping acceptance, and how he turned the thinking of his day on its ear. Very quickly their talk turns from buckets and wells to living water whatever in the world that means? Living water? What is this living water? Isn't all water living? Not really. All of us have seen the opposite at some time or another. Sam Candler, Dean of St. Philip s Episcopal Cathedral, says that: The opposite of living water is dead water. Some water is absolutely dead. Some water is dead, and yet folks continue to drink it. Dead water is the same old television programs every night. Dead water is the same old argument you get into every day. Dead water is the bad habit we persist in nourishing. It started small but now Dead water is that water you give for yourself that still leaves you dry and thirsty and crying out for more. i

4 4 Jesus offers living water. It s hard to tell here precisely what Jesus means by living water. But if you turn over to chapter seven John spells it out plainly: Jesus cried out, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, 'Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water.' " Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive. ii Jesus is offering us his Spirit that flows through a believer and quenches the longing, the spiritual thirst we all know so well. Author Jim Garner wrote, To receive this living water we don t have to drag our buckets to the well and drag them home. We just need to ask and it rains all over us. iii How about you? Are you thirsty? Can you let his living water get all over you? Can it quench your thirst? Can you drop all the burdens and all the problems you brought in here today at the feet of Jesus and run, not walk but run, back to your home or your office or your school with the news that you have found someone who knows everything you have ever done and loves you anyway? Can he be the Savior? Yeah! You better believe he can! They say that when Fanny Brice, the wonderful comedienne, was first offered a job from Florenz Ziegfeld, she accepted the offer graciously, quietly with much emotion. She thanked Mr. Zeigfeld, his secretary and his doorman very politely as she left the building. As soon as she was outside, she raced the five blocks down the street to the theater where she would be performing. All afternoon, she stood in front of the Broadway theater and grabbed people off the sidewalk to tell them that she would soon be working there. Wouldn't it be great to leave church this morning with that kind of refreshing enthusiasm to leave your worries, your dead water behind the way this woman left her water jar. Wouldn t it be great to go out to tell the whole world: Here is the living water to quench your spirit! It was a God-moment, that meeting at the well, a thirst-quenching moment, as Barbara Brown Taylor noted:

5 One bright moment in time, when all the rules, taboos and history that separate them fall forgotten to the ground. iv 5 Remarkably, the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of the Way contains this counsel of counsel: He doesn't just look at the surface; He blows away the dust and drinks the water. Blow away the dust, now come to the living water. v Jesus is the Living Water, the one who crosses all boundaries, breaks all rules, drops all disguises--speaking to you like someone you have known all your life, like a spring that never stops running, and a river that never runs dry. Please join me as we pray. Lord, we do thank you for the gift that you have given to us in Jesus Christ. I pray for each one of us that you would give us a clearer glimpse of who you are, a deeper understanding of our need and how you want to satisfy every thirst, our deepest need. Fill us, we pray, with your living water, until we overflow with your love and help. Amen Susan F. DeWyngaert, D.Min. First Presbyterian Church Sarasota, Florida i Samuel G. Candler, Give Me a Drink, Day 1, February ii John 7:37-39 iii Jim Garner by John Buchanan, Astonished, Voices of Faith, March 6, 2006, iv Barbara Brown Taylor, Face to Face with God, Christian Century, February 28, v Tao Te Ching, chapter 38.