The Psalm : Psalm 95
A psalm celebrating God the creator of all things as the solid rock on which our lives should be built.
O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways." Therefore in my anger I swore, "They shall not enter my rest."
The Old Testament Lesson: Exodus17:1-7
God allows Moses to brings water from the rock to quell the people's grumbling and questioning of God's will.
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried out to the Lord, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me." The Lord said to Moses, "Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink." Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"
The Epistle Lesson: Romans 5:1-11
God's love has been poured into our very hearts, for while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
The Gospel Lesson: John 4:5-42
So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."
Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"
The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Creator neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Creator in spirit and truth, for God seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth."
The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?"
Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, 'Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world."
"Total Disclosure"
Our readings today are all about the nature of the provisional God we worship, whom scripture attests travels with us throughout our lives and provides all we need to be sustained along the way. "Water" is a key element here, and acts as the agent for the transition from bitter to sweet (a symbol of baptism), through a process of total disclosure. This remarkable journey of faith sometimes requires little more than the courage to embrace who we really are.
Remembering Biblical history is always helpful in having a deeper appreciation for the many complex layers of tradition that lead up to a particular event, or the meaning of a symbol. It is one of the reasons for always having a psalm, an Old Testament lesson, an Epistle, and a Gospel reading. It is why people trace the same paths, and return to ancient sites generation after generation throughout old and new testaments, and why so many of the miraculous things that happen there echo previous events and times. It is also why a continuing quest to know more about the Bible through a lifetime of study is so important to enriching one's faith.
For example you may recall that it was earlier in John's gospel that the very first miracle Jesus ever performed, at the beginning of his public ministry involved common water becoming wine at a wedding banquet. As a member of a community of Jews excluded from Temple worship because of their acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah, the importance of finding God in everyday things and everyday places is very essential to John as the author. It is not a coincidence that here again, at the close of Jesus' public ministry common Samaritan well water is being offered as a source of eternal life.
This is the longest conversation between Jesus and another human being recorded anywhere in the New Testament. One has to wonder why with all the great theological minds that must have surrounded him from time to time, the great need to provide instruction for those who would be left to carry on his ministry, and all the questions of life and death that he could have discoursed on, the longest running interaction of his career was between himself and a woman of questionable past about "water."
As so often happens in Bible stories we are given all kinds of details about the place and the history of the individual, but the woman herself is never even named. She could be anyone of us, and that too is intentional. But the location is very important, Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Sychar is the Greek equivalent of "Shechem", the Hebrew name of the mount on which the Samaritan temple was built. Many of you are probably familiar with "The Red Tent" and you may recall the treacherous and shameful events that took place there at Schechem, brought about by Jacob's sons in their anger over the seduction of their sister Dinah. In the history of Israel Schechem is a place of hidden shame, stained with blood, so it is the ideal location to have a questionable past revealed, and to extend the offer of sins washed away forever.
Clearly we are in Samaria, a place of deep divides, and a long history of controversy over the most sacred traditions in Israel. As a group of settlers whose history began with the Babylonian Exile in 587 BC, these people had actually been living on the land longer than many of those who by Jesus' time period were claiming to be true descendents of the Patriarchs by virtue of their occupation of the city of Jerusalem, and control of the Temple there. Jesus' favorite characters were always Samaritan, because they were expected to have no moral value or substance and they always proved those assumptions wrong. This story is no exception.
Their conversation that day beside the well said basically it was not about the "place" at all, but about the "person" who came seeking. It also held out an important reminder for all of us that we have benefited greatly from the history of what other people have done in the past, and we need to acknowledge that as we ourselves sow the seeds for future generations.
It is "four months before the harvest," and for a ritualized faith such as the Jews practiced, the readings in the Temple and synagogues would have been prescribed in preparation for Succoth. They would have been Genesis 24 (Rebecca at the well), Exodus 2 (Moses with the women at Midian at the well), Ezekiel 16 (woman with many lovers) and Deuteronomy 27 (Moses at Mt. Gerezim). All the themes contained in this one story for a group of people no longer welcome to attend such gatherings.
They meet at "noon" the hour of the crucifixion that is to come, and Jesus' first words to her are very similar to "I thirst," and his own connections with humanity.
This is a remarkable passage that reveals a great deal about Jesus, our gospel writer and his community. In it the past, present and future are fused together in a remarkably subtle way. It is as if John is saying that all that was, is and ever will be exists for this one moment in time (indeed, every moment), just as a drop of water suspended from the tip of one's finger can capture a picture of the surrounding world in it's microcosm. The story moves us beyond a single encounter to transcend and embrace all time. As this story is read, we are in the presence of Jewish history, Jesus and the woman, the crucifixion, the entire gospel and this present day... all in a single bright moment when true understanding dawns.
But most importantly this is also a story with a future brought about by a transformation every bit as miraculous as that original wedding wine. The Samaritan woman left her own "water jar", and became the vessel of living water that transformed her whole community. Her words sent the others to Jesus. Her previous moral status, once so unacceptable was no barrier to such miraculous change. When our authority
comes from God, our former status no longer matters.
Thing is, you can't contain living water (remember last weeks words to Nicodemus? - the wind blows where it wills) - and as soon as you try to put it in a bucket to take it home or save some for yourself for later, it's becomes still water; it can only live as it spills over in you.
It was Martin Buber who said "all real living is dialogue." Real interaction between human beings always requires risk taking and vulnerability on both sides. It is the key to healthy relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, people who seek true friendship, and pilgrims with God.
So what are you thirsting for today? Ask and it will be given unto you, seek and you shall find…but be careful faith will change your life.
Pastoral Prayer:
Gracious God - like a deer that longs for running streams, so our souls yearn for the love that comes from you - the love that wells up in us like streams of living water and brings life not only to us, but to all around us as well. Help us to open our lives to you - to put down our roots in your word - and to turn our hands both upward and outward that we may receive and give your blessing. Grant, O God, that we may be a people who in speaking truth do not judge those of whom and to whom we speak. Help us to reap the harvest which others have sown and to sow so that others may reap. Gracious Father and loving Mother of us all, hear our prayers for those of our brothers and sisters whose names are upon our hearts at this time - we remember them and all those who are in need around our world this day before you. Provider of holy love, thank you for the living and everlasting water you poured out for us at our baptism, and for our world through Your son Jesus. Keep us close to Him, and loyal to His leading, for we ask these things in His most holy name. Amen