The Rev. Robert Lundquist Lent III-A 2/27/05 St Paul’s, Ft Collins

Living Water.

Author John Sanford, in his book The Kingdom Within, tells the story of his family’s rural vacation home during his childhood. His singular memory was of the wonderful spring-fed well from which they drew sweet, cold water throughout the summers. In times of drought, and even when the neighbors’ wells ran dry, the Sanford family’s well always provided fresh clean water. Years later, Sanford returned as an adult to the summer home. The house had not been kept up and had been unused for years. The first thing for the author, though, was to check the well. The cover was removed, and the bucket lowered into … a stone-dry hole in the ground. What had happened? A geologist friend explained that a spring-fed well is supplied through tiny capillaries in the living rock that are kept open by the action re-supplying the water as it’s removed. Over time, the capillaries clog with silt as the well-water sits still. In other words, the well was kept fresh be supplying water to the thirsty, and dried up when it wasn’t being used. Counterintuitive, isn’t it? We tend to think of things being used up rather than replenished.

The Dead Sea is another example. Purported to be the saltiest body of water on earth, one can float easily without effort due to the high mineral content. And nothing grows in it. Why? Because water flows in … but there is no outlet. Evaporation is the only way out for the water, which leaves behind everything else.

The prophet Jeremiah compares water drawn from a cistern to water drawn from a stream. Such a cistern is eventually emptied through such use, but living water, flowing water, is renewed – the stream produces more. Isaiah and Ezekiel also use similar analogies.

In our reading from the Hebrew testament this morning we hear the story of the Israelites camped at Rephidim. And their legendary complaining once again reaches Moses’ ears. “You’ve brought us into the desert to DIE!”, they exclaim. “What am I to do, God?”, asked Moses. God led him out ahead of the camp to a stone. When Moses struck the Living Rock, out flowed Living Water to quench the thirst of the Israelites. Moses, in his sly humor, names the place “Massah” (literally, “to put to the test”) and “Meribah” (“to quarrel or contend”). For the people had asked, “Is the LORD among us or not?” And the Living Water had been God’s answer.

These stories from Torah and the Prophets certainly informed those first hearers and observers of Jesus’ encounter at Jacob’s well near Sychar. The well was at a busy crossroads, perhaps not unlike a truckstop diner. Everyone passed through Sychar, given that Galilee lay to the west and Bethsham to the north. And the well was a gift to the people from their ancestors, from Jacob and his sons. It held a place in their communal consciousness like the Liberty Bell resides in our own historical awareness – a gift from our forebears with great symbolic significance.

It is here that Jesus meets the Samaritan woman. Both of them are alone. For a Jew from Jerusalem, a Samaritan was unclean, ritually impure. That fact presented a barrier to relationship, or even communication. What’s more, a woman was more unclean than a man. On top of that, this woman was outcast from her own community – she was drawing water in the heat of the noonday by herself, rather than coming in the cool of the morning with the other women of the town. This fact would not have been lost on Jesus.

Remember our Gospel reading from last Sunday? It was the story of Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus. Nicodemus, a respected male in the religious hierarchy, came to Jesus in the middle of the night. In today’s Gospel, an unclean outcast woman comes to Jesus in the middle of the day, and has the longest conversation recorded in the Gospels.

Jesus is always breaking taboos, which he does again today. And I know I marvel at this unnamed woman and how “tone-deaf” she seems to be in the face of Jesus’ metaphorical allusions. She desires living water so she won’t have to walk to the well! But she thirsts. “Sir, give me this Living Water. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem shocked or offended by Jesus’ revelation that he knows she has had many husbands, the implication and the circumstance indicating that she is an indiscriminate lover. The love in Jesus’ speaking of the truth disarms and amazes her – to be known and loved so intimately melts her heart, and she becomes the first evangelist, bringing the townspeople (who had shunned her) to meet Jesus. Some say the real point of this story is to demonstrate God as the indiscriminate lover, welcoming all and turning none away, heeding neither sin nor merit in the freely-flowing Divine Love.

Our Living Water is what we have been Baptized in. It is a Sacrament, that “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” Like the bread and wine, the ring of marriage, the oil of unction, the water of baptism is the outward and visible sign of the Living Water welling up within us. As Martin Luther said each morning upon rising, “I AM BAPTIZED!” WE are baptized each moment in God’s endless supply of Living Water.

Likewise, we remember the same at the beginning of our Eucharistic Prayer, in the sursum corda: “Lift up your hearts.” “We lift them to the Lord!” Take our hearts, Lord – we surrender our very selves to You. Paul wrote to the Church in Rome, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts.” And we offer that love back to God, for blessing and for multiplication. When we horde or refuse to share that love, we dry up and thirst. Ironically, when Jesus hangs on the Cross, dying of crucifixion, what are his words? “I thirst.” And from His pierced side flows blood… and water. Living Water.

Tears are living water. Whether they be tears of frustration, anger or joy, they are living, flowing water. For many this has been a season of tears, St Paul. This season of Lent is more than liturgical this year, with the sudden loss of your Rector last December. You are a people seeking wholeness, justice, forgiveness and understanding. I invite you, I challenge you to hold and pray this image, the image of God’s love being poured unstintingly into our hearts. “Sir, give us this water that we may never be thirsty!”

Amen.

A Parish For All People!