Lent III

Reformation, Media

Larry V. Smoose

We’re thirsty!  What parent on a long trip has not heard that from their kids.  So you reach in the cooler for a soda, or bottle of water, or you pour a cup of water from the gallon thermos you’re carrying, or you watch for the next exit or rest stop.  We’re thirsty!  But what if there is no rest stop.   I remember talking with Lee Berry when I was in Yellowknife this past September.  Most of the time you fly into Yellowknife, but there are times when you want to drive.  Lee said that they always take at least a couple of 5 gallon cans of gas with them, and survival gear, because there are literally no gas stations or rest stops for 500 miles.  You better be prepared. 

And when you’re traveling in a desert, with only occasional rest stops, you better know how to find those with water!  What’s Moses thinking about anyway, walking with a whole tribe of people in the desert – doesn’t he know where the waterholes are?   In a recent Man vs. the Wild on the Discovery channel program, Bear Grylls a former British special forces soldier was dropped off in the desert and had to find his way to civilization.   Some of the desert people, Berber’s,  helped to teach him survival techniques, and how to find the precious gift of water, and what a person can do in an emergency.   When you’re traveling in a desert, in the searing heat and drying winds, you better know how to find water.  So how does Moses, with an entire nation depending on him, end up camping where there is no water?  No wonder the people are complaining.   We’re thirsty! 

Of course there are all kinds of deserts and all kinds of thirsts.  When Jesus meets the

woman at the well in Sychar, he realizes that she has a thirst that water from the well can’t quench.  It is, after all mid-day.  No one would walk the distance from the town to the well in the middle of the day in that heat unless there was a pretty good reason.  The other women had already been here in the early morning, when it is cooler, to get water for the day.  So when Jesus suggests that he could give her “living water,” she doesn’t pick up on it at first – and thinks he means some nice, cool flowing water, rather than this stagnant well water.   

But when Jesus begins to go into her personal life, and seems to know all about her – the fact that she had five husbands and the man she is now with is not her husband, she begins to realize that Jesus knows about the deeper thirst in her life and somehow this living water can quench that thirst. 

Now it seems possible to me that this woman had been searching to quench that thirst in some of the places Pastor Schade talked about the last couple of  weeks.  She must have been physically attractive, after all she had had five husbands – worked out, watched her diet, tried to be a good wife -- but she was still thirsty for a good relationship.  And apparently she had at least the basic necessities of life – she was well dressed, had a nice home --  but the fact that she was not socializing in the morning with the other women seems to indicate that she had a thirst for acceptance,  She was somewhat of an outcast, perhaps because of all the men she had been married to, and longed for social acceptance.

There are all kinds of deserts and all kinds of thirsts.  Tonight on the Academy Awards, a

young Iranian woman will be there hoping to win an Oscar for best animated picture.  She wrote Persepolis, a story about herself, about her thirst for understanding of who she is as an Iranian woman.  It is the story of her life – for all the world to see – so that her humanity and the humanity of all Iranian women, might be understood and accepted.  

Brittany Spears has been in the news a lot lately, and as I have seen the destructive behavior and the cries of help, I see a person thirsting for an identity, thirsting for a life that is not always in public view and placed under a microscope or spewed out in tabloids for the prurient delight of celebrity vultures who feast on the struggles and problems of the famous. 

I asked Linda about these thirsts in life such as love, relationships and acceptance and she told me a story about Bill, a resident of Elwyn who died a few years ago.  On his wheelchair tray, Bill always had pictures of his parents who had died several years earlier.  He would always point toward the pictures, and sometimes Linda would put a finger to Bill’s lips and he would kiss her finger and she would then touch the pictures, because Bill could not do that himself.  And she would say to him, Bill your parents are in heaven, and they are waiting for you and watching over you.  Linda always talks about heaven.  She thought Bill was able to have some idea of what heaven was and so she said, “Bill, what will heaven mean to you?”  And he said, “No more wheelchairs.  No more sadness.”  Bill was thirsty for the freedom of mobility and for the love of his family.

We all have times when we are in the desert of life, when we are thirsty and  can’t find

water.  When Jesus was in the desert, the devil tempted him to take advantage of his relationship with God – If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.  Jesus wouldn’t put God to the test.   But he remembered how God heard the cries of the Hebrew people to Moses when they were in the desert.  And Moses was told to go to a nearby rock – touch it with his staff, and God (turn on water) brought water out of a Rock to quench their thirst.

So when Jesus meets this woman at the well of Sychar, and sees that her thirst is far deeper than any water from that well could quench, he says to her, “If you knew who it was who was talking to you and asked him, he would give you living water.”  At first she was confused.  But by his willingness to talk to her, and his unwillingness to condemn her Jesus was already breaking down barriers between male and female, Jew and Gentile;  Jesus would disregard established customs in favor of contact with people who thirsted for assurance that God has not forsaken them.

In Jesus, we see the Rock of salvation from which flows this living water.  The woman of Sychar realized that she was in the presence of the one who was the Messiah, she had a sip of that water and had to tell others in town – even those who might have avoided her.  Last week we saw that Nicodemus had a taste of that living water and learned what it meant to be born again.  For all who thirst, the invitation is given, come all ye who thirst, come to the water and drink, without paying for it. 

It does not matter if you are a celebrity or an ordinary citizen; Iranian woman or Jewish fisherman, if you’ve been married five times or never married at all, it does not matter if you are a teenager or a great-grandmother the price is the same – free;  the gift is the same, living water to quench your thirst;  the giver is the same, the Lord God, the almighty, who loves all of his children and in the deserts of life will not forsake them. 

And this God, who came to us in the human form of Jesus, established oases of life, oases of acceptance, artesian wells of love and caring.  These magical places in the deserts of life are built on the rock of Christ and out of them flows this living water.  They are called churches – come all you who thirst, come to the water and drink.  And many have, their stories fill the Bible and fill the annals of human history. 

I read some stories in our Lenten devotions about those from the church who took some of that water and offered sips to others – Katie Ward convinced some friends to invite another girl who was going to be excluded from a sleepover;  Jeanne Brennan offered a room to people with no place to go and visited others in the desert of prison;  Alina Hess was reminded that God wants us to be friends with everyone;  Sue and Bill Bianco shared their gratitude for the help they have received going through their desert; Dick Hughey shared a story of the gift of Care; I see that living water served generously at the Rejoicing Spirits service.  Living water offered in ordinary events, but giving life to those who receive it.  That’s what Jesus offered to the woman of Sychar.  That’s what we offer.

When you’re traveling in the desert of life, you better know where to find water.  I’m no Bear Grylls, but I know where to find the living water  that allows you to survive the deserts of life.  It comes  from the Rock of Christ our Lord.    Amen.