"Living Water"
February 24, 2008: Third Sunday in Lent, Year A
The Rev. Caroline K. Murphy, interim senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.UnitedChurchontheGreen.org
Scripture:
"May God take these words and make from them a holy word for us today."
Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
Narrator: Jesus 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:
Jesus: Give me a drink.
Narrator: (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
Woman: How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? Narrator: (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus: 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."
Woman: 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: 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."
Woman: Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
Jesus: Go, call your husband, and come back.
Woman: I have no husband.
Jesus: 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!"
Woman: Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.
Jesus: Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father 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 Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
Woman: I know that Messiah is coming.
Narrator: (who is called Christ.)
Woman: When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.
Jesus: I am he, the one who is speaking to you.
Narrator: 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,
Woman: Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?
Narrator: Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony,
Woman: He told me everything I have ever done.
Narrator:
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."
"Friends, God is still
speaking to the world. May our hearts be open to listen and respond.
Amen."
Sermon / Story (from the
perspective of the woman at the well)
It was hot. The mid-day
sun was beating down relentlessly — not a stick of shade in sight.
I could hardly wait to get to the well and take that first sip of cool,
refreshing water. Oh, I know — I could have come in the coolness
of the early morning, with the rest of the women and girls. But
. . . well, they were always gossiping — and I knew full well that
often enough I was the subject of their gossip. No, better to
come on my own, in the middle of the day, even if that did mean bearing
the heat of the noonday sun. This way, I could at least have my
peace and quiet, and perhaps a shred of dignity to go with it.
But on this particular day,
as I approached the well, I saw someone already sitting there: a young
man! Now I know what you're thinking: man and woman meet at
the well, the wedding bells start ringing, the couple lives happily
ever after. I know all the old stories: how Rebekah became engaged
to Isaac at this well (Genesis 24:10-61), and then how Rachel and Jacob
fell in love here (Genesis 29:1-12). But, believe me, I was no
blushing young maiden — no Rachel or Rebekah. "Used goods"
is what those self-righteous women who came to the well first thing
in the morning called me.
And anyway, as I got closer
I realized that this man wasn't even a Samaritan. He was Jewish
and, from the looks of him, a holy man — probably one of those holy
men who were so intent on their maintaining their purity that they would
close their eyes if they saw a woman coming, even if that meant running
straight into a wall and breaking their nose. "There goes another
of those bruised and bleeding holy men," some of us would say to each
other.1
So there we were: a Jewish
holy man and a Samaritan "fallen" woman. Clearly there could
be nothing but hostility and distance between us. Fine.
He could close his eyes at me, and I would make sure not to look at
him either. I would simply draw some water, fill my bucket, and
be on my way. But as I began to lower my bucket into the well,
he looked right at me and spoke to me. "Give me a drink,"
he said. It was the most straightforward, the most natural request
in the world. I could tell that he was every bit as hot and thirsty
as I was. It looked as if he had been walking a long way: there
was sweat on his brow, and a fine layer of dust all over his sandals
and clothing. Well, at least he had the good sense to ask for
a drink of water. Maybe he wasn't the most insufferable kind
of holy man after all.
In fact, there was something
genuine about this person. As our eyes met for an instant, I had
a sense of shared humanity, of shared thirst. It even crossed
my mind, fleetingly, that perhaps he understood something not only about
the thirst that came from the hot mid-day sun but about the deeper thirst
— you know, the kind of thirst that can keep you awake at night.
A thirst for — I don't know — joy or hope, or for love that lasts,
or for a sense of meaning and purpose in life. This man's simple
request for a drink of water and his direct gaze seemed to me in that
moment like a bridge thrown across the abyss that separated me from
him, from others — from myself, even.
But then I brought myself up
short. Surely the divide between the two of us was huge!
And I was used to getting along by relying on myself, by keeping others
at bay. So I turned to the man and quipped, "What are you doing,
talking to me? I didn't think you Jewish holy men ever had anything
to do with us Samaritans — let alone with Samaritan women."2
But this man would not be put
off quite so easily. Maybe he had seen more in my eyes than I
had intended to show, because before long he was talking about the very
kind of deeper thirst that I had just been thinking about myself.
And then he began to talk about the living waters he could offer me
to slake that thirst. Living waters. There was something
about the way he said those words that made me begin to picture a bubbling
spring of fresh water — joyful, sacred, and pure. A fragment
from one of the psalms came to mind: "As the deer longs for flowing
streams, so longs my soul for you, O God" (Ps. 42:1). Who
was this person who could speak so compellingly about my deep
thirst, and about the living waters that could quench it?
It wasn't long before my
practical voice, the one born of rough-and-tumble life experience, took
over again. "Look, mister," I heard myself saying, "this
is a deep well, and you don't even have a bucket. Where do you
think you're going to get this living water?"
And so it went, back and forth
between us, a sparring match in which neither one of us was willing
to let the other off the hook. I threw out every challenge I could
think of, even dredging up that bitter old argument about where God
really wants us to worship — on Mt. Gerazim, which we Samaritans knew
to be the right answer, or in Jerusalem, as the Jews claimed.
I'll never forget his answer: "It doesn't really matter where
people worship — this mountain, that city, a Gothic cathedral here,
a white-steepled meeting house there. It's not the location
that matters, but the integrity and the spirit of worship."
This man was speaking like a prophet, like someone who saw right through
to the heart of things.
He saw right through to my
heart, too. Without my ever saying a word about it, he knew my
whole sorry tale: the five husbands I had had, the relationship I was
in now that lacked any kind of real love or commitment. His eyes,
his manner, his words let me know that he saw everything: my failures,
my disappointments, and my insecurities — but also my spunkiness,
my resilience, and my questioning, thirsting spirit.
He saw who I really was.
And before our conversation had ended, he let me see who he really was,
too: not merely a Jewish holy man, nor even simply a teacher or a prophet,
but the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One who would save the whole
world. He had just finished telling me this ("I am the One,"
he had said!) when the folks who had been traveling with him showed
up, and I went on my way.
But as I slowly walked back
into town, his words still ringing in my ears, I realized that I could
not simply go back to my old life — to the old patterns of floating
from one half-hearted relationship to the next, of living on the margins
and keeping everyone at arm's length. I had to go tell people
about what had happened — about this man who had read me like a book.
I guess my own excitement must have been something like that bubbling
spring of living water for others, because people actually listened
to me, and to trust me, and even to trust this man they had never laid
eyes on in their lives. They went out to the well to meet him
and pleaded with him to come and stay in our town for a while — which
he did. Before he moved on, we had all drunk deeply of those living
waters.
I wish you all could have been there with us at Jacob's well that day; but then, as he said himself, the location isn't really what matters in the end. It's the spirit that matters; and what else but the spirit could have caused you to declare earlier this morning that God is still speaking, and that whoever you are and wherever you are on life's journey, everyone is welcome here? That's exactly how the man I met by the well made me feel that day: welcomed, understood, unconditionally loved — and transformed. I don't know how you came to be here in this place this morning — whether you are tired and thirsty; whether you have ever felt like an outcast, the way I did; whether you ever lie awake at night with a deep thirst for flowing streams. I do know that springs of living water bubble up in the most unexpected times and places, all along the journey. So let me invite you as, as Jesus invited me: Drink of this living water deeply, so that it will be become a spring of water in you, gushing up to eternal life.
1: This phrase is taken from Barbara Brown Taylor, "Face to Face with God," in The Christian Century Feb. 28, 1996.
2: This and several of the other paraphrases of dialogue are by Nathan Nettleton, www.laughingbird.net.