3rd Sunday in Lent

Rev Indrea Alexander 

Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

A few years ago I had the opportunity to go on retreat for a week at the Taize community in France.

Completely unexpectedly, one of the most significant things I experienced there was a deep thankfulness for water. Temperatures soared to record levels, and it was 46.3 degrees at 2pm one afternoon.

I had gone to Taize anticipating a time of deep spiritual refreshment. But the heat overwhelmed me. I sat in the vast chapel with 1,200 other pilgrims aware of the sweat running down my back. I felt a bit cheated not to experience a great spiritual high in that very special place of prayer, teaching and music, but it still proved to be a peaceful, memorable time.

Everything at Taize was simple. Our meals were simple, our accommodation was simple, we drank from a simple bowl and ate our simple meals from a slightly larger bowl. Our only cutlery was a spoon. I remember cupping my hands around my drinking bowl of water, deeply aware of that water as a life-giving blessing. And in Taize’s grounds stood drinking-water taps that gushed gloriously when we sought refreshment. We gathered around them to fill drink bottles. 

Another place of gathering was doing the dishes. The dishes were washed in enormous vats of hot soapy water, then disinfected in similar sized vats of cold water. That was my happy place. Plunging  deep into refreshing cold water to gather plates to place in drainage racks. Around me the pilgrim team spoke myriad languages, and we sang hymns together as we worked, each in our own language. Community around the vats. 

In many countries women gather at rivers to wash their clothes, or at watering holes, wells and pumps to carry water home, just as they did in Jesus’ day. Those gathering places provide much more than water. They provide the news of the day, the latest gossip, a chance for women to share ideas and concerns. 

In today’s gospel reading Jesus pauses at a well in the middle of the day. It is not the usual time of day for women to come and draw water. It is far too hot. But a woman comes, possibly a bit of an outcast, and the scene is set for a profound interaction between the two. 

Jesus speaks to her, breaking taboos of gender, race and faith. For the woman is a Samaritan. A people spurned by Jews. Samaritans shared a common Hebrew heritage, but had mingled with invaders and had developed different religious practices. Fastidious Jews wouldn’t even go through Samaria, but skirted the region, adding great distances to their travels. But Jesus and his disciples were wandering through, and the disciples had even gone to buy food in the Samaritan village. And now Jesus speaks to the woman.

“Give me a drink of water.” She is surprised. Jews will not use the same cups and bowls as a Samaritan. “But you are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan.” And Jesus, having hooked her into conversation, says: if you only knew what God gives and who it is you’re speaking to, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman, prosaically, points out that Jesus doesn’t seem to have a bucket.

He replies in those wonderful words of promise, “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.” Unlike some who met Jesus but never understood him, the Samaritan woman slowly moves from unbelief, to curiosity, to tentative belief—”he couldn’t be the Messiah, could he?”
She hurries home as an evangelist—a carrier of good news. “Come and see,” she says to her neighbours. The same invitation Jesus gave to his first disciples (John 1:39). Come and see. People believed in Jesus because of what she told them, and others because they did “come and see”. They told the woman “We believe now, not because of what you said, but because we ourselves have heard him, and we know that he really is the Saviour of the world.”

Jesus is saviour of the world, and in the dry climate of Palestine, water is an obvious symbol of     salvation. Drink of this water, and live. Jesus gives life and can quench the thirst no earthly thing can satisfy. Some people seek to quench their deep thirst with poor substitutes—increasing quantities of alcohol, drugs, food, money, sex, clothing, possessions, cars, jobs, relationships... There is an underlying assumption that if something is good, more is better. More food, more so-called retail therapy, more climbing up corporate ladders, but none of it can quench that seemingly unquenchable thirst.

Jesus, however, says, “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.” Christians are meant to know that. And we are meant to share it.  When we give people the chance to meet Jesus, they no longer have to rely on what we or others tell them, they believe because they have met him for themselves. They welcome him as saviour, and are able to worship in spirit and in truth. The old words of scripture and the structure and traditions of worship can come alive with meaning.  
We are meant to be sharing the water of life. But perhaps you are thirsting too.

In today’s Old Testament reading we hear that although the Israelites are journeying faithfully as God commands, they come to a place with no water. Sometimes even when we have sought to be faithful, we find ourselves parched, our spirit shrivelling, and the memory of spiritual refreshment dimming into the past. Where is God now? How can we be sure God is with us if we can’t find the water?
One writer (Frederick Niedner) describes the Israelites in the desert like this: “The quarrelsome wilderness generation makes an assumption that seems quite natural and universal. When they have what they need and want, they believe God is with them. In times of hunger, thirst, and affliction, they deem themselves abandoned or betrayed. Worse, they wonder if God has ever traveled with them” ( FOTW Lent p31-32)

Our faith, however, cannot be ruled by our doubts or feelings. Sometimes we simply have to trust, trust that God is present even when the sense of God’s absence may be overwhelming. It is said that few people have known the thirst of God’s absence more profoundly than Mother Teresa. Her private writings tell of a long, terrible sense of abandonment… “Even in such darkness, however, that tiny, wizened woman of God clung to the belief that she bore in her body and soul “the love of an infinite thirsty God,” and that her labors on behalf of Calcutta’s hopeless ones helped to satiate the burning thirst of Jesus on the cross.” (FOTW Lent p33)
Let’s pause for a moment and think of a time when we have been in a spiritual desert.

Maybe that time is now. What does it feel like to be spiritually parched?

Jesus promises life-giving water. Let’s claim it in prayer.
Life-giving God, gently rain on the parched places in our lives. Soak us in your love.

Where our hearts have become hard, may your Holy Spirit seep into even the smallest cracks.

Trickle into every part of our lives and become a spring of life-giving water welling up within us.

Water into life the good seeds scattered in our lives.
Let us flourish in our eternal relationship with you,
and may the blessing we receive overflow to those around us,
we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.
  
Reference:  Feasting on the Word: Lenten Companion.