"The Source" - Sermon from March 27, 2011
The Third Sunday in LentMarch 27, 2011“The Source”
Psalm 95; Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42.
All: “Now may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14 Beka:If I were called inTo construct a religionI should make use of water.Going to churchWould entail a fordingTo dry, different clothes;My liturgy would employImages of sousing,A furious devout drench,And I should raise in the eastA glass of waterWhere any-angled lightWould congregate endlessly.--Philip Larkin Amelia:A reading from the gospel of John, Chapter Four:Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, "Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John" -- although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized-- he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. 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…. Larry:The Holy Land is a wonderful place to visit, but through the centuries the actual location of many events has been lost. One of the few places everyone agrees is the actual site where a central character of the Hebrew scripture and the central figure of the New Testament both stood is Jacob’s well. It’s where Jacob met Rachel, the romance story of the Hebrew Bible. It’s where Jesus meets “the woman at the well.” We aren’t even told her name.The well is both a focal point and a symbol in these stories. Not surprising, since water is such a precious commodity in an arid land. We can relate: we’re in a drought now. I was up in Brown County last week, saw a church sign said, “Pray for rain.” We carry it in plastic bottles, get it from our taps, but this convenience is relatively recent. A few of you remember having to go out to the well at the old farm and work the pump. Historically speaking, electricity was just harnessed yesterday. What was it like to have to find and tote your water every day? Read the Bible. In the Holy Land, water is life. Towns grew up around it. Wars were fought over it. Water was the heart of civilization. Water was the heart of life. Amelia: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." Beka:Emily Dickinson wrote: “Water, is taught by thirst.” At its heart, this is a story about hunger and thirst. The disciples are hungry, so they go in search of food. Jesus is thirsty so he asks a stranger for a drink. But the hunger and thirst of this story are much deeper than the needs of the body. This story is about the hunger and thirst of the soul – hunger for relationship; thirst for love. And how can that be satisfied?Most people came to the well in the morning, waited their turn, visited with their neighbors. She came alone in the middle of the day. Misogynist readings of this story give her red lipstick and a short skirt: she is a promiscuous floosie! But the Bible doesn’t say that. We will hear she’s had five husbands. Five divorces? Maybe. But - hard times, high mortality rate - maybe they died. Widowed five times? What would that be like?Why does she come to the well alone at noon? Maybe she was a woman of loose morals, forced to use her body to survive. Just as likely she was a woman of tragedy, a pariah avoided by the townspeople as bad luck. Maybe she was an introvert or a contemplative (she will show us some theological sophistication). In any event, she is alone. And thirsty. So thirsty. Larry:Another morning and I wake with thirstfor the goodness I do not have. I walkout to the pond and all the way God hasgiven us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,I was never a quick scholar but sulkedand hunched over my books past the hourand the bell; grant me, in your mercy,a little more time. Love for the earthand love for you are having such a longconversation in my heart. Who knows whatwill finally happen or where I will be sent,yet already I have given a great many thingsaway, expecting to be told to pack nothing,except the prayers which, with this thirst,I am slowly learning. --Mary Oliver Amelia: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." Larry:The search for the source. Faucets are a modern invention. Through most of history, people have had to find, draw, carry and store water every day. Their lives depended on staying close to the source. It was their focal point, their center. Civilization grew around springs and wells and rivers. In some parts of the world people – usually women and children – still have to walk miles to get water, every day. No wonder the image of an ever flowing stream whose water slakes your thirst permanently is so powerful to the Samaritan woman!But of course, Jesus is talking about the Soul Source. The psalmist prays: “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psa 63:1). God is the focal point, the center, the Source of the life for which we all thirst. The only Source. But we try to satisfy that thirst with so many other things that leave us unsatisfied. They are to your soul like drinking salt water to the body, which only appears to satisfy but ultimately leaves your thirst desperate and unslaked. Your life depends on staying close to the Source and drinking deeply, daily.You don’t have to travel far. God is with you. God is within you. Said an Indian spiritual leader: “All I do is sit by the river all day long, selling river water.” Like Jesus meeting the woman at the well, the Source meets you at the place of your thirst. Why don’t you drink? Warns an Ethiopian proverb, “The fool is thirsty in the midst of water.” Beka:Last night as I was sleepingI dreamt—marvelous error!—that a spring was breakingout in my heart.I said: Along which secret aqueduct,Oh water, are you coming to me,water of a new lifethat I have never drunk? Last night as I was sleeping,I dreamt—marvelous error!—that I had a beehivehere inside my heart.And the golden beeswere making white combsand sweet honeyfrom my old failures.Last night as I was sleeping,I dreamt—marvelous error!—that a fiery sun was givinglight inside my heart.It was fiery because I feltwarmth as from a hearth,and sun because it gave lightand brought tears to my eyes.Last night as I slept,I dreamt—marvelous error!—that it was God I hadhere inside my heart.--Antonio Machado 1875-1939 Amelia: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 worshiped 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 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." 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." Beka:Like Nicodemus, the woman at the well is a spiritual seeker. Like Nicodemus, she is bright, studied, thoughtful. Like Nicodemus – like us – she quickly shifts to cognitive analysis when the conversation gets too close. It’s safer. Last thing she wants to do is endure the same judgment and condemnation from him this Jewish stranger she has received from the others in the town.But Jesus isn’t about judgment. Mother Teresa said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” And Jesus loves her. He won’t let her stay in her head. An encounter with the Source is a matter of the head and the heart. It gets to the truth of your life. Maybe that’s why we avoid the encounter, even though we thirst for it so. Larry:A town can accuse and carry bad newsGossip is cheap and it’s lowSo unless you’ve made no mistakes in your life,Just be careful of the stones that you throw.--The Staple Singers Amelia: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." Larry:This is the first of several times in the gospel of John Jesus uses the God-identifying words of the Hebrew scripture to identify himself: “I am!” And as Fred Craddock notes, this is the longest conversation Jesus has with anybody in the scripture. An unnamed, unknown woman of Samaria. A different race, a rejected ethnicity, a competing religion, the other gender: All the rules say he shouldn’t give her the time of day. Yet Jesus treats her with the same openness and compassion and human dignity he offers everyone. Says Barbara Pine, “Sometimes being listened to is so much like being loved, it is impossible to tell the difference.” Beka: Like the waterof a deep stream,love is always too much.We did not make it.Though we drink till we burst,we cannot have it all,or want it all.In its abundanceit survives our thirst.In the evening we come down to the shoreto drink our fill,and sleep,while it flowsthrough the regions of the dark.It does not hold us,except we keep returning to its rich watersthirsty.We enter,willing to die,into the commonwealth of its joy.--Wendell Berry Amelia: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." Larry:What I love about this story is how everyone’s need is met by the encounter of authentic relationship. Strangers become friends. The estranged are reconciled. All walls fall that divide us by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, you name it….We know the woman is transformed. Her deepest hunger and thirst is met by her encounter with Jesus. As a result she is welcomed back into community, without which it is impossible to be whole. Jesus also has his hunger and thirst met and he is transformed. How God longs to be connected with us and form us as a community of living Spirit! The citizens of the town remind us of the power of witness to encourage the personal and direct encounter with the Source all people resist and all people so desperately need. They get past their own judgment and cognitive distancing and encounter Jesus for themselves. That’s when they are transformed.We are encouraged with them today: go to the Source of life welling up from within you. Clear away the debris that blocks your access and leads you to exist on the surface instead living at the depth of things. Drink deeply, drink daily, from the fountain of life.Wrote Robert Frost:I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away(And wait to watch the water clear, I may);I sha’n’t be gone long. –You come too. All: The Word of God for the people of God. (Thanks be to God!) Larry: May we pray?Our God,We’re doing the best we can. You have sent us into the world to serve you and do your work, but sometimes we don’t know what to do or how to do it or what comes next. Sometimes, we forget we about your work altogether. Sometimes, even, we forget about you. Yet always you are with us, a fountain welling up within. Help us to keep the well clean, to center ourselves there every day, and to drink deeply from the life spring of your love. In joy, in gratitude, in the name of Christ we pray, Amen.