Lent 3A sermon

The 3rd Sunday in Lent
March 27, 2011
Once, in the middle of a long, hot summer, I was faced with a dual disaster. During the same week, the air conditioners at work and in my apartment both stopped working; and boy, was it hot!
We muddled along as best as we could at both places, and we tried to stay in our normal rhythm of life, accomplishing the things we needed to accomplish. Until one morning, late in the week, I became ill. I was completely incapacitated with horrible physical symptoms, and only then did I realize in all my 24 year old wisdom that I was extremely dehydrated. I’d had no idea!
When I told my roommate what was going on, we went out and bought some Gatorade, and then we each went to our respective parents’ houses and stayed there until our landlord got our air-conditioner fixed.
If only all problems in life were so easily diagnosed and resolved!
In the reading from the Old Testament, we see the Israelites, who are wandering in the wilderness. God tells them to camp at a certain place, and they do, but there is no water there. As they realized this, they become thirstier and thirstier. They know that neither they nor their children nor their livestock will be able to live long in the wilderness without water, and they grow increasingly more hysterical, crying: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kills us and our children and our livestock with thirst?... “Is the Lord among us or not?” Give us proof of God’s presence, proof of God’s favor.
When Moses cries out to God for help, fearing that God’s people are about to stone him, God tells Moses—go ahead of the people with some elders with you as a witness. Take your staff with which you struck the Nile and changed the waters of Egypt into undrinkable water. I will go before you and stand upon the Rock at Horeb. When you strike the rock with your staff, my presence will summon forth the water from the rock for you and all the people to drink.
And so it was. But the story is not remembered by the fact that God saves the Israelites once again, calling water forth from the rock. It is remembered for the testing and questioning of the Israelites, who even after they have been given water, continue to ask, “Is the Lord among us or not.” The Israelites know that they are thirsty, that they need water, and they let their fear and their hysteria cloud their memories of how God has freed them from slavery with miracles and divine intervention, how God is going before them in a pillar of fire and in a cloud, leading them. They forget how God has been providing for them, even in the dry desert wasteland of the wilderness, and in their fear, they cannot see the saving works of God that are even right in front of them in that present moment.
How often do we get distracted, fearful, hysterical, blinded by our “thirst”, by our lack, by our scarcity? How often do we let our fear, our lack, our hysteria cloud our memories of all the times and all the ways God has saved us, of all the times when God has revealed God’s presence, always going before us in the wildernesses of our lives?
In today’s gospel reading, the Samaritan woman has gone to the well to draw water, and there she encounters Jesus. She knows that she needs water, but until she begins speaking to Jesus, she is not aware that she is thirsty, possibly even spiritually dehydrated, all dried up without hope, so that she is practically incapacitated.
The first thing that Jesus does for her is to ask her for a drink of water from the well, and his one small request does many things. First, it invites her into relationship, into conversation. He calls her out of her solitude and loneliness. Second, he begins to gradually reveal to her the truth about himself, and in that revelation, to shine the light of truth upon her deep, deep thirst which she had not recognized or acknowledged. Finally, in his first request, he reminds her and equips her with the truth of a gift. She is able to draw water out of the well because she has a bucket to do this. In Jesus’s encounter with this woman, he teaches her about the spring of eternal life, which will cure her deep thirst, and in his attention and love for her, he gives her a bucket so that she can draw water from that deep, deep well.
The Irish poet and theologian John O’Donohue wrote, “The blessings for which we hunger [and thirst] are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by your self. They are at home at the hearth of your soul.”
On this day, Jesus is inviting you to acknowledge your thirst. He invites you to name your fear of your thirst and to recognize how it causes you to forget God and seek to quench your longing in ways that are not life giving.
On this day, Jesus is reminding you that you have, within you, a deep well from which you may draw the water of eternal life. It is fed by a spring that was created at your making, made holy at your baptism and that continues to be fueled and purified by the hope of God that pours into it through the Holy Spirit.
On this day, Jesus looks at you and loves you, and he reminds you that he has already given you your very own bucket, that you may lower into that deep, deep well to draw forth that sweet water of life whenever you thirst.
All you have to do is remember—remember your bucket, be mindful of your well, and hold fast to the hope that God goes before you in the wilderness.