Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 24, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Have you ever been thirsty? I mean really thirsty? So parched that you think you’ll die if you don’t get a drink? I doubt that many of us have been that thirsty. I don’t recall ever having been that thirsty myself. Still, we’ve all experienced thirst to some degree. It’s a natural part of life. Our bodies need water to function properly and even to survive. They tell us when the water level is getting low by producing the sensation of thirst. All life needs water, and we humans are no exception.

Because thirst is such a universal human experience, and because the Bible is such a human book, the Bible has many stories about thirst and many images of water. The Bible, of course is made up of writings from an arid place, a place where having enough water was a constant concern and often a struggle. When the Hebrews were in Egypt one thing they didn’t have to worry about was water. Egypt had, and has, an abundant and reliable supply of water from the Nile. Israel doesn’t. Canaan may have been a land flowing with milk and honey, but it’s not a land flowing with much water. So it’s not surprising that water images should be prominent in the Bible.

Both of our Bible readings this morning are about water. The first is a story from Exodus about the Hebrew people, who have left Egypt with its secure water supply, needing water and not having it. The setting is the Sinai dessert between Egypt and Israel, one of the driest places on earth. Moses has led the people out of Egypt, but for reasons I’ve never understood he just leads them around in circles for forty years rather than take them straight to Canaan, their ultimate destination. I mean, it’s not that far, even if you’re walking. Maybe because Moses was a man he was too stubborn to stop and ask directions. Who knows. In any event, finding water was a major problem for them.

Our story finds them in a place where there was no water, and they’re not happy about it. They demand that Moses give them water. Moses is apparently as stressed out as the rest of them, for he makes a pretty snappish reply: “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” Ex. 17:26 NRSV So Moses turns to Yahweh, the LORD, who provides a miraculous source of water from a rock. Moses calls the place where this happened Massah, which means test, and Meribah, which means quarrel, “because the Israelites quarreled and tested the LORD, saying ‘is the LORD with us or not?’” Ex. 17:7 NRSV

Before we move on to John’s water story, please note a couple of important things about this one. The people in the story assume that if God is with them God will provide for their physical needs. Their demand for water is interpreted as a test of God’s presence with them. If water is provided, God is with them. If water is not provided, God is not with them. Every human character in the story makes this assumption, and Yahweh, the LORD, goes along with it. He miraculously provides water not so much because the people are thirsty as to prove that he really is with them. This Exodus story has what is, for me, a very primitive understanding of our relationship to God and of what it is that God does for us. It is a primitive vision of faith, although one that is still very much with us in the world today.

Then we come to a story about water in the Gospel of John. Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob in Samaria, between Galilee and Jerusalem. Jesus is thirsty and is sitting by the well. A woman comes from the nearby town to draw water, and Jesus asks her for a drink. She objects, for reasons that don’t matter to us this morning. Jesus gives her a reply that, like so many of his replies in John, is cryptic at best. He says: “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.” John 4:10 NRSV The woman is puzzled, and Jesus says: “Everyone who drinks of this water [from the well] will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty again.” John 4:13-14a NRSV The woman says: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” John 4:15 NRSV

Now, here’s one thing that strikes me about this exchange. Jesus and the Samaritan woman, it seems to me, are talking past each other. Jesus is talking about “living water” that will become in those who drink, as he also says, “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” John 4:14b NRSV He’s speaking in metaphor, but the Samaritan woman is a literalist. She can’t understand Jesus as talking about anything but literal, physical water, as we see in her last line where she says she wants Jesus’ water so she won’t have to keep coming back to the well to draw water. Clearly that’s not what Jesus is talking about. After all, in this story he himself is physically thirsty. No, he’s not talking about physical water. He’s talking about something else.

So what is he talking about? He’s talking about something that is analogous to water, something for which water can be a strong metaphor. Our bodies can’t live without water, and thirst can become overwhelming if we don’t get some. Is there something that isn’t physical that we humans need as much as we need water? Is there something that isn’t physical that will cause us to dry up if we don’t have it? Is there something that isn’t physical that we need again and again throughout our lives if we are to live? I’m convinced that there is, and I’m convinced that that nonphysical thing for which we metaphorically thirst is what Jesus is talking about here.

That nonphysical thing for which we thirst that Jesus offers the woman at the well and to us is God. It is the Spirit of God, God the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel of John Jesus is all about Spirit. In the story we heard last week he tells Nicodemus, in effect, that the life of faith is about life in the Spirit. Later on in the Gospel, as Jesus is preparing his disciples for his own leaving them, he promises to send them the Holy Spirit. John’s Jesus says things about himself that can only be understood spiritually: I am the good shepherd. I am the gate. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the vine and you are the branches. These and most of Jesus’ statements in John are, like his statement about living water, metaphors for spiritual truths. They are metaphors for life in the Spirit.

Spirit, the spiritual dimension of reality, ultimate reality which is spiritual not physical, is that for which our souls thirst as our bodies thirst for water. In our tradition we call that for which our souls thirst God. Without God our souls dry up just as our bodies do without water. The Psalms know this truth well, and they often use the metaphor of thirst to express it. They say: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:2 And “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you.” Psalm 63:1 And “My soul thirsts for you as a parched land.” Psalm 143:6, all NRSV We’ve probably all known people whose souls have shriveled up from want of God, or maybe we’ve even been such a person ourselves at times. I know I have been. People whose only concerns are physical, material concerns strike us as dried up, hard, and crusty. They lack the fruits of the Spirit—joy, peace, and compassion among others. I’m not talking about not being religious. I’m talking about being closed off to Spirit by denying its reality and living only for the material, especially about living only for the material. Our souls thirst for Spirit, and without it they become arid and barren.

For us Christians, our connection with Spirit is Jesus. When we connect with Jesus we connect with God, we connect with that living water, the water of Spirit, for which our souls long. We drink real water, the living water of the living God whom we meet and know in Christ Jesus. In Jesus our souls are refreshed and nourished. When we drink in the love of God that we see and know in Jesus our souls are renewed and refreshed as our bodies are by a long, cool drink of water on a hot summer day.

The Israelites in the desert thought that if God did not provide physical water, God was not with them. We know better. We have a better vision of faith and what faith does for us. We know that the water God offers is not physical but spiritual water. It is nothing less than connection with God. God slakes our spiritual thirst; and because we know that, we know that, as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, we need never be thirsty again. The spiritual well that Jesus is for us is always available to us, even when physical water is not. We know that people’s physical needs are not always met in this world. God does not always provide miraculous water from a rock. Indeed, in the experience of most of us, God never does that, not literally. Yet God’s spiritual water is always available to us when we turn to God and open our spirits to the divine presence. Then we find real water indeed, the living water of our connection with Spirit. And for that water we can truly give God our thanks and praise. Amen.