Longing for Water
(Free Version) The Third Sunday in Lent- Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42
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It is perhaps appropriate this week to take time to pause and reflect on the last time we heard these readings in church. If you have followed the lectionary these past three years, you will notice that these readings last came up for March 15, 2020.
This means that this coming Sunday will mark three years since the first week many of us realized the impact of what was happening (in-person work and school changing, sports shutting down, Tom Hanks being infected, etc.).
I must admit, I had NO IDEA what we were in for. What a Lent (PLUS!) that was! I'm not sure we will grasp the effects of that period for a long time. It was fitting, and is now fitting for us to hear stories of desperation: a wandering desert people longing for water, Jesus’ promise of living water, and Paul’s insistence that the church must boast in our sufferings because of what is being produced in us.
Each of our readings are about dependence, and the choices made in the context of need, suffering, and pain.
In our Old Testament reading (Exodus 17:1-7), the Israelites experience their legitimate need for thirst and complain against Moses. Their real dispute is with God, but Moses is the one directly in front of them. In their thirst, they remember the last time they had what they needed: in Egypt, while they were in slavery. They are tempted to forget God’s liberation and they yearn to go back to what they know. Still, with the very staff that brought them out of Egypt, God provides water for them.
In our epistle reading (Romans 5:1-11), Paul explains what God has done in the life of the Christian. We have been justified by faith. Because of this, we can trust that God will see us through to the end. We can even boast in our sufferings in the present time because we know that something is happening in us in the midst of it: endurance, character, and hope. This is all undergirded by God’s love. We have a great future. We will share in God’s glory. But God has made that declaration now in the present, because of what Christ has done on the cross in the past. If he did that for us: died for us when we were ungodly, how much more will he sustain us until the end.
Our gospel reading (John 4:5-42), conveys the story of Jesus and a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in Sychar. Jesus asks for a drink, and then promises the woman living (moving, like a river) water rather than the stagnant well water. Intrigued, she asks him more about it. He asks her to first find her husband, but then reveals that he knows she has had five husbands and the man she has now is not her husband. From this account, we are unable to piece together a full picture of this woman’s life. Such a circumstance was extremely rare, and would have involved great pain. It is possible that she has buried five husbands. It is also possible that she has experienced divorce or is now in a concubine situation or with a man who has not formally married her because of an issue regarding his children (heirs). It is also possible that she lives with a kinsman. Whatever the case, it is very unlikely that this woman is promiscuous or prone to adultery as has often been the trope.
Whatever the case, Jesus’ knowledge of her situation is not a condemnation, but a way of revealing who he is and the fact that he is the one who is here to “sort things out” in the world. Empowered by the way he knows her, this woman invites the town to “come and see” him. They do come and see and are changed, knowing that he is the Savior of the world.
There are a few important things for us to convey to our congregations in the context of these readings.
God knows you. During difficult seasons, and in the season of Lent when we intently ask God to search our hearts, God may begin to reveal some places in our lives where we have been choosing inappropriate responses to real needs, where we have sin. We become aware of these things and are convicted of them because God loves us.
God cares about your real needs. No matter how dark, God is with us in our vulnerability. I want to tell my congregation: every time you hurt, you are in need, God is with you. You are not broken without him being broken. You are not rejected without him tasting your rejection.
Catherine Marshall says,
If we are to believe Jesus, his Father and our Father is the God of all life and his caring and provision include a sheepherder’s lost lamb, a falling sparrow, a sick child, the hunger pangs of a crowd of four thousand, the need for wine at a wedding feast, and the plight of professional fishermen who toiled all night and caught nothing. These vignettes, scattered through the Gospels are like little patches of gold dust, say to us, “No creaturely need is outside the scope or range of prayer.” 4
He is living water to quench your thirst. Sometimes, in the midst of our real needs, we turn to other things. We go back to slavery because we have convinced ourselves that unsatisfying things will satisfy us. He calls us beyond well water into living water.
He empowers you to witness. When we leave our well-water jars behind, our nets behind, our tax table behind, our witness is powerful. We live in a world that is seeking control, performance, safety, money, sex, power at all costs. The liberating witness of the church is that there is something so much better: revealing light and thirst quenching water.