3 Lent

 

March 12, 2023

 

John 4.5-42 

 

+ I’ve been pretty honest about this from the beginning.

 

And many of you have been on this particular journey with me.

 

But…eight years this coming May, I made a decision that was, for me, an important one.

 

Eight years ago in May, I decided to not partake of alcohol any longer.

 

I mean—none.

 

Zero.

 

Well, except for Communion wine.

 

But that’s it.

 

It was not an easy decision for me to make.

 

I liked partaking of my cocktails, as many of you know.

 

In fact, a big part of my ministry was going out for cocktails with parishioners and prospective parishioners.

 

I liked the social aspects of drinking.

 

But…I suddenly, physically, was not able to drink alcohol any more.

 

Every time I did, I get physically sick.

 

I want to be clear:

 

I wasn’t an alcoholic.

 

But I definitely abused alcohol in those years before I stopped.

 

And it was getting worse.

 

And I have no doubt that I was definitely on a very dangerous slippery path to becoming an alcoholic.

 

I am certain that had I continued drinking, it would, by this time in my life, be our of control.

 

After the death of my mother, I know that I would have descended into the depths of drinking.

 

If I had continued drinking, I would be almost certain that I would not be here today.

 

I would not be your Rector.

 

Still, despite all of that, at the time, eight years ago, I will admit that I was not 100 percent happy to give up drinking.

 

And I sort grumbled about it and pouted about it for a while..

 

But, after a while, I discovered that it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

 

I have never felt better!

 

The bigger issue for me was navigating my social life without alcohol.

 

I soon discovered non-alcoholic beers (which weren’t as bad as I initially thought), as well as the wonderful world of mocktails.

 

(They’re actually pretty tasty).

 

Giving up alcohol, however, much like when I gave up meat or dairy, makes one especially conscious in many ways of the ways one can use and sometimes misuse such things.

 

And yes, we can be abusive not only how we drink, but also how we eat.

 

 Yes, I missed alcohol, and meat, and dairy.

 

For a while.

 

But after so long, the “new normal” took hold.

 

And now, I can’t imagine those things in my life at all.

 

Now, as I say that, I realize this is all a matter of a privileged person talking about giving up something.

 

This is Western Society problems.

 

In a world in which people are starving and thirsting, in a world in which people are suffering from real addiction to substances and food, I realize that my crowing about giving up alcohol sounds a bit shallow.    

 

And I apologize if it does.

 

But it also has given me a unique outlook on those people are starving and thirsting, as well as those people who are suffering addictions to such things.

 

I realize that, for the most part, thirst, for example, just like real hunger, is one of those things we simply don’t worry about too much in our lives in our privileged Western world.

 

Most of us don’t physically thirst.

 

We have our coffees, our clean water, our water machines and water tanks, not to mention our sodas and our recreational alcohol.

 

And so, for the most part, it’s a luxury for most of us to give up things like soda and alcohol, even if we’re addicted to them.

 

There’s no doubt about it: so much of our life revolves around what we drink, that thirst very rarely ever plays into our lives anymore.

 

But although we might not thirst for liquid often in our lives, we do find ourselves thirsting.

 

We do thirst for knowledge, we thirst for justice, we thirst for fulfillment, we thirst for truth.  

 

Certainly this past week, when we watched the shameful behavior of our elected representatives in this state of North Dakota turning their backs on a prayer in which gender is mentioned—and thus turning their backs on the transgender people they also were elected to serve in this state—made me thirst for some changes in our state government.

 

And we definitely thirst for spiritual truth.

 

And I think that’s very close to what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel.

 

In our very long Gospel reading, we find Jesus in conversation with this Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.

 

More often than not, when we encounter a story like this in scripture, we don’t often think about what happened to some of these people following their experience with Jesus.

 

Every so often, it might not hurt to ask ourselves: what happened to this woman at the well?

 

Did she heed the words of Jesus to her, or did she go on in her old lifestyle?

 

We know she shared the news with other Samaritans.

 

But did she reform her life?

 

We will never know.

 

But, what is more important is the message that is here for all of us.

 

Jesus talks about a “living water.”

 

What is this living water Jesus speaks of?

 

Well, if we read this scripture closely we see that, despite popular pious tradition, Jesus at no point says that HE is the Living Water.

 

But rather that he comes to give this Living Water.

 

So, what is it that he offers this woman at the well?

 

Well, we actually get our answer in another later passage from the Gospel of John.

 

In John chapter 7, it is made clear that this Living Water is the Spirit of God within Jesus.

 

The Living Water that flows so abundantly, so profusely, is the very Spirit of God.

 

Of course because he is the Messiah, the Christ, as he tells this woman he is, he has this Spirit within him.

 

But he, as the Messiah, as the Christ, offers it all.

 

And, this is important, when as Jesus sits with the woman at the well, he offers not only her that water of life, this Spirit of the living God—he offers it to us as well.

 

And we, in turn, like her, must “with open hand” give it “to those who thirst.”

 

To truly understand the meaning of water here, though we have to gently remind ourselves of the land in which this story is taking place.

 

Palestine was and is a dry and arid land.

 

And in Jesus’ day, water was not as accessible as we take for granted these days.

 

It came from wells that sometimes weren’t in close proximity to one’s home.

 

There was certainly no in-door plumbing.

 

The water that came from those wells was not the clean and filtered water we enjoy now, that we drink from fancy bottles.

 

They didn’t have refrigeration; they wouldn’t have understood what an ice cube was—so often the water they drank was lukewarm at best.

 

And sometimes it was polluted.

 

People got sick and died from drinking it.

 

Which is why people drank alcohol.

 

But despite all of that, water was essential.

 

One died without water in that arid land.

 

Water meant life.

 

In that world, people truly understood thirst.

 

They thirsted truly for water.

 

And so we have this issue of water in a story in which Jesus confronts this woman—who is obviously and truly thirsty.

 

Thirsty for water, yes, but—as we learn—she is obviously thirsty also for more.

 

She is thirsty as well for love, for security, for stability, all of which she does not have.

 

Now, we have to be fair to her.

 

For a woman to be without a man in her day would have meant that she would be without security, without a home, without anything.

 

A woman at that time was defined by the men in her life—her husband or father or son.

 

And so, widowed as many times as she was, she was desperate to find some reason and purpose in her life through the men in her life.

 

This woman is truly a broken prson.

 

She is thirsty.

 

Thirsty for the water she is drawing from the well and thirsty for more than life has given her.

 

In a sense, we can find much to relate to in this woman.

 

We too are broken people, as you have heard me preach again and again during this season of Lent so far.

 

We too are thirsty.

 

As broken people, we are thirsty for relationships, for money, for food, for alcohol, for anything to fill that empty parched feeling within our broken selves.

 

And as broken people, we find that as much as we try to quench that thirst, it all seems to run right out of us.

 

We find that we will never be quenched until we drink of that cool, clean water which will fill us where we need to be filled.

 

That cool, clean Water is of course the Spirit of Life.

 

God’s Spirit is the Water of which we drink to be truly filled.

 

It is the Water that will become in us “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

 

What better image to take with us in these long, spiritually thirsty days of Lent?

 

As we journey through the desert of Lent toward Holy Week, toward the darkness and violence of Good Friday, what better image can we cling to?

 

Because that is what we are doing during Lent.

 

We are traveling through the desert.

 

We are walking through the arid wasteland of our own lives.

 

We are journeying toward the Cross and toward the destruction, thirst, pain and death it brings.

 

We are wandering toward that tomb, that dark, dank place.

 

We are that woman at the well—parched and alone, thirsting for something more.

 

In Lent, we bring ourselves—our fractured, shattered, uncertain, frightened, insecure selves—to the well, expecting only for a temporary quenching.

 

But we know what awaits us.

 

We know that if we, like the Samaritan woman, is patient, we too will be given what we long for.

 

So, let us drink fully of the Living Water of God’s Spirit that is offered to us there.

 

Let us drink deeply of God’s Spirit, who is offered to us fully and completely.

 

And in that Water, we will find all that we desire.

 

Our insecurities will be washed away.

 

Our wounds will be cleaned and healed.

 

Everything we have done or failed to do will be made right.

 

Our brokenness will be made whole.

 

We will be remade into saints.

 

That thirst that drives us and nags at us and gnaws at us, that drives us to drink from places where we should not be drinking, will finally—once and for all—be quenched.

 

And in that Living Water we will find Life—that Life that Jesus the Messiah, the Christ brings us.

 

That life we find in those Living Waters is a Life without death or suffering or wanting.

 

All we have to do is say, “Give me some of that water.”

 

All we have to say is “give me the Spirit of the living God.”

 

And it will be given to us.

 

And those of us who drink of that water will never again be thirsty.

 

Let us pray.

 

Creator of the universe and all people therein, you who formed humankind in your image, placing them in this world in all their diversity differing colors, genders, races, ethnicities and language; we praise you for the splendor of your creation and the love that motivated your hand on this Earth. Amen.

(The prayer prayed by the Rev. Dr. Leanne Simmons, pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Bismarck, at the North Dakota Senate on February 8^th; two senators turned their backs in protest).