Picture yourself in Tucson. The city is set on a desert plateau about 2100 feet above sea level and ringed on three sides with mountains rising to over 9,000 feet. Unlike the Sahara of our imaginations – endless miles of rolling white sands – the desert here contains a wide variety of plant and animal life. Saguaro cacti and other succulents rise high above the desert floor, Palo Verde and Mesquite trees provide a little shade, and hummingbirds twitter everywhere. The light in Tucson, like most of the desert southwest, is astonishingly clear and bright, and there are twice as many sunny days as cloudy ones. What you might not notice until you begin to get dehydrated is that the air in Tucson is very dry, indeed dangerously dry. Every work truck carries the familiar orange barrel-shaped water coolers. Open up almost anyone’s fridge, and you’ll find plastic jugs filled with water that are constantly being emptied out. Out on the back patio there will inevitably be a gallon jug of tea baking in the sun. And when you sit down to lunch, or perhaps just to visit, you’ll usually drink at least three glasses of the chilled iced tea or some other drink. You can survive in Tucson without central heating, you can even survive without central air conditioning – the first evaporative coolers weren’t common in Tucson until the late 1940s. But you cannot survive in Tucson without water. It is an absolute necessity of life.
Now picture yourself in Samaria, near a well on the outskirts of Sychar. The climate here too is desert-like and very dry. And here too it is impossible to survive without water. At noon a lone woman, presumably shunned, ridiculed, and marginalized by the other village women, trudges up to the well. It’s already hot, and she desperately needs water for herself and her male companion. To her surprise she’s met by a tired, dusty, Jewish man, who, against all the social norms, all the rules, asks for a drink. “What,” she says, “You’re kidding, right?” Then, most astonishing of all, he tells her that if she knew with whom she was conversing she would have asked for “living water.” Knowing her sacred geography and history, she presses the stranger about this water. And again he astonishes her by telling her that all those who drink the water he provides “will never be thirsty,” and, indeed, that this water will become “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
What on earth is this “living water?” To begin with the expression translated “living water” can also mean “fresh, running water,” as opposed to water in a cistern. Just as in last week’s Gospel reading, where we encountered one word that meant both “wind” and spirit,” here too the evangelist uses words that catch us up short and make us think a little harder. But what kind of water is it that Jesus is offering? Actually, we don’t have to look much farther than the Hebrew Bible to get some clues. In today’s lesson from Exodus, the water gushing out from the stony rock became a symbol for God’s continuing care for God’s people – despite their tendency to whine, complain, and drive Moses nuts! Speaking for God, Jeremiah, accuses the people of choosing cracked cisterns instead of the “fountain of living water,” i.e., God himself (2:13). Similarly speaking in God’s voice, Isaiah promises the exiles that when they return to Israel they will “draw water from the wells of salvation” (12:3). Farther on Isaiah voices God’s promise to guide the returning exiles “by springs of water” (49:10) and God’s invitation to all who thirst to “come to the waters” (55:1). Telling us of the beauties of the restored Temple, Ezekiel offers a lush description of the life-giving river flowing from the Temple. Ultimately, water symbolizes the source of life and Spirit for all creatures. As heir to this rich Scriptural tradition, Jesus reminds the woman – and the readers of this Gospel account – that our relationship with him is truly life-giving, and that through our relationship with him, we have access, deep within ourselves, to the life-giving action of the Spirit.
There’s more. Jesus’ “living water” is transformative. It is not meant for private consumption. Rather, Jesus’ living water transforms us into people who are more nearly like him. Look at how Jesus related to the Samaritan woman. Across every social barrier – gender, religious practice, morality, ethnicity – Jesus reached out to her. He accepted her, instructed her, encouraged her, and loved her. He gave dignity to her, even though she was no doubt abused by those around her, because she had seriously transgressed the rules of proper living. Touched by Jesus’ loving acceptance, the woman mediated Jesus’ love to others. Running off and leaving her water jug, she ran to the neighbors who had shunned her and invited them into Jesus’ presence. Empowered by Jesus, she became the first evangelist!
Can we experience the transformative power of Jesus’ living water? In The Bean Trees, a hauntingly beautiful novel set largely in the southwest, Barbara Kingsolver relates the story of Taylor Greer, a native Kentuckian who winds up in Tucson with a Cherokee child. One day, just at the beginning of the summer rains, two of the assorted friends she makes, Mattie and Esperanza, take Taylor out into the desert. Mattie mentions that for the ancient Native Americans, today is New Year’s Day. “What,” exclaims Taylor, “July the twelfth?” Mattie explained that “they celebrated it on whatever day the summer’s rain first fell. Everything started over then,” she said. They planted crops, the kids ran around naked, and “they all drank cactus-fruit wine until they fell over from happiness. Even the animals and plants came alive again when the drought finally broke.”1
So do we have to go to the desert southwest to experience the power of living water? Aren’t we also thirsty? Like the Samaritan woman at the well, aren’t we also thirsty for love and acceptance? Aren’t we thirsty for real, authentic life? Don’t we, as John Lawrence suggested, often go after water that doesn’t really satisfy us? “There are,” he says, “the more obvious wells” of alcoholism and drug addiction, the “forever running sluice of poverty and hunger.” Perhaps we drown ourselves in our work – paid or unpaid – only to neglect our health, our families, our neighbors, and our God.2 Jesus promised the Samaritan woman that “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” That promise is for us as well – for all of us, me, you, the clergy, the bishops, the alcoholics downstairs. Irenaeus, the second-century Bishop of Lyons reminded us that “The Church is the fountain of the living water that flows to us from the heart of Christ. Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace.”
So the question remains. How do we experience this living water? There are many ways, of course, but here is one. We experience this living water in the same way that the Samaritan woman experienced it: by putting ourselves in Jesus’ presence. In a few minutes, I will invite you to “lift up your hearts.” You will respond, “We lift them to the Lord.” When we acknowledge our desire to be in Jesus’ presence, we open ourselves to that flow of living water into our own hearts. And, wonderfully, we can open that channel wherever we are, whenever we want. While waiting your turn at the checkout line, enjoying dinner out with friends, walking the dog, greeting people at Loaves and Fishes, or checking out the latest Facebook posting, you can pray, “I lift my heart to the Lord, I put myself in Jesus’ presence.” And when you are centered in the Lord, his water will flow through you. When his water flows through us into a parched and thirsty world, we can ourselves follow our Master, and respond in love to those whom Jesus loved, to those who are marginalized, who are poor, sick, needy, or addicted. We can even make sure that all people have access to the safe, clean water that is necessary for physical life. Dare we let Jesus’ living water touch those who are not a part of this community? Those in the apartments next door, for example, or those who meet downstairs in our fellowship hall, those who come to the mobile food pantry, or those who are hidden away in assisted living facilities? With whom do we need to share the power of Jesus’ love and acceptance of all?
I want to close with an invitation to practice the presence of God given to us by Edwina Gately. This is week 27 of 52 ways to practice God’s presence.3 Gately begins with a quotation from Thomas Erskine. “What a full and pregnant thing life is when God is known; and what a weary emptiness it is without God! The river of God is full of water, and God will moisten and fill these parched hearts of ours, our of the river of his own life.” Gately then prays.
The rain is falling
like millions of silver jewels
shining against
the black of the night
to be absorbed
by the thirsty soil.
May your grace, O God,
fall upon
our dried humanity
unceasing.
May we absorb
Your moistness
That our dried up hearts
may rise and swell to bursting.
Finally, Gately offers us an invitation: “As you water your plants or flowers, imagine God’s grace watering your soul.” May we, like our plants, drink deeply of that living water.
1. As quoted in Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2007), p. 115.
2. Quoted in Synthesis for March 27, 2011(Boyds, MD: Brunson Publishing Co.).
3. A Mystical Heart (New York: Crossroad,1998), pp. 66-67.
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