Living Water

Picture yourself in Tucson. The city rests on a desert plateau about 2100 feet above sea level. It is surrounded on three sides by mountains that rise to over 9,000 feet. Unlike the Sahara of our imaginations – endless miles of rolling white sands – the desert here contains many varieties 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 refilled. 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 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 only became affordable in Tucson in the late 1940s. But you cannot survive in Tucson without water. It is absolutely necessary to life.

Now picture yourself in Samaria, near a well on the outskirts of Sychar. Here too the climate is desert-like and very dry. Here too you can’t survive without water. It’s noon. Trudging up to the well is a lone woman, shunned and ridiculed by the other village women, who would have come earlier, while it was still cool. The woman desperately needs water for herself and her male companion. To her surprise she meets a tired, dusty, Jewish man, who breaks all the rules and asks her for a drink. “What,” she says, “You’re kidding, right?” Then, to her astonishment, he tells her that if she knew with whom she was speaking she would have asked for “living water.” She knows her sacred geography and history, so 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. But what kind of water is Jesus 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 becomes a symbol for God’s continuing care for God’s people – despite their tendency to whine, complain, and drive Moses nuts! Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, Jeremiah speaks for God and, accuses the people of choosing cracked cisterns instead of the “fountain of living water,” i.e., God himself (2:13). Similarly speaking for God, Isaiah promises the exiles that when they return to Israel they will “draw water from the wells of salvation” (12:3). Isaiah also 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). Ezekiel tells us of the beauties of the restored Temple with a lush description of the life-giving river flowing from the Temple. Ultimately, water symbolizes the source of life and Spirit for all creatures. Jesus is heir to this rich Scriptural tradition, and so he reminds the woman – and the hearers of this Gospel – that our relationship with him is absolutely necessary for life, and that through him, we have access, deep within ourselves, to the life-giving action of the Spirit.

There’s more. Jesus’ “living water” transforms us. It is not meant to make us feel good. Instead, Jesus’ living water transforms us into people who are like him. Look at how Jesus related to the Samaritan woman. Jesus reached out to her across every social barrier – gender, religious practice, morality, and ethnicity. He accepted her, instructed her, encouraged her, and loved her. He gave her dignity, even though those around her surely abused her, because she had transgressed the rules of proper living. When the woman was touched by Jesus’ loving acceptance, she could turn around and offer 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, Taylor goes into the desert with Mattie and Esperanza, two of the assorted friends she makes. Mattie mentions that for the ancient Native Americans, today is New Year’s Day. “What?” exclaims Taylor, “July the twelfth?” Mattie explains 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,2 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. Jesus promised the Samaritan woman that “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” Jesus says the same thing to us – to 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? We experience this living water in the same way that the Samaritan woman experienced it: by opening ourselves to Jesus’ presence. Although Jesus is present to us everywhere we seek him, for some of us, he may be more present in especially sacred places: old churches or pilgrimage places. Others of us might sense his presence in nature: in spectacular sunsets or on our daily walk. For others, Jesus is present in “thin places,” where the veil is parted and we suddenly sense that Jesus is standing beside us – as I did this week praying with a family whose loved one was dying. Many of us – hopefully all of us – see Jesus in the Eucharistic banquet, when we sense ourselves sitting at table with him and his friends as we receive his Body and Blood.

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 offer our love to those whom Jesus loved, to those who are marginalized, who are poor, sick, needy, or addicted. Would you like a concrete way to ensure that people everywhere have access to the safe, clean water? Providing access to clean water is one of the major program areas of Episcopal Relief and Development. Closer to home, dare we let Jesus’ living water touch those who are not a part of this community? Later this spring, we hope to offer living water to those who wish to worship “in spirit and truth,” but who cannot, for any number of reasons, join us in this sanctuary. The church will leave the building – to share its living water with those who thirst.

As we prepare for Street Church and our other ministries here is a simple way to practice the presence of God.3 It is given to us by Edwina Gately. In week 27 of 52 ways to practice God’s presence, Gately 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.

And here is her invitation: “As you water your plants or flowers, imagine God’s grace watering your soul.” May we, like our plants, drink deeply of God’s living water.

1. As quoted in Sundays and Seasons (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2007, 115.
2. Quoted in Synthesis, March 27, 2011 (Boyds, MD: Brunson Publishing Co.).
3. A Mystical Heart (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 66-67.