(This is the text of my sermon for March 15.  The readings referred to are Exodus 17:1-7, and Jn 4: 5-42.  In our readings today, things are more than what they seem.)

“Give us a drink.”

That is what the people cried out to God for, in the wilderness.  They were in the desert, and they were thirsty for water.  This was true, but it was not the whole truth.  It was not the only thing they were thirsty for.   They were thirsty for homeland.  For safety.  For security.  For belonging.

And God knew that only the relationship God was forming with them  would really quench this thirst. Only the ability to trust in God would answer their deepest needs.  They quarreled for the sake of water because they did not yet have this relationship of trust in God, who meets our deepest need.

“Give me a drink.”  That is what Jesus asked for,  when the woman came to the well to draw water.  He was on a long journey through Samaria, and was thirsty from his walking.  But he could not draw water from the well, for he had no bucket.  He was vulnerable.  While the disciples had gone to buy food for him,  he asked a stranger to give him water.

The woman was an outsider to him.  A Samaritan.  Jesus could have walked to Galilee from Jerusalem by a different way.  He could have gone down by the Jordan River valley, as most Jews did.  It was the usual way.  There was water to drink there, all the way, by the river.  But we are told he had to go through Samaria. What was this necessity?  After all, Samaritans had nothing to do with Jews.  The two groups shunned each other.  The hostility went back 500 years.  So why make a journey of several days on foot  through inhospitable territory?  What was the necessity?

Just before this, in John 3:16 and 17,  Jesus’ mission was stated.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,  that whosoever would trust in him  would have everlasting life.  For God sent not his son into the world to condemn it,  but rather that the world might be saved through Him.”

Now, Jesus becomes his own proclamation.  He goes to the world.  That was the necessity. And he arrives as a needy one.  Jesus makes himself into the one in need for the sake of the Samaritan community.

Actually what we see is only half of the story.  Jesus is the thirsty one,  but the Samaritans are the ones in need of living water.

“Give me a drink,”  Jesus says to the woman of Samaria.   Jesus is thirsty for water, but not for water alone.  He thirsts for our salvation.  He thirsts for the reconciliation of the Jews and the Samaritans.  He thirsts to offer salvation to all people,  and in Samaria he begins with this “unimportant” woman.

The woman comes to draw water in the heat of the day, alone.  Everyone knew that the hard task of drawing water  and carrying it home  was easier in the cool of the evening. This was a social time for village women.  But this woman comes in the heat of the daywhen no one else is expected to be there.  There is no community of women joining her.  Perhaps her hard life has caused her  to be ostracized by them.  Maybe she does not feel comfortable with them.  And when she arrives, Jesus is there –  a helpless traveler who is thirsty – and he asks for her help  because he has no bucket to draw water  from the well.

Jesus begins by breaking the rules.  Although he is the strong one,  he becomes the vulnerable one.  He has the living water, but he becomes the thirsty one.   Although he is Jewish, he speaks with the Samaritan.  Although he is a man, he speaks with a woman who is not related to him.  He is the great one, but he initiates conversation with one who is a nobody, unnamed in the story because in those times only men were considered important enough to have their names written.

Now, when Jesus speaks with her, she becomes a somebody, a messenger with a message for all her people, as she runs to her people shouting, “come, come, come and see the one I have met.  He knows me through and through.  Could he be the Messiah??”

She opens the door  of hospitality  in an inhospitable place, as God gives her a place in the mission of bringing God’s reconciliation to the whole world, through Jesus.  She has just met Jesus, and already the relationship she has with Jesus is changing her life and the lives of those around her.

When the disciples come back  from finding food in the village,  they try to give some to Jesus, but he replies,  “My food is to do the will of my Father, and to complete his work.” They don’t understand at first  that what Jesus hungers and thirsts for, more than the food and water that keep the body alive,  is to connect with us and give us life, life now, and eternal life as well.

What Jesus hungers and thirsts for is that we come to know the love of God, the love that is given to us for free, the grace of God’s wholehearted welcome,  God’s forgiveness for our past failings,  the grace that can heal memories  and  broken relationships.

What Jesus hungers and thirsts for is that we let Him help us,  so that the brokenness inside us – and among us – can be reconciled.

This grace cannot come through earthly water,  or earthly food.  It comes through receiving  the relationship God offers.  This is what Jesus offers the woman at the well, the living water of knowing God in Spirit and in truth.

It doesn’t matter where we are.  We need not make pilgrimage.  We need not be in Jerusalem, or on Mt Gerazim, where the Samaritans worshiped.  We need not even be at church to connect with God,  if we worship God in Spirit and in truth,  if we are in this life-giving relationship.  God always longs  to be reconciled to us and takes the initiative so that we can have this relationship,  this water that bubbles up unto eternal life, because it is God’s will to embrace us with love through Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is what gives us hope in the present and the future. Even if we think we are nobodies, God knows each of us by name.  It is for us that Jesus comes, bringing the living water.  This is the source of our joy and our hope, even in the midst of challenging times like this time we are in now, when anxiety about contagion abounds and causes normal life to be disrupted.

When we are in relationship to God,  we do not need to let our anxieties become terrors, because God has promised to be our safe place.  God goes with us through our deserts and provides for us.

So in this time of disruption, do not panic. For you have received the Holy Spirit.God is within you, going before you,  walking beside you.  God has your back.  God is with you in quiet and in danger,  wherever you are, now and forever.  Amen.