Thirsty

Preached March 27, 2011 at St. Michael and All Angels, Portland OR

Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
Psalm 95

Dear God,
Give us the courage to ask you for the water that springs from the rock of our salvation, your beloved and our hope, Jesus.
Amen



One of my most cherished possessions is a picture I found one day at the goodwill bins under broken vacuum cleaners and shattered Christmas decorations. It cost $1.14, weighing somewhat less than a pound. It is a small framed picture of a shih-tzu, in a garden of yellow flowers with a bow on his head. The caption reads: ALWAYS BE READY TO MEET JESUS.

If someday I am a person with all of her belongings in a shopping cart, this will be one of them.

I have spent more time than I should be willing to admit in public meditating on this image.

In the south the phase “being ready to meet Jesus” suggests impending death, such signs are posted at dangerous curves in the road, or alongside steep drop-offs. So sometimes, I imagine that this picture means that nothing is safe in this world and that even small dogs with bows in their hair could be the end of us. Am I ready to die and meet Jesus?

Other times I think the picture means that God comes to us in so many surprising ways that I should never stop seeking the face of the Holy in everyone I meet. Even silky-coated cat-sized dogs can be glimpses of God. We just never know when we are going to meet Jesus.

The woman going to the well in the noonday sun didn’t know any of these clichés. She was just going to get some water.

Every day she comes to this well. Every day she fills her water jug and goes home, and every day she wakes up thirsty, and goes to bed thirsty. The longings in her heart are so deep a thirst that she barely notices anymore.

She is terrified of being alone, and yet at least five of the men she has loved have left her. She has tried to quench her thirst in the arms of love or at least companionship.
Doesn’t she know that the dry places in her heart can’t be watered that way?

Do we know that?

Are we not the same as the woman at the well?

Some of us seek to quench our thirst with the waters of information, knowing things others do not know. I have a friend who compulsively watches the news, she is terrified of not knowing what is going on in the world, as if the knowing will keep her safe.

Some of us seek to quench our thirst with the waters of respect. If we can just do everything right, then people will admire us and that dry painful scratch at the back of our dusty throats will be soothed.

Some try to extinguish the dehydration of the soul with literal drink, others in pills or food.

Some seek the waters of pleasure to anesthetize the thirst that keeps us awake at night.

But we are all thirsty.



Thousands of years before a nameless woman goes to the well in the hot noonday sun, the people of Israel were on their way to the promised land from the not-at-all loaded place named the “desert of sin.” Moses had led the people to a place to camp that had no water.
The people were thirsty, their children were thirsty, their animals were thirsty. The people were scared and wondered what would become of them. They begged Moses for water. so Moses, feeling completely overwhelmed by his responsibility turned and complained to God. What should I do? he asked. They want water. I am so tired Lord, how do I give them water?

Then with a smile God said- “follow me, and bring that trusty staff of yours.”

So, God led Moses to a rock and striking it as God told him to do, cool refreshing water streamed out.
Water to satisfy the thirst of parched, scared people.



Thousands of years go by, and one day Jesus is traveling with his friends, and he is tired and he is thirsty. So he stops by a well to rest as the noon sun beats down while they go shopping for food. He is sitting there, when this thirsty woman comes by. Jesus says to her “The water that I will give will become in you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life, you are known by the God who loves you. I see who you are and I love you."

We are a thirsty people. We are a parched and scared people.

Here is the promise: If we drink from the well of being seen and known by the God who loves us, if we sip that living water, we will loose our thirst for the wells of this world. If we can truly taste what love feels like slipping down our dry throats, the wells we have been haunting our whole lives will seem stale, and bitter.

Jesus says “if you knew who I was you could not come so close to me without asking for this.”

So here we are, this close to Jesus.
Are we going to ask him?

Or are we satisfied with the old stagnant water we have been drinking all these years? The waters of money and position, or power and pride, the waters of comfort and complacency.

Or would we like a tall cool glass of love and transparency.

Are we willing to be known?
really known?
are we willing to be loved like that?

Are we willing to reach out to the rock of our salvation and beat on it with the staff of faith and drink the refreshing water of being known? Of being loved?

Can we say “give it to me so I will never have to come back to this well of shame again"


But all our longings will not be quenched by a drink of this living water, it will awaken new longings. We will thirst more and more deeply from that moment on, for justice and truth and love.

A drink of this water will ruin us for all other wells. We will never again be satisfied by half truths, and easy answers. We will not be content with being admired and not known, with being informed and not transformed, with being in positions of power and not compassion.

Once we taste living water we will thirst for it for the rest of our lives.

As Jesus turned the water at the wedding into wine, he turns the living water of himself into the common cup of our life together. The living water of the gospel becomes the rich wine of common life.

Would you drink if you were invited?

you are invited.

If you want to know who this Jesus is, if you are ready to meet Jesus, the tired and thirsty rabbi with eyes like love,

then this is the cup of salvation.

come take a sip-