Living water

Preached at St Alphege Church on Sunday 24th February 2008 at 11am Eucharist
Third Sunday in Lent, Year A

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


Perhaps, like me, you were sometimes frustrated by the weather last summer. Apparently it was the wettest summer since better records of rainfall started to be collected in 1914. Although autumn 2007 was relatively dry the winter has been wet and flood warnings seem to have become common place. Flooding along the River Severn and the River Avon seems to have become routine and the residents of Tewksbury could be forgiven for wishing that there was far less water around.
How different all this is from Palestine where water is a scarce resource and the perpetual threat is not flooding but rather draught. In biblical Palestine collecting the water needed for the day, was a significant daily task, and one that could become critical in times of draught. Water for drinking, for washing, for watering animals and plants was a precious commodity associated with sustaining life, cleansing bring life to the desert. People in Gloucestershire today may find it rather hard to think of water in such a positive way, but that is the mindset that we need if we are to understand our scripture readings today.
First of all we have the reading from Exodus where the Israelites are in rebellion against Moses and against God because of the lack of water. They start to say that they would have done better to stay in Egypt where at least there was water to drink. Moses asks God what to do. God tells Moses to go and strike a particular rock so that water will flow. Moses does as God tells him, water flows from the rock. The people have plenty to drink and the crisis is averted. However there is something unsatisfactory about the story. It is one of very few places in the bible where God appears to relent to people who are fighting against him. God often relents to people who repent, plead to him or who cry out for help, but it is very rare that he relents to people who struggle against him. Moses names the place Massah (which means trial) and Meribah (which means contention) because there the people put God to the test.
Unease about this incident pervades the Old Testament. The same story is told in the book of Numbers, chapter 20 and in this account God blames Moses and Aaron for their lack of belief during the incident. God declares that Moses and Aaron will not therefore lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. This judgement is repeated in Deuteronomy chapter 32. In Deuteronomy chapter 6 the Lord gives a specific commandment; do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you did at Massah. Psalms 95 and 106 both dwell on the incident, recognising God’s displeasure at being put to the test.
Water is also a key theme in our gospel reading. Jesus talks about the gift of living water, which he wants to give to us. This point comes up in Jesus’ remarkable and wonderful conversation with the Samaritan woman. One of the remarkable things about the conversation is the taboos that it breaks. And these are broken for a very specific purpose. They are broken to show that the love of Jesus, and the gospel message is for everybody… for everybody. The first taboo is that in this kind of situation a man like Jesus would not be expected to talk to a woman. But the gospel is for women every bit as much as it is for men and Jesus does not hesitate to talk to the woman. The second taboo is that as Jew, Jesus would not be expected to talk to a Samaritan. The Jews looked on the Samaritans as a people which had abandoned key parts of its Israelite heritage and religion during the Jewish exile of the sixth century BC. The Samaritans had interbred with other peoples and now practised what the Jews saw as a corrupted version of the Jewish religion based around their own temple on Mount Gerizim. Jews would not voluntarily associate with Samaritans, and would normal seek to avoid travelling through Samaria. But Jesus clearly recognised the Samaritans, like the Jews and the Gentiles, as sons and daughters of the one father in heaven, and so as brothers and sisters to be loved, and as people with whom the gospel should be shared. In his conversation with the Samaritan woman Jesus suggests that although salvation comes from the Jews, it comes for all people. The hour has come when worship will no longer depend on temples, be they in Jerusalem or on the mountain in Samaria. Rather the Heavenly Father seeks anyone who will worship in spirit and in truth. Jesus stayed two days in the Samaritan City to preach and to teach, and we are told that many came to believe in him, because of his word. We are told that they recognised him not so much as the saviour of Israel or the King of the Jews, but rather as the saviour of the World. And so it is that God’s agenda for the messiah and for the Jewish people is shown to be far greater than they had ever imagined. The love of Jesus is for everybody, without distinction; it is a universal love, and the kingdom that this love brings is a kingdom for the whole world.
This fact that Jesus’ love is for everybody…that it is universal, has implications for us as we seek to grow into the likeness of Christ on our journey towards heaven. We too are called to love everybody and this is very challenging. It is usually easy to love the people who we instinctively like, but it is much harder to love the people we don’t like. It is usually fairly easy to love people who are like us, from similar backgrounds and with similar aspirations, but it is much harder to love people who are very different from ourselves. At yet this is one of the key characteristics that distinguishes real love (the love of God) from merely human love. Probably most of us still need to grow in love, so that our love becomes more universal, more open to all, more like the love of God.
And when we think of loving people who are very different from ourselves I think it is worth clarifying a little about what that requires and does not require. To love someone does not require me to agree with their politics, or their lifestyle, or even their morals. Jesus presumably did not “agree” with the Samaritan woman’s religion or with her propensity for getting through husbands. Despite these things he did what he could to build a relationship with her, and to help her on her journey towards God. He spoke to her, offered her living water and called her to worship in spirit and in truth. Love requires us to look beyond our own thoughts and feelings and see the person in front of us as someone created by God, loved by God, who is called by God to share in the life of heaven just as we ourselves are called. Love calls us to do practically what we can to help that person. Very often, that means listening to them, being ready to set aside our own thoughts and feelings in order to be properly attentive to the needs and aspirations of the person in front of us.
So let us pray that the Lord will give us his living water to sustain our hearts and to help them grow in love for everyone. May the living water wash our hearts of all prejudices. May our love may become pure and free of self interest. May Christ’s living water in us become a spring welling up and bringing new life to those parts of our being which are arid and dry like a desert. So may the love of God in us grow, and bring us and many others to eternal life. Amen.