The stream of living water

Sermon preached at 11am Choral Mattins at St Mary’s Lapworth on Sunday 27th March 2011. Other versions of this sermon were preached at the 8.30am Said Eucharist and at St Michael’s Baddesley Clinton’s 3pm Evensong.

Third Sunday in Lent – Year A

Readings: Ps 95 Exodus 17: 1-7 John 3: 5-42

About three times a year Bishop David calls together all the clergy of the diocese to the cathedral for a “Bishop’s Study Day”. We had one such study day ten days ago on St Patrick’s Day. The topic was Pilgrimage and the main speaker was Bishop Lindsay Urwin. Now Bishop Lindsay is an interesting character within the Church of England. In 1994, at the young age of 39 he was made Bishop of Horsham, a Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of Chichester. He looked destined for great things, but in fact he never progressed from Horsham. It is possible that his very traditional views on women’s ordination made it difficult to appoint him as a diocesan bishop. Anyway in 2008 he resigned as Bishop of Horsham and took up the post of Administrator of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, based in Walsingham, a small and rather remote village near the north coast of Norfolk.
Now I don’t know how much you know about Walsingham? The shrine to our lady there goes back to the eleventh century, and a Saxon noblewoman called Richeldis. Richeldis was a window known for her good works, care and generosity towards the people around her, for her deep faith and for her particular devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. In 1061, five years before the Norman Conquest, Richeldis had a vision in which she was taken by Mary to the tiny house in Nazareth where the angel Gabriel had told Mary to expect the child Jesus. Mary asked Richeldis to build a replica of this house of the Annunciation in Walsingham. Mary showed Richeldis where to build the house by making water spring up from the ground. Now there are various miracles and strange stories associated with all this (not to mention some confusion and uncertainty), but certainly a house was built and certainly it became an important centre of pilgrimage visited by many people including several generations of kings and queens of England. Then in 1538 King Henry VIII had the whole place destroyed. It wasn’t under the 1920’s that the Shrine started to be redeveloped by the Church of England.
Now as he was telling us all this, Bishop Lindsay focused on the spring of water that Mary had used to indicate the position of the holy house. He pointed out that springs of water are very often a feature of Marian shrines. Certainly I know that this is the case in Lourdes, France, where a new water spring was an important feature of St Bernadette’s visions of Mary in 1858, and I know it is true of other Marian shrines too. Bishop Lindsay comment was that it was very typical of Mary to draw attention to Jesus. A spring of water is indeed a powerful reminder of Jesus, who in our New Testament lesson today said that the water he gives a person, becomes in them a spring of living water, welling up to eternal life.
And this image of Jesus as giving a spring of living water, water that forever quenches thirst, is an image that goes very deep. It is very mysterious and worthy of being pondered at length. It resonates with many other themes in John’s gospel and in the wider scriptures.
For example, in John 6: 35 Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. No one who come to me will ever be hungry, no one who believes in me will ever thirst”. There is this same theme of thirst being quenched by Jesus. It is as though Jesus sustains the life of believers, just as bread and water sustain our earthly lives. Jesus takes this even further, perhaps making a link to the Eucharist, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise that person up on the last day, for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.” (John 6: 54)
Also in John 7: 37-38 Jesus cries out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, let anyone who believes in me come and drink”. John refers to a scripture [what scripture?] “from the heart shall flow streams of living water.” This explanation reminds of us of the blood and water that streamed from Jesus’ side when he was pieced on the cross (John 19: 34), and also the river of life that rises up from the throne of God and from the lamb, and flows through the recreated New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation (22:1). John also states that Jesus is talking of the Holy Spirit when he talks of streams of living water (John 7: 39) and indeed we often think of the Spirit as the sustainer of life.
But in our New Testament lesson there was another explanation of God’s gift for sustaining life, as bread and water sustain us when we are hungry or thirsty. When the disciples ask Jesus to eat something, he says that he has food they don’t know about. He says, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me.” So Jesus himself is stained by doing the will of the Father in heaven.
And in so many ways this is true for us too. It is by doing what God wills for us that we grow into what God has created us to be. It is by doing God’s will for us, that our particular way of serving the people around us is revealed. This is where our true identity is found; it is revealed in doing God’s will.
So as we think of Jesus as the stream of living water, welling up to eternal life, so let us focus on doing God’s will in our lives, moment by moment, day by day and so let us be sustained by Jesus, who is himself sustained by doing the Father’s will. Amen.