SERMON, February 24, 2008

Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42 “Is the Lord among us, or not?”

I once visited Egypt with some friends. The highlight of the trip for me was when we went to the Sinai and spent some time on the desert. A friend and I rode camels across the desert in the middle of the day, and we hiked with a guide through an incredibly beautiful white canyon. It was stark, very stark—almost no vegetation as far as we could see. When we came out of the canyon suddenly there before us was the lush green of an oasis. Now, all my life I’ve seen pictures of oases in deserts: green palm trees in the midst of barrenness. But this was far more than I had imagined. This I could see with my own eyes, and feel in my own body. The shock of the lushness of the area around the pool of water-the well- is hard to describe. Of course, it would not be something you would notice here in the middle of the rainy season when our hills are green. But in that place filled with dark bare mountains, sand beneath our feet for miles and miles, and no vegetation—the palm trees and other greenery were incredibly beautiful. And, a sign of hope: because the green meant one thing for sure: water.

Moses’ people cry out for water as they stagger across the desert. They feel like they can’t go on. They remember with bitterness the relative comfort of their years of slavery in Egypt. Looking back they wonder why on earth they ever thought it was a good idea to leave. They quarrel and complain.

From our perspective with the rains still falling, it’s easy perhaps to distance ourselves from these people with their complaints. But if you have ever been hungry, or really thirsty—or maybe you’ve been sick—not yourself—you know how easy it is to complain, and to quarrel, and to find fault, and to begin to blame. . . It’s hard to be your best self when you are in need of the basics. The people cry out, “Is the Lord among us, or not?”

One of my commentaries translates this as, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?”(1) “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” and I suppose this is, really, a cry that echoes deeply within each of us. We, like the Israelites, are a people of faith, and yet when the going gets hard—when the losses we suffer seem unbearable, when we cannot find rhyme or reason for what befalls us, when the pain is great and our own resources seem inadequate, we, too, cry out, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Even in times of my own comfort I ask this question. I pick up the paper, or listen to the news on the radio, or hear stories of violence and desperation in my own community. I wonder, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?”

And, these stories make me think about water today. About the places where it’s flooding, and the places where there isn’t enough water; places where wars are being fought over water. I think of the polluted waters—creeks, rivers, oceans. The single greatest determiner of health in the world—is not medical science, not hospitals, not immunizations, none of those things: it is clean drinking water. Clean water to drink is something we all need. We are one in that need.

“Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Jesus comes to Jacob’s well in need of clean water to drink. Jesus in need. That is where this wonderful story begins. His need takes him to the well at mid-day where he asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. What follows is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the gospels: longer by far than any conversation with his family, with his followers, or with those who challenge him and test him. It gives you pause to think about Jesus in need—that Jesus might come to us in need. But that’s where it begins. “I thirst,” he says, as he will say again later.

She is shocked by his request because she knows enough to know that he is Jewish and that he will break the law if he even sips from her bucket. Their conversation goes on though—and moves from his need to her need. “Sir, give me this water.” They are there at the well united in their common need.

And, then he asks her to bring her husband, and surprisingly I think, she blurts out her truth: she has no husband. He does not judge. He does not withdraw. In fact, he seems to draw closer as he reveals that he knows that, and a lot more. She has no husband, and has had a whole line of husbands, and is now living with someone who is not her husband. Perhaps this is why she is even at the well at mid-day—a time when no other women would be there to draw water—it being too hot and too late for that. Perhaps her story, known by all in her village causes her to come when she would not encounter others at the well. We don’t know.

But her truth—her willingness to share her truth—his acceptance of her in the truth of who she is—leads to his own sharing of his truth. For this is the first time in John’s gospel that Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah. He tells his own truth to a woman, a foreigner, one with a checkered past and present. His need and her need, her truth and his truth. In the broad daylight they stand revealed for who they are: it is a holy moment. Whoever the Messiah is, he is one before whom she knows the truth of herself and the truth that she is respected, and dare I say, loved.

The truth shall set you free—and indeed it does. The woman is really the first evangelist. For she leaves her jug and runs back into town proclaiming that she has met someone who knows everything about her. Can he really be the Messiah? she wonders to them. They, perhaps knowing much of her truth themselves, come charging out to see this phenomenon! In the end they recognize Jesus as Savior, not for what she has said, but because of what they have seen and heard from themselves. Jesus stays with them then for several days.

Such a story this one. About the boundaryless love of God. About the radical inclusivity of the good news—that asserts God’s presence with us—no matter what. No longer contained on one mountain or another, in one building or another, God is among us to be worshiped in Spirit and in truth. Spirit: the breath of God, the wind of God, the very breath we take in and out that inspirits our bodies. The word once meant “hope” as well—to despair is to have lost spirit. Wherever there is spirit wherever there is truth we know that the Eternal One is among us.

You and I know how this works—this kind of encounter. We have known how when we dare to risk telling of our need we can meet one another in mutuality. When we dare to speak our truth, we know our common humanity. We are brought together by spirit and truth. The Eternal One is present in the meeting.

I have experienced this time and again in my own life—and seen it in the lives of others. Particularly when they are on the edges of life—like the poor thirsty Israelites—when people know their fragility they can sometimes be freed from their pretenses of ordinary living to speak their need and their truth and to know God’s presence.

Once when riding a bus in Wales I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between two matrons (folks who look a good deal like me) who sat right behind me. They’d been shopping and chatted for a while about shopping—it’s pleasures and burdens. Very light conversation it was. But, then we passed a mortuary, and after a pause, one of the women began to talk about how her niece, a beautiful young woman in her thirties, had recently died of cancer. She talked just a bit about how awful that was. The other woman confessed to her friend that her own son had died suddenly several years back. He was 37 and had an aneurism. They’d given his organs to unknown others, which was something of a comfort. But, nothing really assuaged her grief. He’d been so healthy one day and dead the next. There was a silence. There was breath—spirit—there was truth—where there had been distance, there was relationship. The Eternal One was in our midst right there on that little bus.

Our thirst is deep: we long to be fully known and fully loved. “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Oh, yes. In spirit and in truth. The encounter can begin in need --when we dare to speak with one another—of our need and of our truth. When we risk listening deeply to one another—no matter our differences. When we dare to breathe in and out the precious breath of God and let the spirit take us where it will: the boundaryless love of God will set us free and make us new. Always. (1) The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised Edition, W. Gunther Plaut & David E. S. Stein, editors, Union for Reform Judaism, New York:2005.