February 24,  2008

The Third Sunday In Lent
Year A

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

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The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY

The theme for this Sunday's readings seems to be WATER. That makes sense, since between 60% and 85% of our bodies is made up of water (depending on how fat or skinny or bony we happen to be). And around 70% of the earth is covered with water, which also makes sense, since those watery bodies we have require regular "refills" of water. If we don't get sufficient water to keep our bodies well supplied, we dry up and become a bunch of dust, like what's left after a cremation of a dead body. That also makes sense, since God made the first human from the dust of the earth, and at the beginning of Lent we were marked with crosses of ash and reminded, Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. You see what we are without water...a pile of dust.

Now the thing about dust is that it gets blown all over the place. It doesn't have any say in where it is going and it doesn't know when it has arrived there. Dust has no sense of its own. It is a material that can be used and manipulated by whoever cares to bother with it. And it is scattered and manipulated also by the forces of nature.

The reading from Exodus doesn't go into detail about all these scientific facts. It simply tells us that the Israelites, whom Moses led away from Egypt where they had been slaves, were thirsty. They'd been hiking across the desert, and the dry winds make people in that situation feel pretty dehydrated. Even nowadays, we hear occasionally about people who get lost in the desert and die from lack of water. These people had been living near the great Nile River, and were used to having adequate amounts of water near at hand. They must have felt that they were dying after days of walking across the desert...and it is quite true that they were "on the way" to death after their water ran out. They were terribly thirsty. They had not yet learned to know or trust God to take care of them. For generations they had lived in Egypt and had known only the gods of Egypt, not the One God of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They didn't know how to pray and they didn't know how to trust the Lord who had sent Moses to lead them out of Egypt, out of slavery, and back home again to Palestine.

So, like people everywhere, they blamed the government. And the only government that company of ex-slaves had was God, who spoke through Moses. Not knowing much about God, of course they complained to Moses and blamed him for their thirst.

Moses, however, DID know God, so he turned to God for advice on what to do, and got the advice he needed, and followed it to the letter. And, as we have heard in the readings, it worked. Water gushed out, the people had all they needed to drink, and they were saved.

Water is truly the miracle drug of all times, isn't it?

But water is more than just two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, H2O. Did you notice what Jesus had to say about water, in his conversation with the woman of Samaria?

Jesus explained that there's water, and then again, there's living water. Water is what the Israelites needed so badly while they were marching through the desert, when they were thirsty and close to dying from lack of water. But living water...that's something else again.

In Jewish usage, living water is running water, water in a spring or stream or river. It's not stagnant. It doesn't collect dust and bugs and dead leaves and things like that. It runs over rocks, in a channel, and the process of running over rocks purifies the water, filters out solids and adds air and keeps it fresh. But that wasn't what Jesus was talking about!

The "living water" Jesus spoke about is simply faith in God. That's what the Israelites in the desert didn't have. If they had had living water, they would have trusted God, who would have given them water according to his plan, probably by leading them to an oasis where there was a spring of clear, sweet water. But they didn't know to trust God, and they were impatient and scared, so they wound up with brackish water from the rock...enough to keep them alive, but not very satisfying.

If we don't have living water in us, we become a pile of dust, and are blown this way and that way by the winds and the pressures of our life in the world. So we fall into sin because we hang out with a group of people that don't know or care about God (like the Israelites who were just freed from slavery). We have no sense of morals or of the need to obey God's laws, and probably see them as a nasty way of limiting our freedom. But if we do have living water within us, we know that it is far more important to keep well watered with faith, so that we can live God's way, and provide living water to others. And we are strong enough to resist the winds of natural desires and temptations, and the forces of society that try to blow us away and manipulate us.

But that's not all Jesus was talking about. On another occasion, at a Temple ceremony, Jesus proclaimed loudly, I am the living water! If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. He said this at the time the priests poured great jugs of water down the steps of the Temple, as a part of the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, when the Jews recall the time they spent wandering in the desert.

And so: if we have faith that Jesus is indeed God the Son, we have drunk from his living water. And if we truly believe, the faith we have will stream out from us to others, and give them also living water, faith in God and Jesus, to drink, too.

Are you filled with living water? Are you a fount of living water for others? If not, pray that you may be a fountain and a channel of living water to a thirsty, sin-filled world, and bring it back to true life again. Amen.

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