Thomas E. Myers

February 24, 2008

Exodus  17:1-7

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ² The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” ³ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” ⁴ So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” ⁵ The LORD said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶ I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷ He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”

John   4:5-42

⁵ So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷ The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

²⁷ Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰ They left the city and were on their way to him.

 “The Dry Well”

Our passage from Exodus is about a complaining group who followed Moses across the Red Sea and into in the wilderness on their way to the promised land.  They were glad to be out of Egypt, but were ungrateful because of the hardships that they had to endure.  Over and over they complain…  Know anybody like that?  They looked upon their freedom as a burden, not a blessing.  Liberation alone was not considered sufficient proof of God’s compassionate care.  Nothing would satisfy them.  Scriptures hold timeless truth.  We are invited to see ourselves in the characters of the story.  When is it that we are part of a problem rather than part of a solution?

The people were ready to stone Moses when they became thirsty and there was no water where they camped.  That’s what people do first, they kill their prophets before doing anything else.  Maybe if we just complain loud enough, then maybe God, or somebody will do it for us. 

When is it that we are like these ancient Hebrews?  We ask why God allows war, yet we will not learn to curb our own anger and teach our grandchildren how to resolve problems without the use of anger or violence.  No, we think that fear and anger justify our actions, and we model that for our children.  We ask why God allows starvation yet we will not change our lifestyle, or do anything to address hunger.  We are experts at coming up with reasons why we shouldn’t help.  They brought it on themselves…  They are too lazy to work…  Maybe if they wouldn’t spend their money on smoking they would have money to buy their kids something to eat…  The list of our excuses is long and well thought out.  Maybe it is time to stop complaining and started acting in faithful response to God.

The image of water in the desert, pouring from the rock to satisfy the need of the people, is not merely an ancient miracle.  It is a statement from God.  God not only provides water, God provides living water; flowing water, fresh water, the best water.  The only difference between Moses and the people of Israel was that Moses believed God’s promise.  Moses was willing to trust God, where the people were not.  Not everyone is willing to trust where God will lead.  The choice is ours; we can choose the attitude of a dry well, or of a gushing rock.  We can trust where God will lead us or we can complain the day away.

We think that complaining relieves us of responsibility, but the cost is the lack of joy.  We do not need to lift a hand, we can complain until someone does it the way we want it.  There really is no joy in this option; it is truly a dry well.  The second option strengthens and nurtures our soul, filling our hearts with living water.  When we respond to life and embrace the journey that God has for us, our heart is changed and our attitude is lightened.  God did not solve Israel’s problems.  Moses found the water that God provided.  And the people continued to complain.  Dry wells are like that.

We move from one mountain story to another.  From Mount Horeb, the mountain of God, the holy mountain of Exodus, that produced the waters from the rock; to Mount Gerazim, that provides the waters for the springs that feed Jacob’s well.

Jacob’s well, at Sycar, is fed by underground springs, underground rivers, and it is this moving water that is fresh and cool.  Because the water is moving and not from a cistern, the people called it “living water,” a term that Jesus used with double meaning.

When Jesus appears to the woman at the well, their conversation has an almost comical quality about it.  It's difficult even to call it a conversation.  Jesus speaks of “living water” and the woman thinks of water and a bucket.  She complains and wonders how he can even speak to her, a Samaritan and a woman.   Even her response to Jesus is founded in her negative, sarcastic, dry well attitude.  Maybe this is some sort of miracle worker who will produce an unending supply of water so that I will never have to return to this well again.  After one of the longest dialogues in the entire Gospel of John, she catches a glimpse of understanding.  “This can’t be the Messiah or is he the one?”  “How is it that he knows everything that I have ever done in my whole life?”

“Jesus had that effect on people, particularly in the Gospel of John.  Nicodemus came to Jesus and Jesus spoke about “wind.”  Poor Nicodemus couldn’t tell whether Jesus was talking about “spirit” or “wind.”  Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born “from above” and Nicodemus thought Jesus said that he has to be “born again.”  Why did the woman have so much trouble understanding Jesus?  Did Jesus take delight in speaking like this?  Well, if nothing else, it is a form of story telling that helped John to get the point across.

The Gift of God’s living water is for you.  It flows even when everything is nothing death all around us.  As we move through Lent I invite you to drink from the river of living water that God provides.  Claim it.  Resist negative, parched attitudes, and embrace the joy and completeness that God intends for you.  Laugh and know that God laughs with you.

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