one who matters

3rd Sunday in Lent

            I grew up watching Western stories on TV and at the movie theater.  My heroes then were Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.  One thing I learned from watching those Westerns is that a cowboy had everything he needed for survival somewhere attached to his saddle.  If he needed protection from the rain or cold, the cowboy had it with him.  If he needed food, it was in his saddlebags.  And, of course, cowboys always had their canteens with them.  When they rode out into the open plains, they had to carry their own water.  If they didn’t, it could mean a threat to their survival.  Some of those shows I watched showed a cowboy running out of water, turning his canteen upside down, and nothing coming out of it.  Whenever that happened, that cowpoke was in a heap of trouble.  That’s kind of the fix we see Jesus in today in our gospel lesson.  He’s thirsty from traveling.  He’s come to a town in Samaritan territory to Jacob’s well.  People traveling at this time carry with them a kind of canteen.  It is a leather bucket from which one may take a drink.  It’s also useful for drawing water from a well or a stream.  Jesus doesn’t have his bucket with him.  It might be with his disciples, who are now on a grocery run.  In any case, Jesus has no water bucket.  So he needs the hospitality of a stranger.

            Notice:  The stranger in question here is a Samaritan woman.  What makes this encounter highly charged is that Jews and Samaritans don’t have much to do with each other these days.  It’s a long-standing feud.  The Jews say Jerusalem is where God is to be worshiped.  The Samaritans say it is on Mount Gerizim.  From the Jewish point of view, the Samaritans have an altered and insufficient Bible.  That is to say, it’s not all there.  And what is there has been doctored to suit the Samaritans, at least from the Jewish perspective.  To see this woman today from the Presbyterian point of view, she would be, say, someone who attends one of those prosperity-preaching mega churches.  We preach from the whole Bible.  They preach texts that support the “give-to-get” theology.  We preach about discipleship.  They preach about success and becoming wealthy.  We preach about taking up our cross and following Jesus.  They avoid any topics that might be a “downer” or make great claims upon the worshiper, except for her pocketbook.  We worship in a church that employs a prepared order of service, and what the congregation says is in bold print.  They have a free style of worship.  If they want to say “amen” during the service, they don’t need any bold print to tell them when.  Presbyterians-mega church, Samaritans-Jews, this mountain-that holy place.  Who’s right?

            Doesn’t matter!  That’s what Jesus says.  Mount This or Mount That, Presbyterians or mega church, the whole Bible or only the prosperity parts.  Those issues aren’t going to matter when the time comes when God will break in to human history.  They won’t matter in the end times.  And Jesus makes it clear to the Samaritan woman that this time of God’s inbreaking has arrived.  “You worship what you do not know,” Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  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.  God is spirit,” Jesus tells her, “and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.”  So if we are in the days when God is breaking in to human history with his saving activity, a new question becomes paramount.  The crucial question is:  Where can I find God?  That’s the question that matters in these days of God’s saving activity.  Where can I find God?  That question points to the universal human thirst.  We all thirst for God, for the one who put us here, for the one who gives human existence meaning, for the one directing human history toward some purposive goal.  The psalmist expresses it this way:  “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”  That’s the question that matters.  Where can I find God?  Where can I go to get the spiritual water that will quench this universal human thirst?

            We get an answer from what we see.  We see Jesus asking this Samaritan woman for a drink of water.  He doesn’t have his water bucket handy, you remember, so he needs to accept this woman’s hospitality.  Nothing strange here, you may be thinking.  But the Samaritan woman thinks otherwise.  During this conversation in which Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for a drink, she inquires of this Jewish stranger who has approached her, “What’s up with this?  This is strange, don’t you think, a Jew asking a drink from a Samaritan!”  True enough.  Jews and Samaritans don’t associate together.  A Jew wouldn’t drink from a Samaritan bucket.  This is strange!  Stranger still is what Jesus says back.  “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.”  Jesus uses the phrase hydor zon, which means both “running water” and “living water.”  The woman takes the normal meaning for Jesus’ words, “running water.”  Running water is to be preferred to stagnant water, and the woman wants some.  If she had running water, she wouldn’t have to keep coming to this well again and again and again.  So she says to Jesus, “Sir, I’d like some of that water.”  It’s the right request, but for the wrong reason.  She doesn’t understand Jesus’ offer.  He isn’t offering her “running water,” but “life-giving” or “living water.”  Jesus began by asking water of her.  Now he’s offering it.

            Let’s stop and look at what is happening here.  First, Jesus is reaching out to this woman who is so despised by the Jews.  She is an outsider.  An outcast.  Jesus’ mission goes beyond the insiders to the outsiders.  And notice how.  He crosses two conventions of his day to show her that, in his eyes, she is a person of value.  He speaks to the Samaritan woman.  A Jew isn’t supposed to speak to a woman in public.  Jesus does.  And she’s a Samaritan.  An outsider.  One who is despised by Jesus’ own people.  Jews don’t talk to Samaritans.  Jesus does.  Jesus reaches out to her.  Speaking with her demonstrates to her and to all that she is one who matters to Jesus.  She has value in his eyes.  And when you felt God in Christ tug at your sleeve, did you experience your point of contact as being offered to everyone in general, or did you experience it as being highly personal?  Amateur radio operators, in order to begin a radio conversation, will open the mike and say, “Hello CQ, CQ, CQ.”  A rough translation:  “Hello out there.  I’ll talk to anybody.”  Is that how God tugged you on the sleeve?  Or was it to you personally?  In my experience, it was personal.  When God reaches out to you in Christ personally, you know you matter to God.  When that Bible passage speaks to you directly, you know God has spoken to you personally.  When that sermon seems to be speaking to you directly, that may be God calling attention to that message, because it is intended for you personally.  When God reaches out to us, we know we’ve been addressed by God directly.  So, look at who you are, one who matters!  You matter to God.

            Notice what else Jesus does.  He offers the Samaritan woman “the gift of God.”  Jesus offers the woman “the gift of God.”  What is that?  The gift of God is Jesus Christ himself.  It might be more correct to say the gift of God is the gift of God’s own self in Jesus Christ.  At the Lord’s table, I lift up the bread and the cup right before the moment the elements are given to you.  With the bread and cup raised, I say, “The gifts of God for the people of God.”  At the Lord’s table, the bread and the cup are the symbols for God’s gift of himself in Jesus Christ.  In his conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus employs the image of “living” or “life-giving” water.  The answer to our question, Where can I find God? is in the person of Jesus Christ.  God in Christ is the source of the “life-giving” water that quenches the universal thirst for God.  Jesus Christ embodies God’s universal call made though the prophet who called out like a merchant in the marketplace, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.”  What satisfies the universal human thirst for God is for God to give himself in Christ to each one of us.  Individually.  Each one, as one who matters.