By The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Exodus 17:1-7 Romans 5:1-11 John 4:5-42
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Gen. 1:1)
Thank you, O God for the gift of Water. Water. The source of life. Water. Through water and blood we are born of a woman into this life. Through the water of baptism we are born to eternal life. Through the mingling of the water and blood of Jesus we are cleansed of all that pollutes ones life. By water and wine we are strengthened for daily life.
Through the waters of the Red Sea, Israel is saved from Egypt. By water from the Rock struck by Moses at Massah and Meribah, Israel is saved in the desert wilderness of Sinai. From the waters of the Jordan River, Jesus learns of his identity as God’s beloved son and the ministry that is his.
From a new well, called a borehole in the Bari language of the people of Kajo Keji, there is now refreshing, life-giving water in the hilltop village of Romogi, their new diocesan worship, administrative, and educational center thanks to the people of this cathedral community. Water that will assuage, refresh, cleanse, purify, irrigate, empower and baptize, bringing people to Christ and to a new fullness of life in his community. Water. Thank you, O God, for the gift of water.
For all its goodness water is also a source of power, a weapon of oppression, a reason for enmity. It is said that if water was abundant in the Israeli and Palestinian region, the other matters would soon fall away. That is a bit overly simple and hopeful, but the point is well taken that water, access to water, is a major source of division between those peoples. Indeed the Wall that is being build to fence in Palestinians meanders, not randomly, but meanly and meaningfully from water source to water source fencing in the water wells for Israeli communities.
In our own country the states of Georgia, Florida and Tennessee are in court battling over who may and may not have access to their water.
In the gospel selection from John today, we find Jesus traveling in foreign territory Samaria, stopping at a well where Jacob and his family drew their water. The enmity between Samaria and Judea was 600 years old. Each contending that salvation, the messiah of God, would come from them.
And Jesus’ need for water to drink provides the opportunity for him to demonstrate and proclaim some very important things about God’s kingdom.
He meets a woman who couldn't be more of an outsider in a people, the Samaritans, who are themselves outsiders for a good Jew, and he receives her as an insider, an intimate who has no cause for shame. He brings up her past, and her present, not to shame her, but to take away their power in showing how little they affect how Jesus and the God he proclaims receive her.
Jesus received the Samaritan woman with such love and such grace she was profoundly transformed that after meeting Jesus, she's bold enough to demand living water from him. “Sir (Man), give me this water.” By the end of the conversation, she's left her water jar behind and is rushing into the very center of the village, demanding to be heard by those who were once her tormentors. And she IS heard; many believe in Jesus because of the woman's bold testimony.
What transformed this woman could transform our world. The woman at the well was despised by her village, which was despised by Judeans, whose ancestors had been humiliated by Babylonians. From generation to generation, every humiliation, resentment, and violence had been recorded, numbered and passed down from parent to child keeping the score so that they could even it. Jesus sets all that aside.
He demonstrates in a living parable the truth that God has opened the kingdom to every race and nation and tribe and clan and family and person!
It is true for the nation of the homeless and the nation of the hungry and the nation of the imprisoned and the nation of the disenfranchised and the nation of the elderly, and the nation of the young. All those whom our society, the world, would separate or exclude out on account of their difference because they do not fit a particular category... all of them are included by Jesus in God's kingdom now, today and forever.
What is also true is that many, many people do not know this Good News. They can't prove it by their experience. Real life, the school of hard knocks, has taught them something else. And there are some who have never heard it and so can’t know it.
What God has done in the gift of his Son and the gift of the cross and the gift of the kingdom with living water is to give it to all of us for a purpose. And that purpose is to show others, demonstrate to others their worth, their purpose, their power, that they have wonderful gifts that come as graces from the God who loves them and has claimed them as his own; the beloved daughter, the beloved son - now, today and forever.
Sometimes, there are barriers that prevent people from hearing, believing, knowing this Good News. Sometimes, folks have to have their bellies filled first. Sometimes, folks have to have their bodies clothed first. Sometimes, folks have to have be sheltered first. Sometimes, folks have to have their fears acknowledged and quieted first. Sometimes, folks have to have their isolation broken through the presence of a caring person first;
Sometimes those things have to be taken care of first before they can know of this gracious goodness of God. Sometimes just in taking care of those things people have come to know because they can see and feel and hear it.
Every race, every nation, every man, every woman, every child must know that God's kingdom is theirs and that Jesus and life-giving water are available to them in every moment of their waking, working, sleeping, celebrating, suffering, caring, loving and being loved. Everyone, including you is to know that.
Please pray with me. O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world. Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of friendship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made whole and perfect in our love for all your children. Amen.
