February 24, 2008  Third Sunday in Lent

Zumbro Lutheran Church, Rochester, Minnesota

Pastor Gary E. Benson

 

                                                 “Thirsting for Life”

It was 2005 on a very warm summer’s day. The small group of motorcyclists I was with had traveled through Yellowstone National Park, we were headed east through warm and windy Wyoming. The landscape was barren; the air temperature (according to the bank) was 102 degrees.  Add to that, literally sitting on top of an engine and traveling across heat radiating black asphalt, it was “the perfect storm” to create great thirst.  We did not have to be told how thirsty we were!

 

In our text for today, Jesus too had been traveling. he arrives in a Samaritan city called Sychar around high noon.  Hot and thirsty, tired out, he headed for the city well, typically a place of water and refreshment. On that hot day in Sychar the city well would also be a place of encounter, opportunity, and engagement with that one labeled, “the Samaritan Woman.”

 

My question, if not challenge today, is could such exchange/encounter that Jesus shared with the Samaritan women be a model, a strategy for us in terms of being not only “tellers of the “old, old story,” but also of being witnesses of and for Jesus Christ to a “thirsting world” in the here and now?”

 

That said, I suggest in this text Jesus demonstrates a simple yet profound strategy for dealing “with spiritual thirst” (or the yearning of the soul for peace, contentment, hope).  I shared the specific strategy with our G.I.F.T. (Growing in Faith Together) group a number of weeks ago.  I suggested then, and now, that at the well at Sychar, and countless other occasions throughout scripture, Jesus shares three key elements for engagement/discipleship.  First, he meets people where they are at. Second, he listens to their story, and third he invites them to come along. ”Come along on a journey of truth, repentance, reconciliation, salvation, and witness.”

 

Let’s unpack this thought. Recall our text. Jesus, being thirsty from his journey, goes to the city well for water. There he engages the Samaritan woman in conversation. The Samaritan woman was, as we read, a person we would say “with issues.” So many issues, with such a reputation, that she went to the well at noon, while the quote “regulars of the community are taking a rest from the heat of the day.”  Aware of the woman’s story, Jesus doesn’t say, “Let’s go to the synagogue; let’s go here or there, I need to share concerns and issues regarding your life and lifestyle.”  Rather, right there, at the well (under the beating sun), Jesus engages the Samaritan woman by simply asking, “Give me a drink.” She responds quickly and according to culture, “What are you, a Jew, asking me, a Samaritan, for a drink?”

 

Ah ha, now, Jesus, “baits the hook.”  “If you knew the gifts of God and who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked of him and he would have given you living water!” What happens? Like water spewing from a broken pot, she simply pours out the story of her broken, “thirsting”  life -- the good, bad, and ugly of it. It just flowed out.  Having listened to her story, Jesus does not share words of pity, or judgment, rather of possibility. The possibility of a new life direction: “Who drinks of this living water will thirst no more.”

 

In that regard, I am reminded of words to a gospel song, “How long will this world look up seeking to fill its cup, to realize that God’s hand is reaching down.” With the Samaritan Women and Jesus, there was reaching up and reaching out, but Jesus was not putting down.  With compassion Jesus affirmed the level of her thirst (your story is your story / your past is your past). Yet he invited her to a new source of living water from which she would thirst no more.

 

Today, even though our stock market and the economy is struggling, it has been said that so many Americans have become so comfortable they sense  no need to hunger or thirst for anything (outside of what they can buy, control, possess). But tell that to the “thirsting souls” looking for peace and consolation in Cottonwood, Minnesota, following the tragic and fatal school bus accident this past week. St. Augustine wrote, “Only those who thirst for God can have their thirst quenched.” Or as the Gospel of John records, “My soul is restless Lord, until it rests in thee.”  (John 7:37)

 

Today, as a community of faith, we are not gathered at the well rather around the baptism font – that which has been called, “God’s well of forgiveness and grace for the sin parched soul.”  And isn’t it here, as we bear our story, be it our confession, we open ourselves up to receiving God’s grace showering down, refreshing, forgiving, and empowering us with “living water?”

 

If you had opportunity to read the faith stories of ZLC members in this book, Ordinary People of Extraordinary Faith, or attend a Lenten breakfast, reality is this, even though each faith story is SO different, each story shares a common journey of “claiming the One who is the Living Water; claiming the One who refreshes the soul with forgiveness, grace, and a future of hope.”  Furthermore, as we publicly affirm that story, we are not simply tellers of the “old, old, story,” but proclaimers of Jesus Christ in the here and now: 2008.

 

So it was also with the Samaritan woman.  After her encounter with Jesus, she left her former life behind. She literally left her water pot behind to give testimony to the Lord who saves, delivers, and heals; who refreshes, empowers, who changed her life.  She was transformed from one labeled a sinner/outcast to a witness and evangelist. Jesus had met her where she was at, listened to her story, and she choose to take up the invitation to a Spirit and grace-filled life.

 

Later today, ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson will be here at ZLC for a conference.  The Bishop does not hang out at “water wells,” but he has made it a practice to, shall we say, “leave the ivory tower of ELCA church headquarters in Chicago” to journey to the hot, cold, dusty, and frozen places of the ELCA -- literally and figuratively.   And “meeting people where they are at” throughout the ELCA (in the name of Christ) he asks/invites engagement.  “How is God working in your life?  How is God fulfilling that thirst for meaning, hope, purpose, for you and others through your congregation?”  Such question baits the hook, invites our witness and faith stories.

 

By our presence here today, we affirm our spiritual thirst, and together we celebrate “the One Jesus Christ who meets us/ listens to us/ and then invites daily “to living waters” of freedom and forgiveness.

 

As the Samaritan woman, may we put behind all that has weighed us down, and, as water flowing from a broken pot, may our lives give witness of God’s grace flowing onto parched thirsty souls around us with invitations of hope, life, and refreshment in Jesus’ name.