Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent - "Quenching the Deepest Thirst"

The Texts

What is your deepest thirst? Where is your deepest need? What immediate needs might God be fulfilling to draw you closer, to bring you to a place where your deepest thirst can also be quenched? And no, I’m not talking about the goopy, sentimental, “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” thirst – I’m talking about what’s killing you, slowly but surely, and the thirst you have for what will bring you life, because that thirst is the deep thirst that only the living water of Jesus’ promise can quench. Let us pray: Heavenly Father, you promise living water and so we come, ordinary sinners in need of the life-giving water you offer. Fill us to overflowing with your living water, that through our baptism and your holy supper we will become conduits bearing your living water into the world that thirsts for you like parched grass on a hot summer’s day. Amen.

We have a God who loves surprises, who loves to invade the ordinary moments of our life and fill them with living water, with life and salvation. A nation of slaves, freed through a fortnight of miracles and still kicking the sand from the bottom of the Red Sea, bursts out bickering and whining because they’ve run out of water, and God pours water from the rock instead of just sending a thunderstorm. A bunch of fishermen put out to sea one night, and in the morning, after catching nothing but seaweed and old sandals all night, they throw their nets out one more time because some wandering rabbi said to do it, and God fills the nets so full they can’t hold all the fish. Surprises like this are what lead us to believe Jesus when he tells us, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Once God starts invading our lives to quench our thirst, we find that it’s like trying to get a drink from a fire hose.

The Israelites in the wilderness received water because water was their immediate need. But God didn’t stop with water. God used the wilderness experience to show all of God’s people what it means to quench the deepest thirst: a thirst for a God we can trust. Likewise, the Samaritan woman received the truth because Jesus perceived that her immediate need was the truth, both about herself and about Jesus himself. But Jesus didn’t stop with the short, easy, parlor tricks of personal revelation. Jesus used the woman at the well to quench the deepest thirst of all: through the Samaritan woman, Jesus created truth, faith and community where there had been none before.

But, if the Samaritan woman is any indication, we usually don’t even know what we’re thirsty for. She came to the well looking for water and met a Jew. She thought she’d met a normal Jew and he turned out to be a prophet. She thought she’d met a prophet, so she asked him about worship practices, and he talked about the living God. She said she believed in God, that a Messiah was coming, and he said she was now, in that moment, face to face with God himself. Every question revealed a thirst within her that she had buried deep, and every response from Jesus met that thirst and quenched it in spirit and in truth. She came to the well for water on an ordinary day, but she left a disciple and witness of the Messiah, one who had come face to face with the living God and been filled with the Spirit until its living water poured forth from her into the town where she lived. This story tells me that there are no “ordinary” moments: in the blink of an eye, the eternal, transforming, living water of the Spirit of God can come flooding into our lives and change us forever, quenching thirsts we didn’t know we had and moving us from a Tuesday’s drudgery to an awareness that the Spirit lives within us and within everything we say and do. When women came to the well described in this story, they left bearing water in their vessels for their families to drink: is it any different when we come to the well of baptism, and leave bearing the living water of the Spirit of God?

But it wasn’t just the Samaritan woman being filled here: God was quenching God’s own deep thirst, too. Jesus has a thirst for those who have been made to feel as though they were outsiders, unclean, unwelcome, less than human. God has a thirst to touch and hold all human life with care, dignity and truth: even when the life in question has been, shall we say, less than exemplary, or at the least less than perfect.

We often assume the Samaritan woman led an immoral life. Nothing in the text from John suggests this is the case: the woman merely says, “I have no husband,” to which Jesus responds, “That’s right – you’ve had five husbands, and you’re not married to the man with whom you’re now living.” It could be exactly what we think it is: a woman married and divorced five times, now living in sin with another man. It could be something else, though: in a culture where life expectancy was nowhere near what it is today, it would not be out of the question for this woman to be a five-time widow, now living with another man and terrified to marry again. But whatever her story might have been, we can say with a fair amount of certainty that her life hadn’t been a life for which anyone would hope.

I remember hearing Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak at a Lutheran Student Movement National Gathering, and he mentioned “the essential dignity and worth of every human life.” This was a man who’d grown up in a society which marginalized him and actively persecuted him for his entire life, but God used Tutu as a leader in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where sins were confessed by those on both sides of the apartheid conflict. In the case of the Samaritan woman, Jesus didn’t excuse the life she lived, but neither did he malign her worth because of it.

In fact, Jesus spent more time talking with the Samaritan woman than he did with Nicodemus, who we remember from last week’s reading. A woman married five times and now living in sin received more of Jesus’ attention than Nicodemus, a righteous Pharisee who was also seeking the truth. Nicodemus came at night, skulking around the expectations of his society, unsure about Jesus but still hoping to find out some solid information: to that one Jesus spoke bluntly, in riddles and with more than a little condescension. The Samaritan woman came to Jesus by accident, in broad daylight, with no agenda and no expectations: to her, Jesus spoke bluntly, too, but with truth and compassion. This suggests to me that when we come to God with our own expectations, with an agenda to be answered in terms of our own making, God might not have a lot of good things to say to us. Martin Luther might have described this as reaching for things that are above us, seeking God where God does not want to be found, trying to put ourselves in the place of God’s creative majesty, power and glory. When God meets us in our ordinary lives, though, invading what appears to be nothing more than daily work, God comes with truth and compassion for how we live and what we do in this life, in this world – God comes in Jesus, incarnate, enfleshed in creation and willing to meet our immediate needs and to quench our deepest thirst. This is where God wants to be found: in Christ Himself, the humble one born to Mary and Joseph, who lived a human life, who knows what it means to be tired, to hunger, to thirst.

There are times of wilderness in our lives – times when it seems like God is either ignoring us or refusing to acknowledge how deep our thirst may go. My friends Nate and Audrey had a period of time where it seemed as though God was denying them the good things many of us take for granted. In the space of a few short weeks, they lost Audrey’s father to a sudden illness, and a pregnancy for which they had hoped and prayed for several years. Who doesn’t want children in a healthy marriage? What loving child wouldn’t want her father to live to see grandchildren? In those few short weeks their lives were rocked by losses I can hardly imagine – and to add injury to their insult, Nate was a groomsman in our wedding less than three weeks after Audrey’s father died.

But life continues, even in the wilderness. Nate and Audrey did what all of us do every day: they bought groceries, cleaned the house, carried out their work as best as they could, and placed their trust in God to lead them out of the wilderness someday, to quench their thirst for joy and love. A few short years later, they started the adoption process, and eventually they were blessed with two boys, brothers from Ethiopia, and now they are trying to adopt again. They have a love for the people of Ethiopia they didn’t know before, and Audrey often expresses her amazement at how much your life can change because of how God quenches thirst we didn’t even know we had.

What was it like, I wonder, for the Samaritan woman to go to the well that day? She just needed water – like everyone else who’s ever known life in God’s creation. Perhaps her heart was still bruised from the loss of those five husbands. Regardless of whether she was widowed or divorced, you don’t lose five life partners without being wounded. She asked for help meeting her basic needs – notice that she asked, “Where can I get this water, so I don’t have to keep coming to this well?” But God doesn’t bless us like that. Nothing God gives to us takes us away from the basics of this life: the living water of the Spirit and truth changes how we look at this life. Like water from the rock, God works into situations that seem hopeless and brings life out of them, working redemption and salvation where before there was only forsakenness and despair. And once God has done this in us, we begin to see how God continues to bless in ways we never saw before, through ordinary means and ordinary people like you and me.

You think God can’t be involved in your ordinary life? Think again. You might just be taking out the garbage, changing a diaper, driving a friend to the airport: God might be invading your life or the lives of others to quench a thirst of which you or I are completely unaware. Some people say that there’s a divide between the sacred and the secular. If we believe in a God who created all things, then there is no such thing as a secular world: God is deeply committed and completely sunk into all of it. In Christ there is no such thing as an ordinary trip to HyVee, or just running down to the corner store for a pack of smokes, or going for a walk with a friend or a spouse – God uses such moments to invade our lives and begin working in us, surprising us and helping us see with the eyes of Christ how the Spirit is alive and flowing through this world. You came here this morning for good news, and here it is: there is living water flowing through you, and your ordinary life is a conduit through which the grace of God flows into the world. Like the Samaritan woman, even your questions about the things you don’t understand can be a witness to your faith in Jesus Christ, your belief that God is alive and active, the Spirit flowing into others through you. This is no ordinary day: it is the day the Lord has made, a day for quenching thirst and pouring out living water. May you be filled, today and always. Amen.