Year A Lent 3 2023 Thirsty

 Year A Lent 3, 12 March 2023

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Thirsty”

Collect

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

John 4:5-42

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

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.” 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.”

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; 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, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

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?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ John 6:35

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ John 7:37-38

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ John 19:28

Jesus promises to quench our thirst. And yes, in today’s Gospel reading, and on the cross, Jesus got thirsty.

Thirst is a human need. We all know what it is like to be thirsty. In our age where we have access to so many beverage choices, it is surprising that 75% of us are chronically dehydrated, supposedly. (Source) Now that stat has been in question by the medical community, but suffice to say, we should all be drinking more water. It comprises approximately 60% of you if you are a man, 55% if you are a woman. (Source) 

Water is life. Period.

One of my favorite non-fiction books is “In The Heart of the Sea” by Nathaniel Philbrick where he tells the tale of the whaleship Essex and its destruction by a sperm whale in the Pacific. This true story was the foundation of the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Beyond belief, the suffering of the survivors is an even more horrific story than the fiction account. Philbrick goes into agonizing detail on many subjects, and one of them is thirst. Picture yourself in a small boat in the middle of the Pacific, no shade from the sun, no land for hundreds of miles, and you are thirsty. This is a lengthy quote, but this stayed with me so long, I feel the need to share it in its entirety.

“In 1906, W. J. McGee, Director of the St. Louis Public Museum, published one of the most detailed and graphic descriptions of the ravages of extreme dehydration ever recorded. McGee's account was based on the experiences of Pablo Valencia, a forty-year-old sailor-turned-prospector, who survived almost seven days in the Arizona desert without water. The only liquid Valencia drank during his ordeal was the few drops of moisture he was able to extract from a scorpion and his own urine, which he collected each day in his canteen.” (p. 126)

[The next phase] “McGee describes as the "cotton-mouth" phase of thirst. Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth.

“Even though speech is difficult, sufferers are often moved to complain ceaselessly about their thirst until their voices become so cracked and hoarse that they can speak no more. A lump seems to form in the throat, causing the sufferer to swallow repeatedly in a vain attempt to dislodge it. Severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate.

“…The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as "a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth." Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers are known to moan and bellow. Next is the "blood sweats" phase, involving "a progressive mummification of the initially living body." The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood.

“The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying sensation of drowning. Finally, as the power of the sun inexorably draws the remaining moisture from the body, there is "living death," the state into which Pablo Valencia had entered when McGee discovered him on a desert trail, crawling on his hands and knees:

“[H]is lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky; his nose was withered and shrunken to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; his eyes were set in a wink-less stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself black as the gums . ..; his skin [had] generally turned a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; his lower legs and feet, with forearms and hands, were torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without trace of blood.” pp. 127-128

Most of us have never truly been thirsty, but the fight to avoid what I have just described is so deeply woven into our DNA, when we are thirsty it becomes an obsession. We have to have a drink, and we have to have it right now. For most of us, that is something easily remedied, so we do not ever, not once, truly think about it.

When we see the woman at the well, wanting to get her basic needs met, she probably was out there when she was to avoid people. The heat of the day is not the time to go and get water, unless one has no choice. At noon she wanders out, I think to be alone and avoid the ridicule and scorn. She is ashamed enough on her own without anyone else adding to it. And then she sees Jesus at Jacob’s Well. And he has the audacity to ask for water.

He was thirsty. She was thirsty. But they had thirsts for very different things. 

As is his fashion, Jesus stepped in, reframed the question and asked her to step up to a deeper level of meaning and purpose. 

I love when the disciples showed up Jesus is so ebullient that he does not want lunch, he has been filled with that higher meaning and purpose. Floating on Cloud 9 as we might say.

As we continue on the road to Jerusalem in Holy Week, for what do you hunger? For what do you thirst?

Jesus desired life change for the woman he encountered. It sounded like she had had such a hard life. I am glad that Jesus enabled her to start fresh, to have a do-over. Lent enables us all to have that opportunity.

Yesterday on our Vestry Retreat, we spent time talking and getting to know one another. We talked about our callings and the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Both are so important. The Holy Spirit prompted the woman at the well to run into Sychar and tell everyone that she had found the Messiah. Prompting. Her Call may be something completely different.

Do not confuse the Call of God in your life as an excuse to avoid the Prompting you may receive. Someone recently told me a story of how they felt a nudge to help someone pay for something at the store they needed, but could not afford. Diapers for a newborn. They were not called to do that, but standing in line behind them, they heard the prompting of the Spirit and did something about it. The Good Samaritan probably was not called to Medical Missions, but when someone is lying in your path, I think the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do something about it. If you have the ability to respond, you have the Response-ability.

Jesus promised us when we give a cup of cold water in his name it is the same as doing it to him.

The Thirst Jesus felt that day he asked the woman to respond to. A cup of water from the well, that is all. But we all have needs. Food. Water. Shelter. And as we move up Maslow’s Hierarchy, the needs get more profound and harder to fulfill. The Spirit Prompts us to answer the easier needs. Water. Diapers. Food. The Spirit Calls us to do the harder work together.

The Call of God on our lives is to answer the Soul Thirst that people have. The philosopher Blaise Pascal put it this way. “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” The water Jesus offered to the woman, and offers to all of us today, is for that Soul Thirst.

The Promptings of God and the Call of God, both are the work of the Church, and both are things you can do. At our Vestry retreat we talked about doing the work of the Promptings and the Callings, the Bodily Thirsts and the Soul Thirsts. Why? Because that is why we are here, and this is what we do, “THAT THE WORLD THROUGH HIM MIGHT BE SAVED!” [John 3:17]

As Jesus promised: 

‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, 

and let the one who believes in me drink. 

As the scripture has said, 

“Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ 

John 7:37-38 Amen