Exodus 17:3-7 | Romans 5:1-2, 5-8 | John 4:5-42

We’re in a very, very interesting time in our country and the world today because of the virus.  I know many of us will be discouraged and, in many ways, feel responsible not to gather in groups, and so I’m so pleased to be able to have a vehicle through which I can speak with you, especially during these Sundays, these very crucial Sundays of the teaching of the tradition, the Judeo-Christian tradition that gives us life.  So I pray you’ll listen.  I pray you’ll tell your friends, if they can’t get to church, try my podcast or try my radio station at 10:00 every Sunday.  So that’s the first ad I’ve ever started one of my programs with, but I think it’s unusual times.  

This reading is the third Sunday, the middle Sunday this great season of Lent, and it’s considered to be a unique Sunday, because it is a Sunday upon which, during this solemn season, we’re asked to rejoice.   Laetare Sunday is the name of it.  The vestments go from dark purple to pink, and the reason for that is the message that we have in this set of readings, and I want to see if I can connect them to what I would consider to be one of the most important things to have in your heart when you’re listening to scripture, is to have a sense of the overall plan of this incredible work called scripture.  The truth is we’re being revealed clearly a message that is universal, that is so well-suited to our nature, and the topic is our relationship with the spiritual, with the transcendent, with the God who created us.  There’s a certain overarching theme that goes through, a sort of core story in the Old and New Testament, and the two need to be read together.  You can’t study one without the other.  It’s like seeing the last two acts of a play and skipping the first act.  So what is this theme?  Well, the thing about these five readings, it tries to capsulize that whole broad theme, and it starts off, as you remember from the first Sunday, where Jesus is being tempted.  His humanity is being exposed for what humanity is.  Its weaknesses are that it doesn’t like to struggle.  It doesn’t like pain or suffering.  That’s normal, but when those difficult burdens come, the task is not to try to use all your strength and power to alleviate those sufferings but somehow to seek the truth that’s in them.  Every burden, every suffering has a truth hidden in it, like gold hidden in a rock.  Then the second temptation was to not trust — to need proof before we believe something when things get difficult, when things don’t make sense, to doubt rather than to say, “I believe, and I trust, and I’m interested in how this mystery is going to unfold.”  And the third temptation was to buy into the world that just simply sucks life out of everybody.  Take those three images, and then look carefully at what this particular set of readings is trying to enable us to see.  It starts off with that stubbornness, that resistance to discomfort that was in the Israelites.  They were on the way to this freedom.  They were going through all the struggles that you and I go through to find who our true self really is, to live freely of all the pressures that are on us, that keep us from our authenticity.  It’s a struggle, and the struggle is accepted and not just accepted passively but accepted with the idea that somehow it contains truth.  And so the first reading is about the stiff-neckedness of the people, their hard, rock-like hearts, stubborn.  “I won’t give into something I don’t understand.”

Then Paul reminds us that the gift that Jesus has come to accomplish — he tells us what that is.  The gospel says very clearly that Jesus is the one who comes into the world to complete the work of the Father, to reveal completely who he is, in a way, finish the work of the Old Testament that is there to reveal who God is by revealing the fullness of who he is in a person.  So interesting that God can only reveal himself completely when he is in human form, when he’s incarnate in someone, and so that work of Jesus to reveal the fullness of the Father is going to be fulfilled in the words of the second reading where this presence of God inside of us is best described as living water flowing through us into other places that are dry and empty and in need of growth and change and transformation, insight, life.  So we have this beautiful image of the thing we’re rejoicing about is the fullness of God’s revelation, is the simplicity of a truth beyond most of our imagining.  It is God living in us, just like he lived in Jesus but not as complete or as effective.  We’re not gods, but he is God, because he was completely 1,000 percent God, also 1,000 percent human.  But right away there’s that issue.  Can you believe something you can’t understand?  Yeah, try to believe that.  It is the truth.  And then this living water, what is it?  Well, living water is different than water that just stands in a pond.  Standing in a pond, it can get polluted, or things start growing in it.  If you have a stream flowing in Colorado, the water’s coming down from fresh snow melting, it’s just as clear and as free of anything negative.  It’s just pure, flowing water.  So this image of God’s grace in us is not just water being given in a bowl from a pool.  It’s living.  It’s moving.  It’s moving from one source to another, and the source is God’s love, his mercy.  The fullness of God revealing himself in Jesus is how loving and how merciful and how compassionate, how understanding he is, and so this living water, according to Romans, is the thing that flows through us, our hearts, into the hearts of others.  

So now we see this whole image I just gave you being enacted in this beautiful encounter of Jesus with the woman at the well.  The thing that’s so beautiful about the woman at the well is she had no right to anything that Jesus was offering.  In fact, she was absolutely, totally unworthy.  She was a Samaritan.  Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans.  She was a lawbreaker.  She didn’t follow the rules of marriage, and she was a woman.  Rabbis didn’t talk to women, and rabbis didn’t talk to Samaritan women, and rabbis never talked to Samaritan women who were not keeping the law.  So she’s us.  That beautiful woman is us, the feminine part of all of us that is sensitive enough to know our weaknesses and longs for wisdom.  The feminine in every human being longs to understand things they can’t fully understand with their minds but can with their hearts.  So in this encounter, he has this conversation with her.  “If you knew who I was, you’d ask me for water.”  Now, it’s interesting that, if she knew who he was, in a way, at the beginning, she would sort of be terrified that she was somehow not worthy, but her image is not that she wasn’t worthy so much as she thought that the people that worshipped in Jerusalem were judgmental and excluded people from their group.  Does that sound familiar?  The difference between Samaritans and the Jews was simply Samaritans believed that you worshipped God, and their temple was on their mountain, and the other was on the Jews mountain.  So it’s all part of that old, ancient tradition that God dwelt in the earth, in a place, and you had to worship where your God was.  

That image of God being in a place is so fascinating, because it’s what Christianity completely blows apart.  God does not dwell in one place, not in the temple.  Agustin said a beautiful thing when he wrote — he said, “You must worship God in the temple but only when you yourself have become the temple.”  We are God’s temple.  We possess him.  I believe that’s what Jesus means when he said the day will come when we will not worry about whether God is in the Catholic church or the Baptist church or the Lutheran church or the evangelical churches or the Muslim church.  He’s in hearts.  He’s in hearts, hearts that are open to mystery and can receive this incredible gift of new life inside of them and allow it to flow and bring life to the people around.  Those are the miracles that we see in the next two gospels.  The next gospel is a man born blind, and Jesus, because of the power of God flowing out of him into this man, healed his blindness, his lack of insight.  As that miracle took place, the blindness of the Pharisees and scribes was exposed, because even when they saw the proof, they wouldn’t believe it.  Then the next miracle is raising someone from the dead, Lazarus.  

So this flowing water that’s in you and in me has the power to open the eyes of people who can’t see the fullness of God, because it goes way beyond logic and beyond reason, and they’re not living the full life that God wants them to live.  I’m not saying that people that don’t go to church don’t have that.  I’m just saying no particular church has it, and it’s not necessary that you even have a church.  God doesn’t need an institution to reach you.  The institution is there to help you, and if it’s a good institution, if it’s true to the gospel, if it’s life-giving, if it’s authentic, it is a wonderful place to be.  Why wouldn’t you want to be there if you wanted the gift that it offers?  But not every religion offers it.  Not every minister in charge of a community offers it as freely as it should be offered.  That isn’t a condemnation of organized religion.  It’s just a truth, but the greatest truth is what I’m trying to share, is in this set of readings.  It’s a beautiful description of how God reaches you and me through the love, forgiveness, compassion, understanding of people around us.  We know what that feels like when you’re loved and somebody sees you as important and valuable in their life, when they tell you that they felt something flowing through you to them that affirms something in their life.  That’s church.  That’s religion.  That’s what we’re here for, and here’s a great thing to worship and to celebrate on this third Sunday of Lent.  The middle of these five readings is so important, because it’s what the first two readings lead up to and what the next two readings — it just explains how it works.  What an important set of gospels.

Father, you invite us to rejoice at the truth of who you are and most especially who you are within us and how you radically change the reason for us being here.  It’s not about being comfortable.  It’s not about being successful.  It’s not about somehow achieving everything we want the way we want it.  It’s about service.  It’s about caring.  It’s about giving life, life-giving, wisdom and strength.  Thank you for this extraordinary ministry that we all carry within our hearts to the circle of friends we have, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.