Year A 3rd Sunday in Lent 27 March 2011
Exodus 17: 1-7 Psalm 95 Romans 5: 1-11 John 4: 5-42
It has been so hot and muggy here lately. It is the kind of weather where you need to drink a lot of water. Water is a theme that runs through our readings this week.
Exodus 17:1-2 “The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.””
Do you recall the story? Moses asked them why they were putting God to the test and then asked God what to do. Gods answer was to strike a particular rock and from this rock water would flow. This water then refreshed and satisfied the community – until they found something else to grumble about.
Our Psalm reminds us of this story also and exhorts us to not be like those who quarrelled with Moses and put God to the test.
Psalm 95: 7b-11 “Today, if only you would hear his voice, “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”
The people of God had seen the amazing deliverance of God and yet they still turned away from God. The magnitude of God’s reality and goodness was not a leap of faith but something real and experienced. Their turning from God was not for any lack proof on God’s part but purely because they wanted to do things their own way. They were not humble before God, but arrogant and demanding. We are often the same.
Those people who had experienced God first hand did not enter the Promised Land. This should make us think very seriously about our heart’s attitude towards God. We can know God and then become arrogant and proud and in doing so, mess up our relationship with God and others in the family of God. I find it most frustrating when someone tries to judge my level of Christianity.... and even more frustrating when they misunderstand some of the traditions of the church and use it as a witness of our lack of true Christianity. We don’t really know each other’s hearts and only God does. What we are called to do is consider how we can spur one another on toward love and good deeds.... but not putting ourselves above or under anyone, humbly keeping our hearts soft towards what God might be saying to us through them.
The Israelites in the desert with Moses found themselves in a position that we often find ourselves in. They were not grumbling without reason. They had no water. We should have some understanding of this from the times we’ve been on water restrictions. So then, understand that this vast people were in the desert with their livestock and they needed water to live. The situation was dire, yet a people who knew the salvation of God should have known that God would provide.
Our reading from Roman’s exhorts us to have an attitude of trust in God when we experience hardships.
Roman’s 5:1-4 “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Our sufferings, when we are trusting in God’s deliverance, produce perseverance. Perseverance then produces character, and through that character, we develop hope. This hope is not an “airy fairy” pie in the sky kind of hope but instead it is a patient waiting for what we know will come to pass.
In our Gospel reading we have the story of a lady who had hope. She hoped that someday the Messiah would come and explain all things. She belonged to a people called the Samaritans. The Samaritans were Israelites, interbred Israelites and a mixed bag of others, some living with the religion of faith in the one true God, but then with a fair bit of the religious beliefs and practises of the nations around them and mixed with them. This was a people who were rejected by the Jews. As well as this racial prejudice rejection, the woman was also a reject of her own people.
This woman came to the well at a time when other woman would not. She had had several men in her life and the male presence in her life at that time was not her husband either. What her exact situation was we can only guess, but she was certainly humble before Jesus and responsive to his willingness to be acquainted with her. Her heart was soft towards God and she was willing to receive instruction from a man whose race had rejected her. When Jesus revealed to her that he was the Messiah, she passed the message on. Though she was a reject of that society we are told that many came to believe. Would we be willing to listen with God’s heart to someone that our society has rejected or hear God’s message through this person?
This lady was thirsty and Jesus offered her his living water. At the time she didn’t fully understand what he was saying and so he asks her to go and get her husband. At this point it seems that Jesus is revealing the woman’s thirst, but it wasn’t a physical thirst for water.
John 4:13-15 “Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.””
The water that Jesus speaks of is one that becomes a spring which wells up to eternal life. We all need this water, and we all have access to it.
We are very much like the Israelites grumbling to God to give us water and we are very much like the Samaritan woman who tries to attain water but looks for it in all the wrong places. We fill our lives with motivation for material gain, for security and for love and we know these things are good and so we use them as an excuse to not be too committed to church... we are too busy with these “other” things. But are our hearts hardened to the prompting of God? Have we become arrogant so that we don’t acknowledge the message of God that we might hear from the simple people around us? Do we use our lack of trust in God, due to our current hardships, as an excuse to grumble at Him, and as yet another excuse to not be involved with Him and His church?
Moses struck the rock and water came out. Our Psalm tells us that God is our Rock. Jesus is our rock and he was struck down for us. From Jesus, our rock, flows the living water... a spring that wells up to eternal life.
We do get things wrong and we fail, but there is a way of life. There is a way to quench the thirst that drives us into the meaningless business of life which acts as a wedge between us and the blessings of God. We can enter the “rest” of God and we do this by our complete trust in God and complete reliance on the completed sacrifice of Jesus.
Through the sacrifice of Jesus we rest in the assurance of eternal life. We rest because the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our eternal life. We rest assured because the living water is God’s provision for us through Jesus’ sacrifice and it is not something we strive and work for, but like a natural spring of water... it is simply there for us if we should but accept it.
Romans 5:6-8 “ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
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