LIVING WATER - July 13, 2008
John 4:4-30
Rev. Caroline C. Miura
Opening Prayer: Oh Spirit of the Living God, may the infinite powers of love and gratitude be concentrated right here to bring us deep peace and peace to the world. Amen.
To all you saints & faithful servants of Christ here in Wahi'awa this morning: grace, mercy, & peace to you in the name of God our Creator, Christ, & Comforter this Pentecost season. It is a joy to be worshipping with you this hot summer's morning! It has been a joy to get to know your pastor Fran these past couple of days, as well as Doris & Shirley on the Walk to Emmaus!
This morning's gospel lesson is about Jesus giving living water to a thirsty world. We have all heard how the temperature around the world is going up, resulting in global warming. How many of you know that we start out life being 99% water as fetuses? When we are born we are 90% water. By the time we reach adulthood we are down to 70% water. In other words, we exist mostly as water. As the world's bodies of water heat up, so too, our lives have begun to heat up exponentially. We feel out of control. Many have lost their way and have been looking for love in all the wrong places. Now, more than ever, a message of hope is needed. Many look to the church to provide a clear way! Yet the scriptures are hard to understand sometimes -- the whole story is not told, key parts are left out. Take, for example, this morning's radical encounter of Jesus and the woman at the well.
I don't know about you, but what I want to know in this story, the one question that is not answered, is this: Did Jesus ever get his drink of water? What intrigues me most is that Jesus is thirsty and the woman has the bucket. The story begins with the writer mentioning that Jesus chose to travel through Samaria -- through hostile territory, behind enemy lines, so to speak. The writer's next move is to tell us Jesus is all alone in this hostile country; and that it is the sixth hour -- twelve noon, that he must endure the heat of the midday sun. And to complete the picture Jesus sits himself down next to a well, but he has no means, by himself, to get a drink.
So the stage is set for an encounter: Enter, a woman of the village, who, by all accounts, should not be there at all. The usual time for drawing water would be early in the morning, when the day was still cool. That she comes to draw at noon is a consequence of her having been ostracized by her community. Because of her, shall we say, "lifestyle choices," she is no longer welcome to join the other women in their morning ritual of drawing water. So here they are, Jesus and this woman: he, the Messiah, she is a misfit without community. She has a bucket, and he wants a drink. She needs him to satisfy her thirst for spiritual life and he needs her to quench his physical thirst.
There is a third presence in the scene: a well. It is a silent witness to the intense dialogue between a man and a woman in public, which was forbidden, and between a Jew and a Samaritan, an outsider and a woman, and the daringness of both. This well opens into an underground stream. In Aramaic, water that flowed, rivers and streams and such, were referred to as "living water." Now we have all the key players in place: a thirsty savior, an outcast woman, and a silent well, taping into what I would like to imagine is a stream of tradition, living water, connecting them both, flowing beneath the two.
This passage does something no other passage does, it gives guidance about how to deal with wounds and divisions, especially those longstanding rivalries & prejudices. Belief in Jesus by an ostracized group is at its core what the story is about. The story is about religious prejudices and tensions and a church which, in its very origins, sought to overcome them with face to face encounters. There is no Christian body unfamiliar with ancient or old wounds. Blacks vs. whites, gays vs. straights, Jews vs. Christians, Christians vs. Moslems, Democrats vs. Republicans, are some familiar ones. Here in the islands, the resentment of the native-born versus the immigrant populations is one this state still deals with today. Notice how our story shows us that for healing to occur there has to be face-to-face contact with those one grew up hearing the worst about. What is needed is to share a thirst-quenching beverage with our enemies in order to discover we need each other & have more in common than we had ever realized. This idea has far reaching implications, given all the brokenness in our world
To return to my original question, we never learn in the story whether or not Jesus in fact got his drink. I, however, like to think that he did. Here is why: Jesus is all about relationships & relationships are 2-way streets. Peace, love, & understanding need to flow both ways for wholeness to happen. I believe just as she was able to quench his thirst that day, he was able to quench her thirst for eternal love. The living water & the love was freely flowing through them, connecting & binding them in relationship to one another. Verses 28 ff report: 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!...Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony." Get this, once she is full to overflowing, once she had experienced what Romans 5:5 declares: God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us, she is propelled forward by gratitude to share with those who had previously ostracized her, not her friends now, these are her enemies!, the good news of a love bigger than anything her previous 5 husbands or current lover could ever offer her.
It seems to me the real burning question for us this morning, plain and simple, is how can we get us some of his living water, so we too, will never be thirsty again? How can this story quench our thirst for peace, for love, and for understanding in our lives eternally? A clue can be found in water itself: H2O?! Recently I read a fascinating, life-transforming little picture book called, The Hidden Messages in Water, by Dr. Masaru Emoto. Using high-speed photography, Dr, Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are redirected toward them. He found that water from clear springs (living water) and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors. He has been studying the receptivity of water for over a decade and has learned only water can carry vibration. The realization that water has the ability to copy information changed his life. He found the words Love & Thanks produced the most profoundly beautiful crystals.
Water itself -H2O- can help us remember the importance of gratitude & love necessary to fill us to overflowing with God's love that has been poured into our hearts as well through the gift of the Holy Spirit. A water molecule consists of 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, represented by H2O. If gratitude & love, like hydrogen & oxygen, were linked together in a ratio of 2 to 1, gratitude would be twice as large as love. Dr. Emoto suggests that having twice the amount of gratitude as love is a healthy balance we can all strive for in our daily living, eventually linking the entire world & all bodies of water together by love and gratitude.
The important thing Dr. Emoto discovered is how we need to recover our desire to treat water with respect. And since we humans are made up of 70% water, we need to learn to respect all of humanity as well. The Buddhist practice of Gassho, which symbolizes the oneness of all beings, can help serve as a reminder for us whenever we bring our 2 hands together in respectful prayer. This gesture can serve to remind us of our need to express love (on the one hand) and gratitude (on the other hand) face to face, coming together with reverence (bowing), honoring the presence of the living water in us all.
Each time you take a drink of water this week, remember it is living, vibrant energy, that you can prayerfully consume with love and gratitude for God's love which has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. May healing waters continue to flow through your veins and your lives eternally, spilling onto others you come into contact with, sprinkling them, drenching them, soaking them with love & gratitude. May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with your spirits on your journeys to your own vulnerable encounters at the watering holes where you find yourselves thirsting. Go forth and toast to this life with others and God will be glorified. Cheers!
Benediction: Psalm 23:"My cup overflows. Surely goodness & loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life
Amen
Rev. Caroline C Miura
