The Israelites were thirsty.

          They complained.

                   The King James translation says they “murmured.”

                             In Yiddish we’d say they kvetched.

 

Moses passes on their complaints to God.

          His patience has worn thin.

                   He may be exaggerating, saying the people are about to stone him.

                             But he has to get God’s attention somehow!

 

God tells him to take the staff –

          the same one with which the Nile river was parted,

                   which reminds Moses of the parting of the Red Sea,

                             and implies that the One who delivered the people of Egypt

                                      may now be trusted to deliver the people from thirst.

 

God promises water from the rock.

          It’s curious that the story doesn’t include the moment

                   when water actually flowed from the rock.

          And those skeptics among us,

                   those who want scientific proof of everything,

                             can ponder the fact that “water lies below

                                      the limestone surface in the region of Sinai.”

                                                (Oxford Annotate Bible)

 

Although the people haven’t said it in so many words,

          their key question is voiced at the naming of the place

                   after the people’s quarreling and testing the Lord:

                             “Is the Lord among us or not?”

 

In a desert climate, where life and death are separated

          only by reliable sources of water,

                   the promise of living water – running water,

                             drinkable water, is a powerful metaphor

                                      for God’s provision of all that is needed for abundant life.

 

But that question, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

          has surely haunted all of us at difficult times in our lives.

 

“Where is God?” has been the cry of many, from

          the concentration camps of Germany and Poland to the jungles of Vietnam,

                   from lower Manhattan to the beaches of Sri Lanka,

                   from the Gulf of Mississippi to the shores of Indonesia and Japan,

                   from countless ICUs to minefields in the desert,

                   from tent villages in Haiti to figures huddled in a cardboard hovel

                             fashioned over a heat grate in Manhattan

                             or under an overpass in Albany.      

 

This is also the question behind the Samaritan woman’s question

          about the proper place to worship the God of Israel:

                   “Where is God?  Is the Lord among us here on Mount Gerizim,

                             or is God only in Jerusalem?”

 

Jesus is the one with the physical thirst,

          but the unnamed woman at the well

                   definitely has a spiritual thirst –

                             and we don’t know whether or not she was aware of it

                                      before she met Jesus.

 

She might have been – she was an outsider:

          a Samaritan, not worthy (so it was thought) of socializing with Israelites;

          a woman, less then fully human, as it was thought, chattel to a man;

          a woman, perhaps married five times,

                   and now – perhaps – living with a man not her husband.

 

This conversation, like the one with Nicodemus,

          takes place on two levels:

                   there is physical thirst and physical water,

                             there is spiritual thirst and spiritual water.

 

Perhaps when Jesus turns the discussion to husbands,

          both are fully aware of the two levels of their conversation.

 

There’s a play on words here.

          The word for “husband” also meant “master” or “lord.”

                   Those who were the her husbands may also have been her masters;

                             the one she has now is not her master.

 

We need to remind ourselves, before we assume her to be a “loose woman”

          that a woman couldn’t divorce a man, only men had the right to divorce.

                   If she literally had five husbands,

                             it was because she had been widowed five times

                                      or because five husbands had abandoned her.

 

But it could also mean that she has had five lords, or gods, in the past,

          and has a sixth now whom she isn’t really serving.

                   If she’s symbolic of all Samaria,

                             this last lord may be Rome.

 

The interpretation would make her question about the true place of worship

          not an avoidance of the previous subject but a continuation of it.

 

Whatever the facts in the woman’s life,

          Jesus talks longer to her than he does to anyone else in all the Gospels:

                   longer than he talks to any of his accusers,

                             longer than he talks to any of his own family.

 

She is the first person he reveals himself to in the Gospel of John.

          She’s the first outsider to guess who he is and tell others.

                   She’s the first evangelist, John tells us,

                             and her testimony brings many to faith.

 

Fred Craddock writes,

          She is a witness, but not a likely witness and not even a thorough witness.  “A man who

            told me all that I ever did” is not exactly a recitation of the Apostles Creed.  She is not

            even a convinced witness: … “This cannot be the Christ, can it?”  Even so, her witness is

            enough:  it is invitational (come and see), not judgmental; it is within the range permitted

            by her experience; it is honest with its own uncertainty; it is for everyone who will hear. 

            How refreshing.  Her witness avoids triumphalism, hawking someone else’s conclusions,

            packaged answers to unasked questions, thinly veiled ultimatums and threats of hell, and

            assumptions of certainty on theological matters.  She does convey, however, her

            willingness to let her hearers arrive at their own affirmations about Jesus, and they do: 

            “This is indeed the Savior of the world.”  John immortalizes her by giving to her witness

            a name which is the very term with which he began the Gospel.  The Samaritan woman,

            the Greek text reads, spoke “the Word.”

 

And then, to his disciples, Jesus points out that

          even though it’s four months from harvest time,

                   “Look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.”

 

I believe he meant right there, in Samaria,

          there were many potential believers,

                   and perhaps the disciples weren’t seeing them

                             because they weren’t looking for Samaritans to witness to.

 

But there were many, apparently,

          who had the same thirst for living water that the woman at the well had.

                   And there are many around us, too,

                             who are virtually dying of spiritual thirst.

 

Do we have eyes to see them?

          Are we convinced that Jesus Christ is living water,

                   that God can produce water from the rock?

                             Do we know, from our own experience,

                                      that only God can slake our spiritual thirst?

 

And if the answer to all those questions is “yes,”

          then what is keeping us from sharing this good news with others?

                   Is the Lord among us or not?

 

To God be the glory, forever and ever.  Amen.