Worship for the Lord’s Day, November 22, 2009

Scripture Reading: John 4:5-23

Rev. Lorelei Hillman

Have you ever noticed that, at times, our lives seem to follow a theme?  There has definitely been a theme running in my life over the past few weeks: Water.  First, there is the leaky faucet in my bathroom…  J  Then, water was a big topic on the Border to Border trip to Mexico that I took this month.  We started in AGUA Prieta, just over the border from Douglas, Arizona.  One of the primary concerns we talked to migrants about was ‘how will you get enough water if you cross into the United States through the desert?’  They are often told that it will be a simple one-day trek, and a single gallon of water will do fine.  We know that it takes at least three days to get anywhere, and that they will need much more than a gallon of water a day to survive.

On the third day, we journeyed to the southern tip of Mexico, to the state of Chiapas, and drove up into the mountains to stay in the homes of families involved with the Café Justo/Just Coffee cooperative.  Water was easy to find there – it was hanging in the air!  The humidity was very high, especially for those of us from Arizona, and many afternoons, the rain storms roll through, drenching everything in sight.

Each day began with water, particularly for me!  The bathroom facilities were quite different – their open-air “shower” wasn’t a shower at all, but a small cement cubical next to the kitchen well, and the procedure involved filling a small bowl from the well to pour over yourself as you soaped up and rinsed your hair and your body.  Their toilet had no flush mechanism.  We had to fill a bucket from the well before we went into the bathroom, then pour the water down the toilet to flush it.

Then there was the afternoon we walked up a mountainside, and down a stony, muddy, path into the jungle, around a corner, to see a gorgeous big waterfall pouring down over the rocks above our heads!

We had to drink purified water, processed by the Café Justo co-op.  The family we stayed with said that diseases had been reduced radically since they got the purifier, and we saw small tanks in may places as we traveled about the region.  The co-op sells it at a very low price, and gives it free to schools, medical offices and churches.

And of course there was the water of our sweat, as we walked up and down the steep mountainsides to learn more about shade-grown coffee and how its cultivation helps prevent landslides during hurricanes by promoting the planting of cover trees and ground cover plants.

Well, we know about water here in Arizona, too, don’t we?  We, the people of this congregation, the residents of Arizona, are desert-dwellers.  We, of all people, should understand the importance, the significance of water.  We cover our lawns with gravel, plant mequite and palo verde, sahuaro and agave.  We turn the water off when we brush our teeth, install low-water-use toilets, time our showers.  And we drink water everywhere we go: big glasses of ice water at restaurants, water bottles in our cars, camel packs when we’re hiking.  To us, water symbolizes life.  Without it, nothing can grow.  No flowers or trees, no fruits or vegetables, no animals or people.

To us as Christians, water also symbolizes new life – the death of the past, and the new life in Christ, the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit whose presence changes everything and guides us into God’s hope for us.

We use water every day, but how often do we reflect on its deep meaning?

Like the woman at the well, we are usually going through our every-day lives accepting our situations, the limitations of our own problems, the limitations others put on us, what society dictates, our labels, the ‘way it is,’ until we are confronted by a stranger at the well.  We’re “minding our own business” when Jesus arrives and offers us a different kind of water.

Jesus challenges us - what we’ve always known.  The well of our ancestor Jacob with its cool water can no longer satisfy our thirst in the heat of the day.  Jesus says, “Have a drink of eternal water.”  “Ha!”  We answer, “Where’s your bucket?”

Jesus doesn’t fall for the distraction.  Instead, he asks a few questions about our faith.  But they’re not the questions we would ask:  Is it fun?  Are you bored?  What do you get out of it?

His questions are darker, and more disturbing:  How dehydrated are you?  Shouldn’t your faith fix that – forever?  And what about the life you’re living - how’s that going?

That hurts, so the woman strikes back. “Fine,” she says, “but isn’t it your people who want me and my people out?  What does my faith (or lack of faith) matter to you?”

Listen carefully, because Jesus stretches out his arm and pours out the water she’s been drinking all of her life: “The hour is coming,” he says, “when you, me, all of us, will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”

Location, he says, has nothing to do with it.  The argument of centuries is false.  There is no reason for my people to covet a chunk of real estate, or for your people to cling to the past.  This isn’t what God wants.

But the day – today! – demands a new understanding, greater than yours (here on this mountain), greater than ours (in Jerusalem), greater than your temple or our temple.

Now, and for all time to come God wants something greater - worship that is free and authentic, the outpouring of thanks that comes from being loved, from the full realization of God’s goodness to us.  “The hour is coming, and is now here,” he says, “when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.”

God does not want you to come for worship when you have everything figured out, when you are pretty and clean and righteous.

God is seeking, calling, longing to see people who are honestly thirsty, whose lives are a wreck, people who want to be free and are willing to risk giving up their broken past for a living-water future.

When Jesus shows up at your well at noon today, will you drink the water he is offering?