THIRST
March 15, 1987, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Exodus .17:1-7
John 4:5-26

"Jesus said,....he who believes in me shall never thirst'™
John 6:35 (RSV)

; Jesus said one time,."The man or womah-who believes:in me will never
thirst..." : ; a.

Many generations earlier an anonymous Hebrew poet wrote a hymn for
use. in. the Temple... : oe oa

"As a-hart longs

for flowing: streams,

so longs my soul

for thee, 0 God,:

My soul: thirsts. for God,
for the: living: God.”

Somewhere between the two: between that ancient confession. — "My

soul thirsts for Ged," and: Jesus' bold promise —."the-one who believes in
me will never thirst".--is where most:of us are this morning..:: which is to

say,..thirsty, perhaps secretly, but thirsty. enough to-be here.-and:not
somewhere else: but not quite: certain about. where the water is; not quite
satisfied... : :

-:We know. the power of water: as a symbol, almost without being. told...
the. waters: of: creation... the soft showers of springtime which-cali- the...
first signs of life: from the sleeping: earth, the waters: of. our. Lake’ which
have. been scaring us.to:death recently and which refresh; delight» and
recreate us and on occasion remind us of delicate: balances and -the-place of
human beings in the creation and of all those mammoth forces inthe’ world
beside which you and I feel rather insignificant... And.the waters of
birth... There is a new toy-out for new babies... It looks like a-routine
Teddy Bear, but when you wind up the key on: this bear's back, the music you
hear is not Brahm's Lullaby, .but- something called."Womb Sounds," recorded
sound. with which the infant-has: become accustomed, and:.it is; unmistakably
water sound... It's a special gift to hear:the ocean, isn't it? :You're
really-"at" the. ocean: I've always thought. when you.can actually*hear it.

It's a reminder of something fundamental. And, of course, the water of
baptism, placed gentiy on young foreheads, representing a love so deep and
strong and refreshing that it is better acted out than explained. What a
wonderfully sacramental moment last Sunday when the two year old, quietly
surveying the surroundings during his baptism, pondering what had just
happened to him and what was on his head, came to a conclusion and when I
handed him back to his parents, announced to them and to you with clarity
and with accuracy —- “water.”

It has always been a reminder of our humanity, of our dependence, of
how fragile life is. In the literature of faith water becomes a symbol of
humanity's need for our dependence on God's grace. During the wandering in
the wilderness the people of Israel] complain and doubt whenever water is
not available. The existence of plentiful water in the Promised Land is a
sign of God's iove... "a good land of brooks of water, of fountains and
springs..." [Deuteronomy 8:7] ,

“My soul thirsts for God" the Psalmist confessed.
“The man or woman who believes in me will never thirst". Jesus said.

Somewhere between those two points is where you and I are and it is
where a woman found herself one hot mid-day at a well near the Samaritan
city of Sychar. She is one of the most vivid and intriguing persons in the
literature of the Bible. .Her story is long and convoluted. ‘It's difficult
to follow ali the way through. But. it is a very important story because it
is about issues that are contemporary. It is a story about outcasts,
despised minorities, people oppressed by centuries of racial and religious
prejudice. It is about the barriers people construct between themselves
and others and how religion - instead of destroying barriers - is sometimes
the reason they exist in the first place. It-is also about guilt,
isolation, alienation and the power of a love that cuts through all of that
and calls forth a new life, a rebirth. But most of all, I think this story
is about thirst.

Let's reconstruct it. Jesus and entourage were traveling from Judea
in: the South to Galilee in the North, through Samaria, in the middle. To
the Romans a Semite was a Semite was a Semite and the family feud between
Judeans and Samaritans was of no interest whatever. But it was real enough
to the adversaries that a Jew would walk a long way to avoid going through
Samaria. The trouble was 700 years old. it began when Jews in Samaria
intermarried with Babylonian immigrants and adopted some of their customs.
To “true believers" in Jerusalem, Samaritans were ethnically impure and
theologically compromised. They hated each other. We continue to learn
about the hatred and intolerance for which religion is frequently the
handmaid, as Christians and Moslems square off in Beirut and Catholics and
Protestants curse, bomb and shoot each other in the name of Jesus in the
streets of Belfast.

The entourage of Jesus was in Samaria and stopped, at noon, at a well
which was associated with Jacob. That well is about a mile and a half from
the nearest town - and it is about 100 feet deep. The people with Jesus
went to the town to buy food. A woman from the town showed up at the well
to draw water. Now this is becoming a very interesting situation! If you

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are a first century Jew or Samaritan, you're up on the edge of your seat.
Why is the woman here? There's a well in town. Why has she walked a mile
and a half in the heat of mid-day to draw water from a 100 foot well?
There is a reason why she can't use the town well and it will soon emerge.
In the meantime Jesus is about to do something terribly controversial,
scandalous and revolutionary. Rabbis were forbidden to be with a woman in
public, to talk to a woman, even to lock at a woman. it simply was not
done. A Rabbi was not allowed to greet his wife or sister or daughter in
public. William Barclay suggested that an ‘idiomatic phrase "bruised and
bleeding Pharisees" referred to the ones who: ostentatiously closed their
eyes when a woman approached in. public and consequently walked. into a lot
of walls and fell down a lot. Samaritan women particularly were-not to be
trusted.

What Jesus did next was as significant and revolutionary and volatile
as Sojourner Truth walking up to the "Whites Only" fountain and. drinking,
Rosa Parks one day simply refusing to go to the back of:.the bus and sitting
up front because her feet were tired, James Meredith walking up to the
registrar at the University of Mississippi and signing on the dotted line,
or Jane Doe invading the Club Dining Room at high noon - alone. Jesus
asked the woman for a drink of water.

“It's no wonder," Dorothy Sayers once wrote, "that women were first
at the cradle and last atthe cross.. They had never seen a man: like this
man." . [Are Women Human?, p..47; in Letty Russell, Becoming Human, p. 25].
In one simple act Jesus broke through centuries of racism supported by
religious bigotry. In the same act he.magnificently corrected the great,
great sin of religion which had systematically dehumanized one half of the
human race.

The woman objects because of the cultural taboos. And there-ensues a
curious dialogue which is at once complicated but also light-hearted,
almost playful. Are they conscious that when-a man and woman meet at the
/well romance happens? Of course they arel It's Jacob's well.--Jacob got
his wife at a weli. So did lsaac. So did Moses. - Are they playing gently
with the word "water," with "thirst?" He. offers her “living. water,"
literally, "running water." Does he know more about wells than Jacob, she
wants to know. He corrects her. Living- water -is not running water. It is
what she needs. to live.

Now -another theme is introduced. © “Call your husband" Jesus tells. her
and reveals the fact that she had had five of: them and the one. she is
living with, but not married to, is number six... The legal. limit on husbands
in Israel is three. Now we know what she was doing at this deep well, a
mile and a half out of town at the hottest hour of the day. She couldn't
use the town well. This woman lived so far outside’ the boundaries of
propriety that she was not welcome where other people were. She was an
outcast among outcasts. Respectable people. acted as if she didn't exist.
Their children snickered at her. Less refined: people used hard words, in
stage whispers loud enough for her to hear, to describe what_she was.

This woman has three strikes against her, Yale theologian Letty
Russell observes. "She is foreign and fallen. and female And in all that

rather clinical content it's possible to forget the fact at she was a

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deeply hurt, scarred human being. If you have in any way been a part of,
or a party to, or a close observer of, the end of a relationship, a
marriage, a "long loved love," you know how intensely painful it is.
Multiply by five ~ and. then double it because in addition to the personal
part, the culture said "failure" and her religion said "“sinner.'

- It's no wonder ‘the Disciples are shocked when they return with the
food and find Jesus and the woman talking. The story meanders on. The
woman returns to the village. The people of the village are either
impressed by what she tells them or the change they can already see in her,
because now they come out to the well to see Jesus. Many of them believe.
Jesus stays in their village two days.

The woman was reborn, born again —- if you will, because she was
willing to acknowledge her emptiness. She is a seeker. She struggles with
belief. She is tentative, curious, and her struggle is, I would submit,
like our own. Faith ~ belief in Jesus - doesn't always come easy for us.
We wish it would: ‘We wish: we could generate the simple joyful trust we
think we see in-others. But. it's a struggle for us, a process, a life
dialogue.

The woman received living water because she could say "I'm thirsty.'
it was no problem for her. ~-But-that's exactly what religious people have
difficulty saying. = The Pharisees, for instance, are confidently. and
proudly and traditionally pious. They can't say “I'm thirsty." They can't
confess need at ‘all.- Perhaps that's why Jesus chose to spend so much of
his time with poor: people, social outcasts, fishermen and prostitutes, tax
collectors and this faded flower at: the Samaritan well. He was most
comfortable with people who could confess to: something less than
perfection, people who knew their humanity, people, that is to say, who
knew about thirst.) |

; There is something absolutely basic here. If our own spiritual
“pilgrimage is to go anywhere, we must learn how to acknowledge our thirst,
to identify. the dry places in our lives, the parched. areas that need
refreshment and. living: water. :

And there is something desperately necessary here culturally,
socially, politically. Historian Daniel Boorstin, in his wonderful book,
The Discoverers, proposes that great strides in human history were always
precipitated by an acknowledgment of ignorance. People who know the world
- is flat don't have to explore it. Lewis Thomas, research biologist, head
_ of Sloan Kettering Cancer Clinic and perceptive author wrote,

“The only solid piece of scientific ‘truth
about which I feel totally confident is that
we are profoundly ignorant about nature.
Indeed-I regard this as the major discovery
of the past one. hundred years of biology.

We are at last facing up to it. In earlier
times we either pretended to understand how
things worked or ignored the problem or
simply made up stories to fill the gap.

Now that we have begun exploring. in. earnest,

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. doing serious science, we are getting.
glimpses.of how huge .the questions are,
and how far from. being answered."

{The Medussa and the Snail, p. 58-59]

If. our. technology -is. to..save. us, or at least participate in our
ability to-sustain and enhanee human life.on our planet,..it. will. be. because
that open- -ended probing. and that acknowledgment..of .thirst,.-ignorance, has
been maintained and vigorously. practiced. We need to. be -humble - modest
before the unknown; ~ always thirsty for wisdom and understanding. How
tragic that the voice. of. the Church,. has so. frequently. been opposed to
scientific inquiry. How tragic that religion seems .so eager. to.make dogma
out of opinion rather than risk discovering the truth. - How unfortunate
_that the only voice. people hear,. because -it's.the only.one. that. receives
press attention, has again told the world that it knows the answers, knows
all the truth and that reproductive. technology,..for instance, is immoral,
regardless of its enormous potential for. good. -

There is something about our spirits. that. require. more than ‘the
dailiness life provides. In fact, the evidence that there is spirit - or
soul - about us - is the fact that the physical dailiness of life does not

satisfy us... We are still. thirsty... Think of -how-frequently: that idea
emerges* in our-best..literature.... Human beings. need. something. which:
transcends their: humanity,. gives deeper. meaning. to their. journey, something
which calls out-of them hope and aspiration and: sacrifice. When. we are-
deprived-of that, something. in -us does die. When Willy Loman's dream
crumbles-in Death of a Salesman, there is nothing left. but inevitability
and suicide. Four. teenagers. locked themselves in a parked.car. with. the
engine running in New Jersey last Wednesday night. oA school psychologist
said “they. thought they had nothing to live. for." .Two.more teenagers in
Alsip committed suicide the next day: . Neither worked. .or attended - ‘school,
They spent their days watching television together, On the windshield of
the.car. they. left a note containing lyrics: to-a. rock song.. . “Yesterday
seems as though it. never.existed - Death greets me: Warm. Now I will just
say. goodbye.. os : H

My- proposal and .my growing conviction is that we.are ‘created. with: an
empty space inside,: a thirst so-real that:i am=convinced: our humanity, our
life, depends on something like the living water Jesus offered that. woman.
I propose that our need for God has been. created in us: by God; that the
reaching of the poet, artist, musician, for beauty and truth and passion is
an:-expression of it..--My. proposal.is that our... sense of -God's ‘silence, .God's
remoteness, God's absence - is the. thirst God. put in us expressing. itself.
St. Augustine wrote for.people who struggle: with faith in every age, this
woman. certainly, you and I surely. “Thou hast made our hearts restless
until they find their rest in thee."

_The woman's most urgent need, most insistent thirst,..was intensely
personal. She tried to cover. it-.over but didn't quite succeed. .- An. outcast
in a race that was already despised, a breaker of sacred custom and common
morality, can you imagine how dismal her image of herself.was? She
couldn't have felt. much except the seif-—loathing.which she expressed in a
series of temporary relationships, the last one of. which didn't even
pretend respectability. This woman who didn't matter to anybody: and knew

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it, was given her life back by a man, who in a few minutes, took her
seriously, listened to her, talked with her, affirmed her personhood.

Jesus reminded her of something she had forgotten — that she was a child of
God. me :

We need the reminder. A distinguished social scientist (Rene Dubuos)
“noted recently that the danger to the race is not from the external threats.
which loom'on' the horizon, but from the dampening of the human spirit which
no longer believes it can deal with its own problems. - an °

“We need a reminder occasionally that we are children of God, that we
are not powerless ‘to affect the global forces which impinge on our future.

What happens to that in us? Well sometimes the sense that we are
children of God, loved by God, accepted by God --is contradicted by
authority figures who tell us that we don't matter much. Sometimes Parents
do that to their own children. “How could you be so stupid?" is*in
actuality heard as a descriptive statement which a child adopts and then
lives out. Sometimes teachers do it, and coaches and scout leaders and
_ clergy. ” ,

‘Sometimes religion is the worst offender, It doesn't take much to

convince some of us that we aren't worth much, that the guilt and
inadequacy we feel is authentic, that the psychological joke about the
“therapist who telis:the client that he doesn't have an inferiority complex
~S=—he's* just inferior, in our case is true. Sometimes religion: plays into
“our propensity “to believe the worst about ourselves and to feel’ guilty
about almost anything... about how we live or don't live: about what we
‘really believe or what we find we really can't. believe: about having so
much or’ not having enough: whether we indulged our children or deprived
them: about our sexuality and how we do or don't express it: ‘about our

- appetite and our needs and our dearest: hopes. And somewhere in that
‘veritable maze of guilt: and personal inadequacy we quite lose sight of
-the*reason for raising the subject of religion in the first place; namely
that there isa God whose nature is love, a God who accepts and: forgives
and who wants very much for us to be at home with ourselves and the world
he has given us: that in the dry desert of our thirst for the living God -
there is water to drink, living water.

Part of it, is to come to some well which reminds us of our: thirst.
Part of the pilgrimage of the spirit, the destination of which is newness
of life, is the courage to say “I'm thirsty." That. is what I invite you to
“do this morning... Whoever you are...wherever you happen to be on your own
~~ pilgrimage of faith, in whatever way seems appropriate...to acknowledge

“your thirst.

I invite you to identify and tc name the places where you feel shut-
out...places where. your feelings about yourself ‘could use the healing touch
of someone who: loves. you: without condition.

Perhaps you don't measure up to someone's expectations of you — (your
family, parents, spouse, friends, employers, teacher). Perhaps you don't
live up to’ your own expectations and what you do live with is the feeling
of inadequacy and guilt ‘which results... Perhaps like this woman you are

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standing somewhere outside the boundaries of convention... Perhaps you too
feel cut-off from the community... Perhaps you live with the numbing daily
pain of a failed relationship. . Perhaps, like this woman, you have
concluded that you don't matter.

I invite you, this morning, very simply to say... "I'm thirsty...my
soul thirsts...for the living God..."

The woman came to the well in the dry heat of mid-day because she had
nowhere else te go. She found living water in the graceful acceptance of a
man who took her seriously. She found living water as that man restored in
her her own sense that she was a child of God. She was born again, given
her life anew, by the love of one who was truly her Savior.

That is the Gospel. That is Good News for all who know their own
thirst. Thanks be to God.

Thanks be to you, 0 God, for the restlessness
in our souls,

Thanks be to you, 0 Creator, for making us
incomplete without you.

Thanks be to you, O God of Love,. for the
thirst within us.

Thanks and praise to you, Almighty God, -.
for living water, for love that has
reached out to us, for grace and
forgiveness and affirmation in Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.

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