Hard Rock Cafe
Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42

February 27, 2005

Thirst drives a person to think almost anything. The Exodus collection had exited slavery, but they never thought that being free meant meant being thirsty. Wandering without a map, without a reliable supply of drinking water for 40 years certainly make you think oddly. Barely a few weeks and months into their journey back to the Promised Land, and the Israelites were deleriously angry.

Dehydration caused them to think the unthinkable. Lots of Christians avoid reading their complaints because it is too dangerous to hear one’s heroes say this. “Is God among us or not?” The answer was obviously No. This was not atheism, nor an ancient death of God movement - God never stopped existing for them. God had just taken a leave of absence when Israel knew it was most vulnerable. Or was it that Israel, the slaves freed from bondage way down in Egypt land, believed they were now free to take a leave of absence from God?

It ended up being that famous hard rock cafe, water spewing out of a rock God directed Moses to strike with his staff, the same staff that had seen the parting of the Red Sea waters.

At first glance, this appears to be nothing less than a miracle, God’s interruption of the natural order. I am not so convinced. Sure, this is beyond the ordinary, despite the scientific rationales for how such a phenomenon could have occurred.

This, however, is an embarrassment of Israel’s soul, that you had to get water out of a stone to satisfy them. And yet, the Israelites were oblivious to all these machinations, for there is no recording of their giving thanks to God, no declaration that God is indeed among us and for us. Apparently, they drank, probably complained about too many chemicals in the liquid and went on to murmur with all their heart and soul and mind and strength yet another day. It is reassuring to see such a consistency of spirit. Let’s not just blame the Israelites and think that settles the historical matter. Have you and I - the continuing children of Israel - stopped wandering long enough to think straight for ourselves?

Water can make you think differently. Especially when you are in a place you don’t belong. Jesus did not belong in Samaria, not as a proper Jewish rabbi. It’s why we have to call that famous character in the parable the Good Samaritan. Samaritans were, by definition, not particularly good at all.

Clarence Jordan is on the right track in his Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament. He transposes the entire world of Galilee and Palestine into the geography and language of the Jim Crow South of Georgia. So when Jesus comes to Samaria and to the well at the small town of Sychar (Jordan dubs it Sidecar), this is not just passing through a sleepy place, it’s an isolated all black village. This is the legendary well of Jacob, but the water now is Samaritan-only water, just like in the South there were water fountains where only the blacks could drink and water fountains where only whites could drink.

Jesus wants a drink from a woman and this is an unbelievably loaded situation. No wonder the disciples came back and were horrified at what Jesus was doing. Here he was talking with a Samaritan, and for a Jew that very conversation would render him ritually unclean. Jesus was a rabbi and such a holy person would not talk with a woman. And then he had no cup to drink from. When the woman drew water from the well with her bucket, they had to drink out of the same vessel. How disgusting! How unclean and defiling. How unsanitary! There are people who complain about drinking the wine from a common communion cup for fear they catch some horrid communicable disease. Do you think any white person would dare drink from a blacks-only water fountain in the 1950’s? And what self-respecting black person would want a white man’s lips mixed up in her water supply?

But Jesus sensed her hesitations. I am going to give you running water, living water that is not stagnant and loaded with all sorts of organisms that could cause disease and even death. At least, that is what she thought he was talking about. Jesus wasn’t just talking water. He was offering to slake another person’s thirst for real life.

Remember, when you’re really thirsty, you can think almost anything is right. As he kept talking with her, it was obvious that she had tried to quench her thirst for meaning and comfort by relationships without commitment with a series of men. There are plenty of people who try to satisfy that thirst with alcohol or drugs or gambling. Eventually, the well always runs dry.

This Samaritan woman – and again I’m sorry to say that we are not left her name – was caught up in that small town parochialism. We worship this way, at this hour, and we know you guys do it differently and think we are wrong the way we do it. Pentecostalists do it one way, Baptists another, Catholics and Orthodox each have distinctive emphases, and no doubt about it, United people know exactly what proper worship is and isn’t, even if we can’t put our finger on it.

All of that is window dressing, none of it is essential. God is looking for people to worship sincerely in spirit and in truth and honestly. God is looking for people who are simply and honestly themselves when they worship God. You don’t have to lift up your hands, or hold your hands correctly, or offer your hand with the right handshake in order to worship sincerely, in order to really worship and not just be seen as good church people.

God is dead for most of us because we dread that God might actually be alive. Of course, we desire the occasional easy miracle, the kind that zaps away our despair and diseases and mental woes and makes good things happen to good people. But if God is alive and God will not allow you to be dead, then you cannot ignore a power and a love like that. That’s frightening – you no longer have a choice – you have to live differently. The woman at the well had met another human being who is utterly surprising.

The Holy Grail of Biblical studies has long been to discover and decipher the constant theme or thread that runs throughout the Bible. A lot of great ideas have been suggested: the covenant at Sinai, the Exodus experience, the creation. Yet they always don’t fit somewhere along the line. Every suggestion has become a square peg trying to squeeze into a round hole. I don’t have a better idea, but I do hear a result of reading the Scriptures, loud and clear.

That is the utterly surprising grace of God invading our space again and again. God blesses things and people human beings generally condemn.

Can this be the Messiah, she asks? The Messiah never comes in the shape you expect and Jesus wasn’t what she expected at all. He was so much more she had to change the way she was thinking and living. What else can you do when someone else knows you’ve been married five times and still accepts you?

Jesus had transported her beyond all the sectarian and territorial insider fixations, beyond all prejudices and assumptions about the correct ways to do religion and worship properly, and beyond all the prejudices we accumulate against other people who so obviously do it wrong.

Is God among us or not? This is not an academic, objective question, nor is it a nice pious phrase to impress others. To say Yes means no turning back. To know that it is Yes is to become subjective and consumed by the love and passion of God. And you can’t go on the way you have.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan