Thirsty

Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-30

Those are the words of St. Augustine of Hippo, a brilliant teacher and bishop of the early church.  I want you to hear them again.  You have made us for yourself, and our hearts is restless until it finds its rest in you.  The older I get the more I believe those words to be true.  We are made for Another, with a capital “A.”  Like a fish is made to swim and birds are made to sing, we are made to seek One beyond us. We will not be at rest, Augustine argues, until we find our rest in that Other.

            We see evidence of this from the earliest humans. From the community rituals they practiced.  How they grew crops and celebrated the harvest.  The way they buried their dead.  Sometimes they buried the dead with weapons to protect themselves as they journeyed through the afterlife.  Sometimes they worshiped animals or the sun or moon.  Magic and superstition were interwoven with religion.  Was it primitive?  Certainly.  But it is evidence of that innate drive to seek the One beyond us. They were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had, so let’s be gentle with our critique. We are doing the same.  Today every country of the world has its religions.  Those religions use the tools indigenous to that culture—their ideas, their images, their language—to describe this restlessness of heart and its search for the Beyond. 

            Today it has become fashionable to claim that we have outgrown the need for religions and gods.  You read, like I do, and you see the statistics.  People are leaving organized religions en masse.  Churches are shrinking.    According to a recent Pew Research report, Christians will make up less that half of the U. S. population in a few decades.  But it’s not just churches.  Synagogues sit empty.  Congregations of all kinds are growing older.  It’s being called the secularization of the country.  But that’s not what I want to talk about today.  Today I’m not talking about organized religion or the church as an institution.  I want us to talk about that restlessness of the heart identified by Augustine, that inner need we have to reach beyond ourselves to the Ultimate Truth. 

            I want to share a conviction with you, a conviction that is born out of my own personal experience and a lifetime of study: it is easier to disbelieve ideas about God than it is to disbelieve in God.  Let me say that again.  It is easier to disbelieve ideas about God than it is to disbelieve in God.  To say that you do not believe in a god is not the same as saying you do not have this restless drive for Another, with a capital “A.”  To say that you do not believe in my conception of God is not the same as saying you do not have an inner longing for the Beyond.  There is plenty in the world’s religions that can be dismissed, including in Christianity.  There is plenty that is still primitive and wrapped with superstition.  Discard that, I say.  But when all that is gone, there is something left, something more, something inescapable, something that rings true. That, when everything else is stripped away, what continues to stand, I believe, is God.  Choose the language and symbols that are right for you, but the Bible describes it this way: we are all thirsty to know God.

            The image of thirst in our text from John is powerful.  The dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well unfolds on two levels, as does much of the Gospel of John.  The woman was thirsty and wanted water, H20, the liquid that can be drawn from a well. However, Jesus responded to her at another level, the level of her deeper thirst, the restlessness of her heart, the spiritual longing that existed in that woman and, I believe, exists in every person. 

            Something critically important happens at the beginning of this story. John says that Jesus “had to go through Samaria.” Why did John put it that way?  Why didn’t he just say that Jesus went through Samaria?  Of course, geographically the route through Samaria was the most direct.  But a good Jew would have avoided Samaritan lands, even if it meant a longer trip.  Jesus “had to” go through Samaria on a theological level. His understanding of God and how we are made would not allow him to escape going through Samaria. 

            Here’s why.  The person Jesus met at the well is presented to us as a non-person, a cipher, a person of no value.  She was a woman.  Strike one.  We love and value the women and girls in our lives today.  They did not hold such an elevated place in biblical days.  When I was in Israel in 2007, an orthodox Jewish man walked past our group.  He held his hand up to the side of his eyes to prevent him from looking at our group. I asked my friend, Rabbi Ballon, why he did that.  The rabbi said, “Because we have women in our group.”  He didn’t want to see the women.

            This woman at the well was also a Samaritan.  Strike two.  As a Samaritan, she was an outcast, even the enemy. Animosity between the Jews and Samaritans had existed for centuries and ran deeply.  It was considered inappropriate, taboo, for a Jewish teacher like Jesus to engage a woman of Samaria in conversation.  She was dirty, ritually unclean.  Jesus violated a strict religious taboo.

            And then notice that this woman of Samaria is never named.  Strike three.  Nicodemus was named.  Philip and Nathanael were named.  Even Zacchaeus, the hated tax collector, was given a name.  But not this woman.  She was the cipher at the well, the theological non-person.  The established religion put a hand up beside its eyes so it wouldn’t have to see people like her.   But not Jesus.  John says that Jesus “had to” go there, had to see her, because he knew that she, like everybody else, was thirsty. “Give me a drink,” Jesus requested of this unnamed Samaritan woman.  She was incredulous: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”  Note those last four words: “a woman of Samaria.”  She knew her place.

            I wish I had time to unpackage this whole story.  It gushes with symbolic and theological meaning.  At the end of the day, Jesus did not take water from this unnamed woman of Samaria.  He gave her water, what he called living water, “water gushing up to eternal life,” Jesus said.  She accepted living water from Jesus that day, and a deep longing of her life was met.  Her restless heart found its resting place.  She left her water jug beside Jacob’s well and ran back to the city and “her people,” all those outcasts, all the other theological non-persons.  John says that the people left the city and went to Jesus at Jacob’s well.  This story has the most wonderful ending:

            Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony….  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.  And many more believed because of his word.  Two days.  Among the outcasts.  The unclean.  Because he knew that they too were made for God.  And many believed.

            C. S. Lewis created an insightful scene in one of the volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia.  The little girl Lucy was growing up.  She was speaking with Aslan, the lion, Lewis’ symbol for God.  Lucy says to the lion, “Aslan, you’re bigger.” “That’s because you are older, little one,” Aslan responds.  She asks, “Not because you are (bigger)?” Aslan wisely replies, “I am not.  But every year you grow you will find me bigger.”  (Prince Caspian)   

            That’s the way it happens.  With human civilization and with us as individuals.  Something is awakened within us when we are children—about 10, 12, or 15 years old, and our restless heart begins to stir.  We become thirsty.  We begin to seek One beyond us. Some call it Beauty.  Some call it Truth.  The German theologian, Paul Tillich, called it the Ground of Our Being.  We were taught to call it God.  But as children, our God was small.  Because our thinking was small. As we grew, God got bigger.  Not because God was actually getting bigger.  But because we were.  Our ability to conceive of the Other was getting bigger.

            That exists in everyone, and that is why there are no ciphers at the well, no outcasts, no theological non-persons.  Theologically Jesus “had to” go to Samaria to meet a thirsty unnamed Samaritan woman and her people. She was made for God too, and Jesus knew it.  Her heart was restless, and it found its resting place that day. The world is filled with her.  Huntsville is filled with her.  You.  You are this unnamed woman of Samaria, aren’t you?  Restless heart.  Searching.  Thirsty.  Here’s what she discovered.  The One she was seeking was actually seeking her.  God’s search for us culminated upon a cross.  When that truth finally grasps us, deep within, we will sigh with the saints of old, Oh, what wondrous love!

Closing Prayer

We bring our restless, searching hearts to you, Lord.  Meet our thirst with living water.  Amen.