Third Sunday of Lent

Good morning.   Many, many years ago, when I was in my late twenties, a couple of friends and I agreed to do some day labor for a farmer in Pueblo, Colorado, digging trenches for irrigation pipe on some rather remote land in the middle of what seemed like nowhere.  It was summer day with a forecast into the 100’s, but we were young and poor and needed the extra cash.  The farmer picked us up and drove us twenty miles to the far end of a treeless, shadeless field to start digging.  And then he left.  And he forgot to leave the cooler of water.  Well, we didn’t worry too much because he said he’d be back in a little while to check on us.

This is what I remember; the minute we all realized he had forgotten to leave the cooler, we immediately got thirsty. An hour later, after a lot of sweat, we were really thirsty.   I kept looking down the road, hoping to see that truck.   And we continued to work, expecting our farmer boss to show up any minute and not wanting to be sitting around when he arrived.  After two hours, all I could think about was water.   After three hours, I was so thirsty, so parched that I started to worry that I was headed for some kind of trouble. Before the end of the fourth hour, we just had to stop.  We weren’t tired; we were hurting. I wondered to myself if I would just die of thirst, while, ironically, digging an irrigation system.  Finally, the farmer returned, apologetic.  And without responding to him, perhaps unable to respond to him, I went to the cooler on the back of the truck and drank.  And drank.  And drank.  And I went home and I drank.  And for the next two hours, I spent every minute with a glass of water in my hand.  I did not know that a person could stay thirsty for so long or that a body could hold what felt like the swimming pool full of water.  I said prayers of thanksgiving.  I felt that prayer in every cell of my body. 

Our readings this morning are about thirsty people.  Our first reading from Exodus is situated in a desert, a pretty thirsty place.   To set the context, already God has just responded to a hungry people with a miraculous gift of food, called manna.  And in the very next chapter, from which we excerpt our first reading, now the people are without water and they’re thirsty.  And they are so physically thirsty that, not surprisingly, they call into question the sanity and skill of their leader, Moses.   I am sure they must have asked how could a leader bring people to a life-threatening place, a hot dry barren place with no food and no water?   When you’re thirsty and you have no idea if or when there will be water, it is a frightening and awful experience.   And, as the story comes to a climax, God once again intervenes, instructing Moses, and water flows for all. 

I want to take a 30,000 foot view of this story and ask us to notice a plain simple truth that should not be overlooked, and that simple truth is that our physical bodies matter.  Our bodies matter to God.  God made us body.  We are mostly made of water, we need water to survive, and God made a world with flowing water.  God did not make us to die of thirst. 

This most basic kind of observation forms one of the foundations of our faith and biblical justice – Because people’s bodies matter, water matters.  Food matters.  Air matters.  Shelter matters.  These physical, practical things matter to people.  These things matter to God.  And because they matter to God, because human survival requires water and food and shelter, we have a moral responsibility—everyone of us—to make sure that every man, woman and child on this planet have access to the things that sustain life.   

Our Gospel reading this morning also begins with thirsty people.  Jesus is apparently thirsty.  There is a woman at the well who is presumably thirsty.  And the dialog that ensues is about thirst.  But this conversation takes an interesting turn and focuses on a different kind of thirst and a different kind of water, “living water.”   And Jesus is clearly describing the thirst of the human spirit, which our faith recognizes as linked to God’s spirit.  The thirst of the human spirit is not the same thirst that comes from a hot summer’s day.   Physical thirst is quenched with H2O.   The thirst of the human spirit, the thirst of the soul, the thirst of the heart is for something very different.  What the soul longs for is a little more complex – it is the longing for wholeness, belonging, meaning, direction, community, mission and a vision—all those things combined.   

And this is what Jesus spends his life speaking to.  Where does the human heart find a home?  Where does the human spirit find energy and direction?   And Jesus’ answer, which we amen each week, is that it is in some kind of communion and partnership with God that we find that answer.  And communion with God necessarily means communion with each other -- a communion of a most intimate, radical, committed kind.   Our hearts long for integrity and purpose and direction and that purpose, Jesus makes clear, is expressed as love, forgiveness, justice, mercy, compassion and care.  Water may fill our stomachs, but it cannot fill our hearts.  There are some things that allow life, like water, and there are other things that give life, like mercy and forgiveness and compassion.   Only water that flows from truth and spirit and compassion and community can fill us up.    And, again, God did not make us to die of thirst. 

My brothers and sisters, what is distinctive about the human being on this planet earth, is that we are a meaning-seeking, spiritually hungry species.  Yes, we need water.   But we can not live well—in fact, we will not thrive or even survive—without living water.  The questions we must ask and answer are what is worth living for?  What is worth of my life?  What is worth sacrificing for?   And in this season of Lent we fast, we pray and we share, yearning for answers.

Interestingly, the thirst for water and the thirst for living water overlap.  The first reading and the Gospel reading intersect.  Consider: Food matters to our physical bodies, but it will not get to everyone unless we are a people of Spirit, people who drink from living water.  People who drink from living water care, people who drink from living water share, people who drink from living water see the other as our sister and brother.    Similarly, water matters to our physical bodies, but it will not be available to those who are poor unless we are a people of spirit, people of living water who are able to identify the difference between need and greed, who are willing to limit our use of water to what we need, and at the same time see to it that those who are voiceless or vulnerable have what they need.  Shelter matters for our physical wellbeing but it will not be available to all people unless people of living water insist on an economy and a government that protects the dignity and welfare of all people.  Community matters, but it will not happen unless you and I, people of spirit, extend ourselves to those who have been abandoned and left behind. 

So, in this Christian season of Lent in the United States in the 21^st century, in this Jubilee Year of Mercy, in this Catholic Church being led by a pope who is constantly speaking to what matters to the body and the spirit, may I, a visitor who is only passing through, offer this challenge.  In this Year of Mercy, may I invite each and every one of us to find a way to quench our thirst, to drink living water, by tending to someone who does not have what they need to live a dignified life.  May I invite each of one of us to love someone who suffers from neglect.  My I invite everyone here to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and to link ourselves to someone who is hungry or thirsty or in prison or has been abandoned. 

And, then—and perhaps only then—we will experience living water.

Jack Jezreel, JustFaith Ministries