The Brawl: Thirsting in the Wilderness

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

So, how long has it been since you’ve spent any time in the wilderness?  Do you remember the last time you were there?  What images do these questions prompt for you?

Both passages this morning are located in the wilderness.  The ancient Hebrews are sojourning in the wilderness of Sin.  They are traveling through the desert area of the Sinai peninsula, having been recently freed from their bondage in Egypt.  Jesus and his disciples are passing through Samaria on their way from Judea back to Galilee.  And even through we read that Jesus comes to a Samaritan city called Sychar, we can be sure that all of Samaria is a place of wilderness for Jewish people in first century Palestine.  Samaritans and Jews were like oil and water, and neither particularly enjoyed venturing into the other’s territory.

So, both stories take place on the move.  Both stories describe long and tiring journeys, and both stories include the challenge of thirst in the wilderness.  The Hebrew people, following Moses, find themselves camped at Rephidim, a place where there is no water for the people to drink.  And Jesus, having sent the disciples into the city to get food, finds himself sitting by a well with no bucket to use to draw a drink of water.

In both places, it is probably hot and dusty.  The people in both stories have been walking a long distance, and they are tired.  And thirsty.  Parched.  Dry.

Have you ever been really thirsty with nothing to drink?  Has your mouth ever been so dry that your thirst has become an obsession?  When you are that thirsty, water is all you can think about.  And when there is no water in sight, your thirst is all you can think about.  It has a way of filling your whole mind.  Thirst.  You need to find a drink.  Now.  You need relief.

Anyone thirsty?

The wilderness, as beautiful as it may be, can also be a harsh place.  Without proper shelter, the heat can be parching.  The winds can blow so strongly and steadily, it can feel like a knife cutting across your cheek.  The sun, in a cloudless sky, can scorch not just the dry earth, but your skin, your eyes, your mind.   Walking through the wilderness can be a life and death challenge.

Every year in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, desperate migrant refugees experience the full danger of the wilderness as they set out to try to walk to a better life.  The website for No More Deaths reports a total of 2.666 deaths on the Arizona border since 2000 (nomoredeaths.org).  Not all wildernesses are deserts, however.  Italy has become a destination for refugees from Northern Africa who cross the wilderness of the Mediterranean Sea.  This past week, more than 4,000 immigrants from Syria and Libya and other north African countries. (washingtonpost.com)  The Italians have stepped up efforts to rescue people arriving by water in overcrowded boats after the death of 20,000 such refugees in the past few years.  Traveling for days in the middle of the salty ocean leaves one thirsting, too.  Whether seeking asylum in Italy or in the United States, people who undergo these life-threatening journeys are certainly thirsting, not only for water, but for justice and for mercy, too.

When the Hebrew people at Rephidim looked around and realized there was no water to drink, they panicked.  Evaluating their newfound freedom in this harsh land, they began to look back at their bondage in Egypt nostalgically.  While they may have been slaves in Egypt, and while the work may have been hard, at least they had water.  They begin to grumble and complain.  They want to know why Moses brought them to this God-forsaken place anyway.

And that was the real issue—it wasn’t really about the water or the lack of water.  And it wasn’t really about Moses, either—although both the Hebrews and Moses had a difficult time remembering that.  The real issue was about God.  Was God present or not?  Was God leading them or not?  Did God care about them or not?

They knew that God had been present when the spectacular events that led to their freedom were unfolding.  They recognized God in the plagues sent upon Pharaoh and his people.  They saw God’s might in the parting of the Sea through which they passed on dry land before the waters crashed back together, swallowing up Pharaoh and his armies.  But where was God now?  And why would God lead them to the middle of the desert to die of thirst—a thirst not only for water, but for God.

So they turned their fear and their anger on Moses.  Moses was a sort of agent of God for them.  Moses was the one who led the people to follow God’s direction and commands.  Now the people were having trouble distinguishing Moses from God.  And so their frustration and their anger and their need were all redirected straight onto Moses:  “Give us water to drink!”  And even when Moses challenged their demand, they kept quarreling with him, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”

And, faced with the hostility and fear and anxiety of the crowd, Moses seems to have absorbed quite a bit of it.  As tempers flared in the hot desert, Moses himself cried out to the Lord,  “What shall I do with these people?  They are almost ready to stone me!”

Sitting by the well at high noon in the wilderness at Sychar, Jesus waits patiently for a Samaritan woman to come along with her bucket.  “Give me a drink,” he says to her.  The woman is shocked by his request, and tells him so.  “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”  And John reminds the readers that Jews and Samaritans don’t associate with one another.  Samaritans are a cultural wilderness for Jews.  And men are not supposed to be approaching women they don’t know and talking to them either, for that matter. The vastness of the social wilderness that separates Jesus and this nameless woman can’t be overstated.

But again, it wasn’t really about the water this time either.  It wasn’t really about Jesus’ own thirst.  Jesus came to give the woman a gift of living water, not to take from her a bucket of drinking water.

This exchange follows directly on the encounter between Nicodemus, the esteemed Pharisee and member of the Sandhedrin, and Jesus from last week.  Remember that Nicodemus, a well-educated and religious Jewish leader, came to Jesus in the cover of night.  Not understanding Jesus’s words in the least, and unable to step out in faith, Nicodemus disappeared back into the darkness.

In contrast, Jesus encounters a foreign woman in a foreign land in the middle of the noonday sun.  As Jesus speaks to her, she boldly asks for clarification where she doesn’t understand and confesses her amazement at Jesus’s insights and wisdom.  Her faith and transparency increase until she leaves her water jar behind and goes back to the city to tell others and to bring them to see Jesus for themselves.  Her thirst is quenched by the living water received from Jesus himself, despite the objection of his own disciples who return from town amazed and perplexed to find Jesus talking with and caring about this worthless Samaritan woman.

Let’s go back to my original question today:  how long has it been since you’ve spent any time in the wilderness?  We all go there sooner or later, and we all find it as inhospitable as those trying to cross the desert of Arizona or the Mediterranean Sea in search of new life, in pursuit of hope.

What might some of our wildernesses look like?  Where might we be required to journey where the conditions are harsh and water is difficult to find?  For some people, cancer marks the beginning of a journey in the wilderness.  Sitting in a doctor’s office and hearing that dreaded word, a deep thirst for hope and for healing sets in quickly.  And that’s only the beginning.  Waiting for biopsy and other test results, enduring radiation, and recovering from a dose of chemotherapy are all arduous steps in the hot, sun-scorched wilderness.

Some find themselves in the wilderness as a loved one descends into dementia or congestive heart failure or end-stage cancer or another devastating disease.  Looking across the hot sands of a hospital bed or the halls of a hospice house can bring a desperation for water.  An unquenchable thirst for mercy and for hope parches the lips.

Addiction, divorce, unemployment, and chronic illness can all send us into unwanted wildernesses with no water bucket in sight.  Sometimes parenting can be a wilderness—parenting a baby or toddler who never sleeps, or an adolescent who robs you of sleep as he or she negotiates the land-mines of experience that have to be faced in our teens.  Being a teenager and walking that difficult road while navigating changing hormones and emotions and life experiences can leave one parched and feeling alone in the desert, too.  Even joyful events like the anticipation of the birth of a baby or the planning of a wedding have their wilderness moments, too.

The good news is that God is present in the wilderness.  The good new is that Jesus is sitting by the well.  In both cases, the people’s thirst is generously satisfied.  As Moses cries out to God, God reminds Moses that the people are YAHWEH’s people, and that God is journeying with them.  He tells Moses to bring the same staff that Moses held when God parted the waters of the Red Sea.  With that same staff, he is to strike the rock where God will be standing.  Moses is to do this with the elders present.  When Moses strikes the rock, God graciously provides an abundance of fresh water to quench the Israelites’ thirst and to assuage their fear.  Now they know that God is with them, even in their grumbling and quarreling with Moses.

Likewise as the woman begins interacting with Jesus and expresses her confusion at his words, the Lord of Life slakes her thirst and floods her with the living water of grace and of acceptance and of eternal life.  Not only will this woman not die that day in the desert, in Christ she will not die but have eternal life.  She receives the gift of the living water from the living Lord who sees her exactly as she is:  imperfect and lovely and redeemed by God.

It was never really about the water.  It was about the thirst.  It was about satisfying and relieving the fear and the uncertainty and the sometimes harsh conditions we all face as we journey this life, which from time to time takes us deep into the wilderness.  And just when we come to realize where we are, and just when we begin to panic because we can’t find any water there, and just when we begin to lose hope and to have trouble picturing the future; just when we fear that we have been abandoned in the wilderness by God, and just when we are ready to cry out in anguish:  “Why did you lead me here to kill me with with thirst and to leave me here alone?” or “Sir, give me some of that living water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water,” we will look up and see that God is here with us and that Jesus is extending to us an overflowing cup of living water.

It’s never really about the water.  It’s about faith, given to us freely and liberally by the grace of God, who comes to us where we are and who teaches us to see ourselves as we are and to accept the grace and the forgiveness of God through which we are reconciled to the very God who will never leave us.  The light will dawn on us again, and we will reflect that light to others around us who may find themselves lost and thirsty in the wilderness.  Amen.

• Posted in: Lent
• Tagged: Jesus, living water, Moses, Samaritan woman, thirst, water, well, wilderness