March 27, 2011
(Third Sunday in Lent)

(From The Lectionary Page)

Living Water

Photo of the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Came upon an internet feature on the Salton Sea not long ago. Perhaps some of you saw it as well. The Salton Sea is in southern California, formed in 1905 when a series of dams on the Colorado River and its tributaries burst, thereby flooding a naturally occurring basin. Behold, a giant freshwater lake in the desert. What was not to love? In short order, the region became a haven for boaters, bathers, and bird watchers.

Until, of course, nature and geology took over. The Salton Sea is well below sea level, meaning that it, like the Dead Sea in Israel, has no where to go. Over time, the natural salinity of nearby soil leeched into the lake, along with agricultural run off and God only knows what other contaminants from the rivers which continue to feed it. It is now considerably saltier than the Pacific Ocean and increasing in salinity by about 1% each year. The area is now, not surprisingly, mostly deserted.

Such is the fate of fresh water with nowhere to go.

Our gospel for today plays with the symbol of water. It’s an arresting story, particularly when paired with last week’s account of Nicodemus. There, a real insider – a man of the Pharisaic party – encounters Jesus under the cloak of darkness. In today’s account, a real outsider – a Samaritan woman who has burned through five husbands and is now living with her lover – encounters Jesus under the noonday sun.

And Jesus asks her for a drink from the nearby well. A simple request, and yet utterly remarkable. Her very presence as a Samaritan woman would have contaminated any other devout 1st century Jewish man. To speak to her would be unthinkable, to drink from any vessel she had touched would render him ritually unclean for 8 days. That she was at a well during the heat of the day suggests also that she may well have been an outsider among her own people too. No woman would choose to schlep heavy water jugs at the hottest time of the day unless encountering her neighbors earlier in the day would be even more unpleasant. And yet Jesus not only does not shame her, he engages her in conversation, he names her desolate reality, and he invites her to seek the Living Water. Like so many accounts in the gospel, the conversation with Jesus starts very pragmatically and in short order goes all metaphysical. The two are talking about water, and suddenly, Jesus is talking about something else entirely. He’s talking about Living Water.

If all you have is well water, and if the source of that well water is largely run-off, you have what you need to sustain life, but it’s gonna bear a lot more resemblance to the Salton Sea than to anything we’d want to drink. Living water, to the extent that the term was familiar, referred to water which miraculously flowed from a spring: rare in most parts of the world, especially so in the ancient near east. Living water was water you didn’t have to work for.  You didn’t have to dig to find it, or hold your nose while you drank it. Water which was oxygenated, cold, and fresh and there for the taking. Pure grace. Pure gift.

The Samaritan woman was familiar with the water in Jacob’s well. It would sustain life, but beyond that, it sure didn’t qualify as living water. But if Jesus knew of some spring she didn’t know about, she was all ears. And Jesus seizes the moment and deluges her with grace. Tells her, in answer to her question, that the day is coming when social boundaries between people will shatter. There will be no more insiders and outsiders, but God will be worshiped in spirit and in truth. And if that good news was not enough, he reveals to her of all people – for the first time in John’s gospel – that he is the Messiah, the one who is ushering in this new reality.

For those of us with ears to hear, this is absolutely breath-taking. As is the denoument of the story – where the woman, soaked to the skin in the metaphorical Living Water Jesus gives her, runs and tells the others. No longer an outsider, she is an apostle.  I envision her running like a swiftly flowing river, tumbling over rocks, her veil rippling in the wind like waves. Such is the power of this Living Water.

We are bearers of this Living Water, too. Whether we know ourselves to be insiders or outsiders we, too, are drenched with the grace of abundant life given in baptism. Christ meets us in those blazing moments of self-awareness when it dawns on us that we are in the presence of the God unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid. And he reveals that blazing love, as warm as the noonday sun.

And what do we do?

Are we in danger of becoming the spiritual equivalent of the Salton Sea – receiving everything, and passing nothing on? Or can we bring ourselves to be like the Samaritan woman, Living Water bearers all of us, rushing and tumbling, to share the news of Christ with a thirsty world?