Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Psalm 23:1-2, John 4:7-15, John 19:28-30
November 9, 2003
Sometime late Thursday afternoon, when the church was teeming with kids rehearsing with various choirs, the bubbling water feature in the narthex was knocked to the floor, disassembling its component parts and flooding the narthex carpet. What surprised all of us was that it was not the roughhousing of middle school boys which did the deed, but a bit of over-zealous leaning by some grade school girls.
“Not to worry,” said John Kreitz. “I can fix it….fill it….rebubble it. Chalk it up as a mere blip on the radar screen of ecclesiastical tranquility.” Which it was….a mere blip, I mean. And which he did….fix it, I mean.
When I went home and told Kris that the bubble machine went down….and how it went down….she said: “Yes, but isn’t it wonderful that this year’s campaign features a ‘visual’ that the kids love so much?” Which is true. They do. From day one, they’ve been all around it (if not all over it). To ask “Why?” would be to ask why water is such a big deal to everybody. I wish I had a dollar for every one of you who asked when I was going to explain “that thing out there.” To which I said: “You tell me.” And many of you did. Several of you referenced baptism. Others, taking note of the movement of the bubbles, spoke about things flowing upward….even to the point of talking about heaven. While others were absolutely certain that the bubbles are synonyms for the Holy Spirit. Are any of you right? Sure.
Early on, in the imaginative stage of campaign planning, someone suggested replicating the center aisle waterway at Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral. But we couldn’t get the Oakland County Corps of Engineers to redirect the Rouge River. And much thought was given to placing a waterfall in the chancel. But we feared that the power of suggestion might force choir members to excuse themselves before the offertory. And you laughed when Taek Kim told you, just last Sunday, that the first water-related thought that came to the youth was to hose down the sanctuary from the balcony. One of you approached me in the narthex and wanted to know if Taek was kidding. Of course he was kidding. Either that, or he was adding hosing to sprinkling, pouring and immersing as a fourth form of baptizing.
All along I said that we settled upon water as the campaign “visual” because water is basic. And any campaign that carries the title “This Is All You Really Need” is about basics. But, as we discovered along the way, water is incredibly biblical….from cups to wells, and from running rivers to quiet pools. How many of you know, for example, that if the shepherd couldn’t find “still water” for his sheep (Psalm 23), he would have to dam up a stream and create still water, given that sheep will die of thirst before dipping their tongue in a stream that is rippling.
Which introduces a water-related word all of us can understand….“thirst.” Life is full of it. The Bible is full of it. Sheep thirst. People thirst. The rich in torment thirst: “Dip your finger in the water, come and cool my tongue, for I’m tormented by the flame.” (Luke 19) The poor also thirst, else why would Jesus have said that the first to pass through the gates of the Kingdom would be those who gave them drink? (Matthew 25) And Jesus thirsted at least twice (John 4 and John 19).
Then again, we all do. In a letter that each of you will receive from me in a day or so, I wrote about drinking from garden hoses as a kid. I’d be outside playing with my friends, getting all hot and sweaty, and somebody would suggest a hose break. So we’d find the nearest house with a hose attached to one of the outside walls. Then we would remove the nozzle, turn on the spigot and kink the rubber so as to control the flow. With a little practice, you could create a wonderful fountain. See how much fun we had before sprinkler systems?
It’s a miracle we didn’t die. I mean, how pure could hose water have been? We lived in the days when there were no sprinkler systems. Moreover, faucets came without filters. And refrigerators contained no bottles. What did we do before our mothers bought water in bottles? It’s amazing we’re still walking around.
In researching this matter of thirst, I learned why eating something salty makes us thirsty. You see, each of us keeps two-thirds of our personal water inside the little balloons of our cells. So where does that leave the other third? The other one-third is extracellular water, carrying our blood cells around our body. When we eat a bag of potato chips (as I have been known to do), the sodium component of ordinary salt finds its way into our extracellular water. Meaning that it is now much saltier outside the cells than inside. In short order, the newly-salted water sloshing around our bodies and the unsalted water closeted in our cells yearn to be reunited. But our cell membranes, like disapproving parents, say no….keeping the two apart.
Inside our cells, the water can sense that all those irresistible sodium ions are out there waiting. And in a reckless bid for reunion, some water breaks through the cell wall and embraces the excess sodium. But our cells….having lost the water that crashed through the walls looking for sodium….now feel dehydrated. And it is those dehydrated cells which urge us to drink.
Bringing us to Jacob’s well…..in Samaritan land….at noon….and this chance meeting between Jesus and the multiply-married woman. Now I have preached this story enough so that you are aware of the red flags it throws up. Jesus shouldn’t be in Samaritan land. Jesus shouldn’t be alone with a woman. And Jesus shouldn’t be alone with this woman, let alone asking of her a favor.
“Give me something to drink,” he says. To which she says (just like I did): “You shouldn’t be asking me that.” Which leads him to say: “You probably didn’t know that I’ve got water, too.” “So where’s your bucket?” she says. Whereupon we quickly discern that he and she are talking about different kinds of water. Hers will quench thirst for an hour or two. His will quench thirst forever. What’s hers called? The Bible doesn’t say. What’s his called? “Living water.”
A few minutes ago, I told you what many have said after gazing upon our waterscape in the narthex. But only one of you said “living water.” And the one who said “living water” isn’t even a member. Her name is J.J. Bankert and her home church is Mariner’s Church in Detroit. We see her on Thursdays when she attends a community Bible study here. But upon seeing our waterscape, she was absolutely certain that it represented “living water,” like the kind offered by Jesus to the woman in Samaria. So, was she right? Well, she is now.
To a Jew, “living water” meant two things. On a simple level it meant “moving water.” We’re talking about running water as in the kind of water you’d dip from a stream rather than a cistern. So we can excuse the woman at the well for thinking: “Here we are, Jesus, standing at a well. But you are offering me pure stream water. So where do you intend to get it? And how, pray tell, do you intend to dip it?”
But the other thing “living water” meant to a Jew was “soul water”….as in water which satisfies one’s search for God. Didn’t the choir just sing the haunting lyric of Psalm 42:
As deer yearn for flowing streams,
So yearns my soul for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God.
To which God’s promise was:
I will pour water on the thirsty land. (Isaiah 44:3)
Which is the “cleansing fountain” of Zechariah 13, the “river of life” of Ezekiel 47, and the wonderful promise of Revelation 21:6: “To the thirsty I will give water, without price, from the fountain of the water of life.”
Meaning what? Meaning that there is more than one way to be dehydrated. Some people thirst for water. Others, for blood. Some, for revenge. Others, for righteousness. But many, for God. Dare we say all? You tell me. But I think all do….eventually.
Just last week, 17-year-old Nicole Bush (no relation to the President) of Kelloggsville High School in western Michigan was ready to become the fifth girl in Michigan history to win four consecutive cross-country state championships. Accustomed to running the three miles in 17 minutes, 40 seconds, she was within easy reach of her goal with a two mile clocking of 11 minutes, 24 seconds. One mile later, she crossed the finish line in 29 minutes, 29 seconds. In other words, her last mile took more than 18 minutes. Out of 238 runners, she finished 237th. What happened? Dehydration happened.
But she’s not the only one falling behind in life’s race. A lot of you are back there with her. You started well, but you’re sagging now. Not because your feet are dragging, but because your spirit is dragging.
Is there a spiritual resurgence across the land (as many have suggested)? Darned if I know. I am a preacher, not a poll taker. All of my evidence is anecdotal. I take the pulse of the country, one story at a time. But I hear stories. Every day I hear stories.
One of my better stories concerns a young man who kept being bugged by a friend to try out this church. What’s amazing is that the friend isn’t even a member here. Well, he hadn’t been to any church in a long time. Which made him more than mildly anxious. The first day he came, he failed to find his friend. But he figured: “Well, I’m here. I guess I’ll just sit down.” Selecting a pew near the back, he thought: “Good. I’ll have this row all to myself. Which means I can always leave.” Except somebody came down the center aisle, forced him to slide over, and effectively blocked him in. “Well,” he thought, “at least I can still get out to my left.” But a couple came and sat down to his left, blocking his path there, too. Stuck, he sucked it up…. stayed….and survived. And he’s been coming back ever since.
What brought him? Dehydration brought him. He was thirsty. So why was he anxious? Well, think about the last time you were dehydrated. Didn’t it make you a little shaky? So what brought him back? Darned if I know. But I’d bet the farm on “living water.” You see, there are things we give you to drink here that you can’t order at the average run-of-the-mill watering hole.
One final thing about Jesus and the woman at the well. The well has a name. It’s called Jacob’s Well. Located at the foot of Mount Gerazim, Jacob’s Well is a hundred feet deep and seven feet wide. One can still draw sweet water from it today. It’s authenticity is corroborated by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholarship. There is no holy place in all of Israel about whose geographic accuracy we can be more certain. We know the place. And we can go to the place.
Well, not exactly. We probably shouldn’t go to the place. Because, to most of us, the place is off limits. Our safety being the issue. For the adjacent town to Jacob’s Well is no longer called Sychar (as it was in Jesus’ day) or Shechem (as it was in Jacob’s day). Today, the adjacent town is called Nablus (of the West Bank), and there are few more volatile or dangerous places in all of Israel.
Meaning that for me and mine….and for you and yours….Jacob’s Well might just as well be dry. Because there’s going to be no Jesus-meeting, water-drawing, thirst-quenching done there.
But there will be here. Trust me, there will be here. Assuming, that is, that each and every one of us does our part to prime the pump. And with that, I’ll say no more about money until next Sunday. Instead, I’ll prayerfully place the future of this wonderful watering hole in your hands.
Living water? You would figure that to be priceless, wouldn’t you?
Note: For detailed information about Jacob’s Well, I am indebted to Camille Fronk, Assistant Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. As for information about sodium ions, I checked out Hannah Holmes, who writes about scientific quandaries under the title “The Skinny On….” Look for it on the internet.
