Sunday Sermon - 8 March
The Israelites are suffering. They are dying of thirst and are beginning to quarrel with one another out of hunger, thirst, and frustration at the plight Moses has led them into. So much so that they cried out, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
The Samaritan woman is suffering but she approaches it differently. She is an outcast; she comes to the well alone at noon (the hottest time of the day) because she is not allowed to be with the others. She is a sinner who has had five husbands and is ostracized as a social pariah. Yet Jesus initiates contact with her and asks for a drink with the intention of moving her into a conversation of salvation — a conversation that she’s open to, ready to receive the loving message that Jesus is offering. From physical thirst to spiritual thirst, Jesus takes this sinner on a spiritual journey from shame to witness. She becomes the first evangelist to her town.
I don’t know about you, but I see myself in these stories and maybe you see yourself in them too. I am thirsty. I am at the well in the heat of the day yearning for God’s life-giving water and thirsting for understanding and spiritual awakening. Sadly, recently, I see myself more as a wandering Israelite than I do as the Samaritan woman. Like them, I am frustrated, angry even, wandering about in this desert of life, weary, hungry, thirsting for the world to make sense. I too, after hearing the most recent “Breaking News,” can hear myself call out, “Is the Lord among us or not?!”
That is precisely where the Apostle Paul meets us and speaks into the wilderness of our hearts.
Writing to a divided and anxious church in Rome, Paul does not deny suffering. He does not minimize fear. He does not pretend the desert is lush. Instead, he makes a breathtaking declaration:
“Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We have peace. Which means the question, “Is the Lord among us or not?” has already been answered. In these times of strife we are called to open our eyes with our hearts and to look closely. Yes, God is here, with us, in the wilderness of our world, but that “yes” is not abstract. It’s not a pastoral nicety. It is not a theological slogan that a priest has to proclaim from a pulpit. It is visible, tangible and embodied. We can see, touch and feel it for we know that if God’s love has been “poured into our hearts,” as Paul says, then that love must spill somewhere.
If we open our hearts and allow God’s love to fill us (or as 23rd Psalm says, fill us up to overflowing so our “cup runneth over”) our love spills out into the world. It visibly, tangibly does, and when we look closely enough at our own lives we can see that God is indeed among us:
The Lord is among us when a nurse, exhausted after working a double shift, still pauses long enough to hold the hand of a frightened patient.
The Lord is among us when a teacher buys winter boots with her own money for a child who came to school in wet sneakers on a cold January day.
The Lord is among us when a parishioner quietly drops off warm soup on the porch of someone grieving — no fanfare, no selfie or self-righteous social media post, just love, selfless love.
The Lord is among us when two people who disagree politically choose to sit at the same table and listen to one another without judgment or label.
The Lord is among us when a community rallies around a refugee family who had to flee from their homeland in fear of being executed by a genocidal theocracy.
The Lord is among us when someone in addiction recovery stands up and says, “I need help,” and someone else says, “I’m with you. You’re not alone.”
The Lord is among us when a community surrounds a woman and her family with steadfast love as she recovers from a life-threatening operation.
The Lord is among us when a food bank volunteer offers more than bread — taking time to listen, linger and truly see the dignity in the person standing before them.
The Lord is among us when a teenager befriends the kid everyone else mocks.
The Lord is among us when a long-married couple forgives each other again — for the thousandth time — and keeps choosing loving loyalty and covenant over convenience.
The Lord is among us when we set aside our denominational differences and join together in a meal, embracing the fact that we are called together as one family in Christ.
The Lord is among us when we show up at hospital beds, funeral homes, food banks, and prayer circles.
The Lord is among us when a congregation sings through tears.
The Lord is among us when someone says, “I was wrong.”
The Lord is among us when someone says, “I forgive you.”
The Lord is among us when someone says, “Please stay.”
You see, the Israelites demanded proof and received water from a rock. We ask for proof and often overlook the rivers flowing quietly around us. Every act of mercy is water from the rock. Every gesture of reconciliation is living water at the well. Every kindness, every sacrifice of self for another is evidence that Christ is not absent.
Left to ourselves — truly left to ourselves — we harden. We hoard. We protect. We lash out. We walk away. But when love overcomes our selfish instincts generosity defies scarcity and forgiveness overrides revenge. That is not merely human niceness, that is grace. That is the Spirit poured into human hearts and “our cup runneth over”. That is justification made visible.
Perhaps this is where I need to repent of my own desert thinking because when I cry out in frustration, “Is the Lord among us or not?” What I really mean is, “Why hasn’t God fixed everything?”
Paul reminds us that God never promised the immediate fixing of our human created messes. He promised presence, reconciliation, and that suffering is not the end. Even in Lent, we are and forever will be, an Easter people. Hope does not disappoint us — not because the world is stable, but because God’s love has already been poured out and if that love is truly poured out, then every time we choose compassion over contempt, courage over cynicism, generosity over fear — we are standing at the well again.
We are drinking. We are becoming witnesses.
The Samaritan woman left her jar behind because she had found something deeper than water. She ran back to the very people who once shamed her and said, “Come and see.”
Maybe that is our call in this anxious age. Not to argue louder or panic faster but to notice. To notice the soup on the doorstep. To notice the volunteers and those they care for. To notice the forgiveness. To notice the quiet generosity. To notice the courage of ordinary saints.
Then to say to our thirsty world: Come and see. Yes, the desert is real, the news is heavy and suffering is undeniable. But so are love, reconciliation and grace. My friends, the Lord is among us. In the breaking of bread, the holding of hands and hugs, the mending of relationships and in the stubborn, daily decision to love anyway, in any way.
That love — poured into us, poured through us — is the living water for our thirsty world.
Amen.