“Be Still and Listen”

First UMC Fort Dodge

March 24, 2008

Mark Haverland

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John 4:5‑42 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tried out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water." Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, "I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true" The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!

Gloria Steinam is reported to have said that when you find yourself at the altar for the third and fourth time, you begin to wonder if it really was not all his fault.

So it is with the woman at the well. She has had five husbands and now comes to the well when she hopes no one will see her. She knows that not all these failed marriages were his fault. She knows that she can no longer blame anyone else. Her troubles are her own doing. Her presence at the well in the middle of the day tells us that she has given in to the guilt that is hers. She is no longer able to assert herself, control her destiny, resist the pressures of her judgmental neighbors. She comes in the middle of the day when she knows no one else will be there. She comes to the well because she needs water. Little did she know that in her quest for the most basic and ordinary human need, she would encounter and meet a much greater need that she didn’t even know she had.

I suppose it is no surprise that a desert people like the people of the Bible should use water so often to speak of God. Last week, Jesus and Nicodemus used wind as the metaphor for God’s spirit. This week the metaphor is water. Water is in short supply in the desert so any dependable source of water raises the spirit as well as the body. As they wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt, the people complained to Moses that God had brought them into the desert only to let them die of thirst. God rescues them from death with a miracle of water flowing from a rock. The well created by God to save his people became a place where people continued to meet God as they met their simple need for water. Various wells throughout Israel, including the one where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman, become important opportunities to quench one’s thirst and to meet one’s God. James Mitchner wrote one of his great books about Israel and called it The Source, a word which in many languages means a well. Wells from ancient to modern times have been at the spiritual center of people’s lives. We tend to attach spiritual meaning to people, places and experiences which are important to us, and wells have always been right at the top of the list.

Water can be significant in lots of ways. Too much of it and floods wash us away. Too little of it and drought parches the landscape to a crisp. I once worked on legislation to regulate drainage law. I had thought before being assigned this topic that drainage was mostly just a result of nasal congestion. But it turns out that water, when it is running across your fields, or not running across your fields, can be a very contentious issue. In Iowa, as in most of the mid-west, the law regulates closely the amount, the time and the quality of water which you leaves one farmer’s land to flow over a neighbor’s land. Most of the trouble caused in Iowa by drainage has to do with how much, what kind, and when water leaves one farmer’s land and invades the land downhill. In the sere far west, however, the law regulates the time and amount of water which you can retain on your property. It requires you to let water pass through your property so that those downstream will get their share. Georgia, Alabama and Florida are now in serious conversation about sharing the water in the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola River basins. In Iowa, the problem is usually too much water. In the west and now the southeast, the problem is too little.

Although water is as common as dirt, it is much more valuable. We die much sooner from lack of water than from lack of food. Although an enormous advertising effort tries to get us to drink everything but water, we’d all be a lot better off if we just drank more plain old water. Have you noticed the back lash developing against all those popular plastic water containers? It’s amazing that we will pay enormous amounts for water in a plastic bottle when it’s available practically free all over the place. In addition, these plastic water bottles constitute a huge environmental problem for the environment. And finally, bottled water implies that ordinary tap water is not safe, which in America is simply not the case. Ordinary tap water is cheap, safe, easily available, and for all intents and purposes without dangerous side-effects. We’d all be better off if we bought re-usable plastic water bottles instead of the disposable ones now so popular. It is important to drink water, however. When we don’t drink enough water, we get in trouble. Many older people in retirement homes get treated for bladder infections simply because they forget to drink water and don’t notice thirst. When I backpack, I insist that the hikers drink water continuously, since they will begin to suffer before they realize they are thirsty and then it takes a long time to re-stabilize the water in their bodies.

So it is that the woman comes to the well in the middle of the day to do something quite ordinary and yet very important. It turns out that she is about to encounter something even more important than satisfying her body’s needs for water, although she doesn’t realize it. In the ordinary task of drawing water, the woman encounters God. For her, the common substance, water, becomes the opportunity for salvation. She learns what most of us learn eventually that Jesus encounters us often in the ordinariness of everyday life.

The woman at the well is not looking for anything but water! She isn’t out looking for living water. She doesn’t even know that such a thing as living water exists. And if it did, she would not expect it to be available to a Samaritan woman like her. And a woman who has had five husbands and now living with someone to whom she is not married need hardly presume that God has much to say or offer to her anyway. She has no inkling that God has something for her until Jesus comes to her. And when he comes to her, he seems at first strange, inaccessible, and odd.

I heard a testimony recently from a woman whose marriage broke up because of what she knows were her mistakes and her misbehavior. She knew that the breakup of the marriage was not his fault and felt guilty and worthless. She thought God could never forgive someone who had failed her family, fallen short of her religious and moral standards, and betrayed the promises made in the wedding vow. She dropped out of life in the church until one day, Jesus came to her while she was walking on a beach - God must really like water - to say that she must not presume to tell God who can receive God’s love and forgiveness. For me to say that I or anyone else is outside the pale of God’s forgiving grace is to place myself above God, to tell God what is possible for God, to decide for God what God can do. It is preposterous of us to think that we know the limits of God’s power to love, forgive, and welcome home the sinner. It is blasphemous to say that my power to sin is greater than God’s power to forgive. My friend only realized this when she stopped trying to tell God something and started to listen to God’s voice, waiting to speak to her in the ordinariness of her life.

Our problem is never that God doesn’t speak to us. Our problem is that we don’t listen. And sometimes we even mistake prayer as a time to talk rather than listen. Prayer is not the only time we listen to God, but it can be one of the best times, at least when we use prayer to listen rather than speak. Prayer is the time to empty ourselves so that we can listen to God. As Kierkegaard noted “Prayer does not change God, but it [does] change [the one] who prays.” As many of you notice, I’m sure, we have a silent minute or two during our pastoral prayer time in the worship. I am hopeful that you bring the special joys and concerns we have shared into your thoughts, but most of all I hope you gather these concerns, worries, stress, along with the joys, triumphs and celebration and simply turn them over to God as you might turn over your hand to empty it contents so that when you turn your hand upright again, it is empty and ready for God to place there what only God knows you need. I follow this time of meditation with a short prayer calling our attention to the themes of the day. One of my pet peeves in worship is when the minister mistakes the prayer time as a second opportunity to preach. Whom do such preachers think they are talking to? God? Does God really need a sermon from me? I don’t think so! And you don’t need me taking up your prayer time with my words either. Prayer is more properly a time for us to empty our minds, let go of those special cares and burdens, to make room for God, to enable us to hear God’s voice, to find the peace and comfort which trust in God provides. It is not a time to present our wish list for the day or week. It is a time to bring those special people and situations in life and turn them over to God’s tender care: to let go and let God, as someone has so nicely put it.

For some reason, the woman at the well had a mind open to the voice of God. She was not silently meditating, as far as we know, but there did seem to be a lot of slack in her rope. She trudges to the well at midday, minding her own business and is met by Jesus. He comes to her. She didn’t ask for him, wasn’t looking for him, and was certainly not looking for “living water.” But Jesus speaks to her of things she could not know before she met him. He tells her of the availability of a treasure she did not even know she was looking for.

That’s often the way Jesus comes to us. He waits for us to be open to his coming and then surprises us. He comes to us and speaks to us of a need deeper than even what we thought were our deepest needs. He seeks us out before we ever go to the trouble to look for him. Our relationship with him is dependent upon his initiative, not ours

That is a very hopeful thing, because I do not always know what I need. When I am in trouble, I am often the last one to know. There have been many times when I ought to be looking for something and I don’t have enough sense to go looking for it. I go to the well without realizing that it is not water that I really need.

The good news is that Jesus comes to us. He initiates the conversation. If we just learn to be quiet enough to hear, Jesus will come close enough to speak.

Offertory Sentence

Whether you feel like an insider or an outsider in this gathering, know that at this moment Jesus has found you and is seeking your attention. Enjoy the conversation. We will now receive the morning’s offering.

Offertory Prayer

Receive our offerings, O God, along with our intentions to live as your servants in this world. Turn our thoughts into deeds, our prayers into actions, and our desires into work on behalf of those in need.

Amen.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

God of blessings and bounty, we are grateful when we believe we have enough. Teach us when to want less and to find contentment in all circumstances. Thank you for those who have taught us to know such contentment, especially Paul, your apostle, who could look at his sufferings and be thankful because the suffering created endurance; who could see endurance as a shaper of character, and character as the source of hope. Such maturity is not yet our gift, and we pray you will guide us to such truth. Thank you for seeking us out and claiming us as your children, for bringing us together into this fellowship, and for nourishing us with words of life. You have the words of eternal life, and you feed us with that which satisfies the deep needs of our soul. We give you our thanks in Jesus' name.

Amen.