Delivered by Rev. Ellen Brantley

Sunday, February 24, 2008

SERMON: Quenching Our Thirst

TEXT: John 4:5-15

Remember the old Lipton iced tea commercial where, after taking a sip of iced tea, the person imagined himself on a hot summer day falling backward into a pool of cool, refreshing water. I think they even included the word “ahhh” to get the point across. Being from Minnesota, the land of over 10,000 lakes, that’s how I feel every time I see a clear body of water (in the summertime, anyway). “Ahhhh.” Just the sight of it is refreshing to me. Even the thought of it seems to quench my thirst.

What quenches your thirst? Many people might say that glass of iced tea or an ice cold beer or soda would hit the spot. When I was a kid it would have been a Popsicle or a sno-cone. But what about all the other things we thirst for?

When you think about it, aren’t we a society that is thirsty for many things? Just watch American Idol or some of the other reality shows, and you’ll see that we are a nation thirsty for fame and fortune. We’ve all heard that there are more and more people are drowning in debt, an indication that we are thirsty for material things – the best cars, the nicest homes, all the latest toys and gadgets. If we looked at the lifestyles of teenagers or college students, we’d likely find that a majority are thirsty for love, a thirst which they try to quench with sex. Even ten-year-old girls (and younger) get the message from their peers that there’s something wrong with them if their clothes don’t match or if they’re not thin and pretty. And it seems there are more people thirsting so much for attention that they think going on a shooting rampage and killing dozens of people is a good way to get notoriety!

Trying to quench our thirst in these ways is like trying to get water from a rock. And only Moses, through the power of God, was able to do that for the Israelites as they traveled in the wilderness.

Indeed, we are a thirsty, even parched people. The problem is we’re trying to quench our thirst with things that will not satisfy.

The Samaritan woman at the well was also thirsty for more than just water. We don’t know whether her five marriages were a result of her own promiscuity or whether she was just unfortunate enough to have been widowed that many times and become the possession of the next brother in line. But to Jesus it didn’t matter. He approached her at the well, recognized her thirst, and established a relationship with her that would quench it.

Jesus broke down barriers and defied societal conventions just in speaking with this woman. First, it was unheard of that a Jewish man would initiate conversation with an unknown woman. Second, Jews did not invite contact with Samaritans for fear of ritual contamination. This would be equivalent to a southern man in the 1950’s drinking from the water fountain labeled “colored.”

The woman was clearly surprised by Jesus’ request for a drink, and she questioned him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” He answered that if she’d known who he was, she would have asked him for “living water.” She questioned him further about this water, and he explained, “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.”

What would it be like to never be thirsty again? To be satisfied and content with what we have? To never find ourselves whining about what we don’t have and wanting more?

One of the stories I’ve heard over and over again from people who’ve been on mission trips to some of the poorest countries in the world is how grateful the people are for what little they have and for whatever they’re given. Also, you often hear how enthusiastic their faith is and how alive their worship of God. These are the poorest people in the world, who sometimes have to travel miles every day just to find clean water. Yet somehow, they seem to be quenched by the living water that Jesus spoke of, and in them you can see it “gushing up to eternal life.”

Consider this song that I heard a number of years ago, titled “That’s Not Poverty.”

In Haiti a lady is climbing the mountain

Young men are singing on her left and right

She’s taking the Word to remote congregations

Sixty-five years she’s been taking the Light.

In Haiti a Pastor is walking the jungle.

He’s wearing a cast-off American shirt

He’ll have his reward when his struggle is over

He brings hope to the hopeless and comforts the hurt.

And you can hear it in their voices.

And you can see it on their faces.

When life is spilled,

The cup is filled.

That’s not poverty.

In Haiti believers have light on their faces

As they march through town to the riverside

They baptize believers in this celebration

Of eternal riches that they have in Christ.

We may find ourselves wondering, just as the Samaritan woman asked Jesus, “Where do we get that living water?”

Let me point out that later in this story – a part of the passage we did not hear today – the Samaritan woman, following a much longer encounter with Jesus, leaves her water jar and goes back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” She became a witness for Jesus. No longer fearing how people might receive her or reject her, no longer pre-occupied with her own problems, no longer even worried about her task of collecting water, she stepped outside herself and found that her thirst was quenched in sharing with others.

In the same way, we can quench our own thirst for living water by stepping outside ourselves, by forgetting about our own problems, by making our faith a priority in our lives, and by using our gifts to minister to others.

We can quench our thirst by quenching the thirst of others through our gifts to the One Great Hour of Sharing offering. Some of this money goes to providing irrigation systems and clean water sources to some of the poorest people in the world to make their lives a little easier. We can quench our thirst by participating in or supporting the mission trip to the Oglala-Lakota Indian reservation in South Dakota this summer, providing beds, restoring homes, and assisting the elderly and disabled in this poverty-stricken community.

Most of all, as the Re-Member organization which coordinates the mission with the Indian Reservation emphasizes, our mission will be about building relationships. Furthermore, isn’t our walk of faith a building of our relationship with Jesus Christ? It is not the things we get or even the things we give, but the relationships we establish and the love we share that will finally quench our thirst forever with the living water that gushes up to eternal life.

May we never thirst again… to the glory of God!

AMEN.