Rev. Dr. Bary R. Fleet - Pastor
February 24, 2008 – 3rd Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1-7      
Romans 5:1-11   
John 4:5-42

The Pause that Refreshes

I was somewhere the other day and saw an old serving tray.  It was the kind of tray that children would put out at Christmas with a couple of cookies and a glass of milk.  Painted on the tray was a picture of Santa … but Santa wasn’t drinking milk.  He was drinking Coca Cola, and the slogan under the picture was “The pause that refreshes.”

That’s probably a good title for today’s Gospel reading.  Exhausted from his journey into Samaria, Jesus pauses for refreshment at Jacob’s well.  But the real refreshment that afternoon happens not for Jesus, but for those with whom he comes in contact.

Obviously, the first person is the Samaritan woman.  No one remembers her name, but she becomes a very unlikely witness for Jesus.  “Come and see …” she ends up telling folk.

We know the story – maybe too well – but it is important to remind ourselves of the power of this encounter.  I don’t even know how to draw a modern-day parallel, but there are so many cultural taboos that are crossed here … it has to do with gender; it has to do with religious and ethnic background. 

But somehow, in that encounter, she realizes that she has made a relationship with someone unique … and the only way she knew to characterize it was that this must be “the savior.”  There is something incredibly transforming when we come into the presence of someone who embodies love … a love that extends beyond cultural boundaries. 

This Jesus – this loving being – knew everything about her … knew her unstable past.  (I don’t know if that is the right word, but she had had five husbands and was now living with yet another man.)  Maybe Jesus was tuned into the woman’s unquenchable thirst for a relationship that had depth and meaning – but was looking in the wrong places. 

But what the woman knew was that she felt loved and accepted … valued like she never had before. 

She was so moved that she left her water jar and ran to tell her neighbors:  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done …” 

She evidently had some credibility.  “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” (John 4:39)  But I wonder how she felt when “many more believed because of his word.” (John 4:41) … and then they later told her “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)

For centuries, people have been coming to Jesus … coming to “love” and finding themselves refreshed – restored in body and mind and spirit. 

It is no wonder that water is such a prominent image in the Bible.  It is no wonder that Jesus is equated with water, because water is the only liquid that truly quenches thirst.

Sure, we try lots of other things, and – speaking of Coca Cola – I suspect I drink at least as much of it in a day as anybody in this room.  I read this week that 900 million servings of Coca Cola are consumed every day!  We all have our “beverage of choice.” Some of us even bring our water bottles to church … or our coffee mugs.

We are a thirsty people.  But what we really thirst for is a sense of belonging.  We thirst for validation, for acceptance, for affirmation.  We thirst for safety and security.  We thirst for purpose in our lives.  Probably, the most powerful of all thirst we have is for love … to give and to receive.  We don’t have to cultivate these thirsts; they come hard-wired in us.  In and of themselves, they are healthy … having these thirsts means we are alive.

What is not healthy are some of the ways we choose to quench our thirsts.

We want belonging – and we turn to whoever will have us – even if they are more interested in what we can do for them than they are in our well-being.

We want people to like us – and we spend our lives jumping through hoops trying to please others … our parents, our bosses, our friends … and we do whatever we think they want us to … hoping that they will notice how hard we are trying and they will like us.

We want safety and security – and so we build fences … international fences.  We get stronger locks.

We want purpose and direction – and so we look around to see what others are doing and we follow the crowd.

What we really want, what we really thirst for is … love.  Almost anything in the world can be a substitute for love … and anything less than love leaves us thirsting.

The Good News for today is that we have a God who loves us so much that God would stop at nothing to demonstrate how loved we are … We are loved so much that we don’t need to pretend, we don’t need to hide, we don’t need to be afraid … The same force that created the universe loves us.

When we stop our lives long enough to allow ourselves to “drink that in” … we will know that “pause that refreshes.”  We will discover that our deepest thirst has been quenched.

NOTE:  Today’s sermon is credited to The Clergy Journal, November / December 2007, pp. 38-39.

SERMON IN A SACK:  A bottle of water.  Talk about the Hebrew children in the wilderness and their grumbling because they were thirsty … how Moses struck the rock, and they got water … about how God always gives us what we need – sometimes in surprising ways.