“SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT”
March 22, 2014
Westmount Park United Church

The season of Lent comes when the days are growing longer and brighter, while inside the trees the sap is stirring that will soon nourish new growth, new life. With nature poised on the brink of the miracle of springtime it is a good time of year to be thinking about the spiritual nourishment which God provides to famished souls as we move through the season of Lent to its culmination on Easter when we celebrate the ultimate triumph of life over death.
The lesson which was read from Exodus describes how God provided nourishment to the Israelites as they journeyed across the arid desert on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land. Life giving water flowed out from a rock to save them from dying of thirst. Water is the most important nourishment there is. A person can go for days without food and still survive, provided there is water to drink. Water is absolutely essential to life.
What Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar was that he had something to offer her which is even more vital, more important than water. Jesus calls the vital gift that he has for that woman, and for everyone, “living water.” The woman thought that Jesus was talking about a stream of flowing water which would be more palatable than the stagnant waters held by the cistern of the well at Sychar, and it is true that Jesus was offering something more refreshing, more enlivening than a drink of water from that well. Indeed Jesus’ gift of the reviving life giving Spirit of God brings a refreshment far exceeding even the coolest of clear bubbling streams. “Everyone who drinks of this water,” says Jesus, “will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” [John 4:13 14] The nourishment which comes from drinking of the living water Jesus offers us means richer fuller life that begins now and lasts for eternity.
Jesus is using symbolic language when he speaks of “living water” but I would think that he had something for the woman at the well in Sychar besides charming phrases and some penetrating insight into her life. Perhaps the gift Jesus gave this woman, that refreshed her and made her life richer and fuller than it had ever been before, was the simple yet powerful fact that Jesus treated her with kindness and respect. Jesus took her seriously. He treated her as another human being and not as someone beneath his notice. From the point of view of anyone in Jesus’ society that woman at the well in Sychar had three strikes against her before she even had a chance to come to the plate. For one thing she was a woman, her second problem was that she was a Samaritan, and the third strike against her was the fact that she was living with a man who was not here husband. In every way she was a person who was far beneath Jesus’ standing in society. The disciples were astonished that Jesus was speaking to a woman, living as they did in a society where women had no say or any sort of credibility. There was certainly no International Women’s Day in Jesus’ time. On top of that she was a Samaritan and Samaritans were the sworn enemies of the Jews. Add to that the fact that she was living with a man who was not her husband and it all added up to the inescapable fact that this woman was an entirely unimportant and marginalized person who should have gone unnoticed by someone in Jesus’ position. She was of the wrong sex, the wrong nationality and the wrong social class. But despite all that, or is it because of all that, Jesus treated her with dignity and respect. He did not patronize her, treating her as some sort of pitiable charity case, indeed he came asking her assistance in getting a drink of water to quench his thirst in the heat of mid-day. By granting her full acceptance and respect as a fellow human being Jesus gave her a gift of life which would allow her to rise above her currently despised existence.
We receive a gift of living water, gushing up to give us life in rich fullness, when we are treated as human beings and when we treat others as full brothers and sisters who share our common humanity, and not as strangers or inferiors or enemies. When we fail to see in others the fullness of a shared humanity then we stifle the flow of living water.
Many years ago I heard someone quote the American preacher William Sloan Coffin Jr. who penned a phrase that has always stuck with me. “It is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems.” It seems as if our race has always been driven by blood thirsty revenge of enemies rather than by the life giving realization that we share a common bond of humanity with all people. Once a feud begins, and people of another nationality or country or social system are labeled as the enemy, there seems little hope but to live as enemies from generation to generation. Part of our problem is that we build adversarial rather than cooperative systems right into the fabric of our society. Both our legal system and our political system operate on an adversarial basis. The courts are being used more and more to gain economic advantage by launching litigations against anyone who might possibly be accused of liability. In these litigious times one daren’t proffer an apology lest one be deemed to have admitted liability.
Somehow Jesus managed to bridge the centuries old conflict between Samaritans and Jews. They had good historical reasons for hating each other, for never trusting each other, but springs of living water were allowed to flow into the Samaritan woman’s life because Jesus regarded her as a fellow human being and not as an enemy. Living water flowed because Jesus managed to leap across the barriers that divide us from our brothers and sisters, and to treat someone as a full human being who was on the opposite side from his sex and race and social position. When we do the same as Jesus did then we also allow springs of life giving living water to flow into people’s lives. It brings nourishment to the soul both to receive the gift of living water and to allow it to flow by doing as Jesus did. Jesus says to his disciples in today’s reading, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete God’s work.” [John 4:34] We also are nourished and sustained by God when we do God’s will in treating all other human beings as our brothers and sisters, for all human beings are, without exception, precious in God’s sight. When we comprehend and appreciate the bond of common humanity which connects us to the people we despise the most then we allow springs of living water to flow ever more freely.
We give living water by treating others with love and respect and we receive living water when the love of God flows to us through the lives of loving caring people. But we also receive the gift of living water from God when we stand alone, even when we are despised as the enemy, or relegated to second class humanity, or marginalized by those who wield social and economic power. We receive living water no matter how we are treated by others because even when our humanity and our dignity is denied by others it is affirmed and confirmed by God. The water which gushes up to eternal life comes from God and no human indifference can ultimately stop it from flowing to us and nourishing us with the gift of life that continues for eternity.