As we journey through this season of Lent, getting ready for the Paschal Feast, we continue to hear some of the great stories of our faith. Stories to hold onto as we make our Christian journeys through life. Stories that tell us as much about ourselves as our ancestors.
As an introduction to today’s stories, I want to sing a few lines of an old song - actually they are the only lines....
[Sing ‘How dry I am’]
I had always thought of that as a drinking song until I looked on the internet. There was an article about a Westinghouse clothes dryer that has a music box in it. When the clothes are dry it plays “How dry I am.” Anyway, in the context of today’s lessons, the song: “How dry I am,” belongs to us all.
The Israelites were singing it in the desert when there was no water to drink. That alone was bad news. To make matters worse, the Israelites put God to the test. They were puzzled, “Why would God bring them out of Egypt to die from lack of water?” Well, it’s hard to get really mad at God, whom we can’t see. So they railed against Moses. Moses, after all, said he was doing what God told him when he led them out into the desert. Well! The quarreling got so bad that Moses pleaded with God to do something. “They are almost ready to stone me,” he said.
And sure enough, God came to his rescue. God led Moses to a rock and told him to strike it with his staff. From the rock came water that would assuage their thirst.
Now those of you who have never been to the Sinai Desert might think that getting a rock to give water was a miracle - an occurrence outside the natural realm. But that’s really not what this passage is about.
Back in 1996, I spent two days in the Sinai Desert. While we were on a hike, our leader stopped us at a place that had a pool of water. He pointed out where someone had punched a hole in the rock to let the water out.
Here’s how it works: Rainwater seeps through the sandstone rock until it hits hard granite. Because it can’t go through the granite, the water trickles out from between the layers of rock. Gradually a calcium plug forms in the place where the water leaves the rock.
Shepherds like Moses learned how to find those plugs. In fact, it is likely that Moses struck the rock many times during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. We hear several accounts in scripture. So it’s not a miracle that water came from rock in the sense that something happened outside the natural order. In the bible miracles are signs. By leading Moses and the people to the rock, God was giving them a sign – a sign that they were not alone in the desert. In other words, while they were singing “How dry I am,” the one who assuages thirst was right there.
There are many times in our lives when we sing “How dry I am” - not because we are waiting for another round at the bar, or for the clothes dryer to go off, or for someone to punch a hole in a rock, but because we can’t seem to find God. We can’t discern how God is acting in our lives, or even that God is acting in them.
Sometimes we have a conscious awareness of this dryness. Often it’s unconscious. We just have this general feeling that our lives aren’t very fulfilling, that something is missing. We look here and there for something to make life better. It never occurs to us that what we really want and need is God - or a new discovery of God.
How many of you like the hymn “Amazing Grace?”
Amazing grace!
How sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me!
It’s very interesting that so many of us identify with that hymn. Somehow each of us knows in our heart that I am the wretch that is saved by grace. But do you ever stop to consider what the word “wretch” mean?
Webster’s Dictionary says that a wretch is “a miserable or unhappy person; someone in deep distress or misfortune.” It can also mean “one who is despised or scorned because of some inferior quality.” The root of the word, however, means “outcast.” In theological terms a “wretch” is someone who is separated from God. Someone who sings “How dry I am.”
The Israelites were “wretches.” Not because God had abandoned them, but because they didn’t know where to look for God. When the water gave out, they thought God had abandoned them. The truth was, God was there all the time. They just had to learn how to strike the rock.
The Samaritan woman at the well was a wretch as well. She was singing the same old song “How dry I am.” Like most of us, she wasn’t looking for the answer with another drink of alcohol. Instead, she was looking to husbands for that “something more” that would assuage her thirst. We find her at the well in the heat of the noonday sun. Women usually came in the morning and evening when it was cooler. Scholars have said she was probably there by herself at noon because she was a social outcast - brought about by having so many men. A group of women studying this passage said that she was there at noon because it was the only time she could get anyone to watch the children!
Anyway, where do you look for water to assuage your thirst? Do you look to your job? Your home? Your children? Your spouse? Your material belongings? Your friends?
Well, certainly all these things help. All of them are good in and of themselves. God meant for us to enjoy satisfying work. For us to enjoy family and friends. For us to enjoy the good things of the earth. That’s what the creation stories in Genesis tell us. But it’s so easy to try and make these things into the water that assuages our thirst. To trust in one or more of them for our well-being. Then, when something happens, we are lost.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to Jesus, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”
The living water was right beside her but she couldn’t see him. The water was in the rock all the time, but the Israelites couldn’t find it. The water which assuages our dryness is with us right here, now. Can we find it?
Look around you. Seated around you are people just like you. All of us wretches. All of us thirsty. All of us in need of the living water. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.
My guess is that there are some here for whom the water is gushing right now. Others for whom it is bubbling. Others for whom it is locked behind the calcium plug. What brings us together is that we all sing “How dry I am.” We are all here together because we need that living water which assuages our thirst. We are here because we know that the Source never abandons us. It is just us who get lost.