Prayer for Times of Thirst
John 4:1-42
March 23, 2014[1]
Have you ever been really
thirsty?
My times of physical thirst have
been limited. O, there may have been
some times when mowing the lawn that I came back into the house and really
appreciated a tall, cool glass of water.
There may have been some times when getting ready for various medical
things that I was told “nothing by mouth.”
But I remember reading books
about sailors stranded at sea who were surrounded by water but didn’t have
anything to drink—how they would collect morning dew from their sails before
the sun would steal it away from them.
If I remember the movie Castaway correctly, one of the keys to
Tom Hank’s survival was finding a way to capture and store fresh water. It’s been a long time since I have seen the
movie, but I recall seeing a severely dehydrated Hanks quivering as he took a
drop of moisture that had collected on a leaf.[2]
But it’s not only something that
happens in the movies. I read a report
that this past week, Jose Salvador Alvarenga traveled from his home in El
Salvador to Mexico to tell Roselia Diaz, mother of 23-year old Ezequiel
Cordoba, how her son died after about four weeks at sea because he wasn’t able
to adjust to some of the desperate measures that had to be taken to survive at
sea. News reports said that Alvarenga
and Cordoba had drifted some 6,000 miles at sea on a small fishing boat—from
Mexico to the Marshall Islands, meandering in and out of the currents.[3]
I have never been thirsty like
that.
I don’t know if the Children of
Israel had reached that point of desperation in our Old Testament Lesson when
they came to Moses and demanded that he give them something to drink (Exodus 17:2). They were in the middle of the desert,
wandering in the wilderness following their escape from Egypt, and they were so
thirsty that bondage in Egypt seemed preferable to the suffering that they were
undertaking. “Why did you bring us out
of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (Exodus 17:3b).
Give me something to drink. It’s a cry that is so simple, so basic, so
profound. It reflects one of the most
fundamental needs of the human body. It
also reflects one of the most fundamental needs of the human soul.
It was a fundamental need that
Jesus captured in his conversation with the woman at the well.
The setting is awkward. Jesus chooses to travel through Samaria on
his way back to Galilee from Judea. I
recall the strange phrase from the King James Version that says, “He must needs
to go through Samaria” (John 4:3). Not
because it was convenient, not because there was no other route. It was his destiny.
Jesus sits by the well. He is tired.
It is about noon. He sees a
Samaritan woman approach with her water jar.
It is an unusual time of day to draw water from the well. Most women come much earlier in the day for
this task. But maybe this particular
woman doesn’t want to be in the company of other women, doesn’t want to face
their stone cold glances, their gossip, or their silence. So she comes at noon when she expects to be
alone. She finds the figure of Jesus
sitting beside the well.
Then she hears Jesus asking her
for some water. She is astonished. His accent indicates that he is Jewish, from
Galilee. The racism that divides the
Jews from the Samaritans is deeply rooted, going back centuries. But Jesus does not permit himself to be
limited by the boundaries of gender, geography and race. When the woman questions why he would even
speak to her, he points out to her that if she knew who He was, she would be
begging him for a drink of living water.
When she inquires further about
how could He provide her with water—he has no bucket—Jesus makes it clear that
the water which he provides is different—that those who drink from his water
will never be thirsty again. And the
woman then says to Jesus, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be
thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water” (John 4:15).
The woman is amazed. Jesus lets her know that He knows all about
her. She runs to tell her people about
this incredible man, this prophet. They
are so impressed that Jesus stays in Sychar for two days. Many come to believe in Him—not because of
the woman’s story, but because they have heard Jesus for themselves.
The Bible makes it clear that
God cares about our thirst—both physical and spiritual. We recited a portion of
Psalm 95 this morning in our Call to Worship.
There are verses later in that same Psalm in which seem to indicate that
God was impatient with the Israelites on that day at Meribah. God speaks in the Psalm, “Do not harden your
hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your
ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and
said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my
ways.’ Therefore in my anger I swore,
“they shall not enter my rest.’” (Psalm
95:8-11).
God was impatient and angry at
the Israelites, not because of their thirst, but because of their hardness of
heart. Time after time, God had come to
their rescue, but they were so quick to forget, so slow to trust.
That seems to be a familiar
refrain with God’s children. God takes
care of us. But over time, we grow
complacent. We forget the source of our
help. We become bitter. We complain.
We forget our identity as children of God.
On another occasion in the
history of the Israelite, after another period of hardness of heart, another
time of bondage and repentance, God called His children home. He heard the cry
of His children by the waters of Babylon, where they sat down and wept as they
remembered Zion (Psalm 137:1). God
invited His children to remember who they were.
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no
money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine
and milk without money and without price…
Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live… Seek the Lord while he may be found, call
upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the
unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy
on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:1-7).
But sometimes, it is hard to
remember.
·
It can be hard to remember when, as a parent, we
are struggling to manage a household, earn a living, care for our children,
love our spouses and squeeze out some time for ourselves.
·
It can be hard to remember when, as an employee,
we try to manage the tensions between a faith that places under certain ethical
demands of honesty, integrity, loving our neighbor that don’t always seem to
fit with the amoral demands of our employers.
Honesty, integrity and loving your neighbor don’t always show up in the
profit column.
·
It can be hard to remember, when a person we
love, if not we ourselves, becomes ill, when we face the uncertainties of
medical treatment, hospitalization, and we are reminded of our mortality.
·
It can be hard to remember when we see news
stories that scare us, hear from politicians who capitalize on our fears (both
sides of the aisle).
But God urges us to
remember. To remember who we are, and to
remember who God is. To remember each
day with grateful hearts the many graces He has offered us. To examine our conscience each day to keep
our hearts tender. To remember that we
are baptized in the waters, the waters of the Holy Spirit.
And, to remember in our times of
thirst, to ask for a drink of the living waters.
That is our prayer for times of
thirst. Lord, fill my cup. Give me something to drink.
Are you thirsty today? Come to the waters!
May it be so!
Copyright © 2014 by Thomas E.
Frost. All rights reserved.
[1]
Preached at Cunningham United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia.
[2]
Cast Away, directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by William Broyles Jr. (Twentieth Century Fox, 2000).
[3]
Rafael Romo, “New chapter in castaway's
story: Keeping promise to companion who perished,” (CNN: March 19, 2014),
viewed on the internet on March 23, 2014 at http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/18/world/americas/mexico-castaway-promise/.
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