A Sermon from the First Church….       

A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough, Maine on Sunday, February 24, 2008 (Third Sunday in Lent).  The principal readings were Psalm 95 and John 4:5-42. 
 

“When a Samaritan woman came to draw water,

Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’” (John. 4:7). 

“Don’t Go Near the Water!” 

“Don’t go near the water!” 

Several weeks ago, I heard a mother issue that warning to her child. I was walking through L.L. Bean’s main store.  The prominent feature is the staircase to the upper level and the pool of the water under the stairs. 

Water has the power to engage both our sight and our hearing.  Our language tries to mimic or imitate the sounds of water.  Water, we say, “splashes;” it “gurgles;” it “ripples.”  Our eyes are always drawn by the play of light and shadow on water.  It is hard to ignore the result when the sun glistens on moving water.   

The child I saw at “Bean’s” walked over to the pool and leaned over the rock wall.  It was at this point that the parental intervention was uttered, “Don’t go near the water!”  What sparkles pleasantly, what glistens attractively can also be deadly. 

There was no parent that noontime in the Samaritan village to warn the woman with the water jar.  The stranger at Jacob’s well was a Jew.  Any Samaritan would have yelled, “Don’t go near the water!”  No one warned the woman, she came to the well.  She found a man sitting by the well.  He said, “Give me a drink.”  We do not think of our Lord as saying “give me” to us.  That is what we say to him.  We say it in endless prayer, allowed only by our assurance of his endless love.  But now, to this woman, he expresses the basic human need of drink, a drink of water. 

You know the story and you know the ending.  The woman, in some verbal fashion, toppled over the well wall and fell into the water.  Jesus caught her – another fish in his net of salvation. 

She put up a fight!  Applying the theory that a good offense is the best defense, the Samaritan woman tried to argue free of Jesus by changing the subject.  He kept pushing her and she finally acknowledged his claim.  He may be greater than Jacob but where will he get his ever-flowing stream of water?  He may be a prophet who discerns her marital troubles but is he so sure that Mt. Zion at Jerusalem and not Mt. Gerazim is God’s chosen dwelling? 

Note by the end of their long dialogue (the longest in the Gospels), none of Jesus’ religious arguments made much of an impression upon her.  She could have cared less about the division of opinion over which mountain was the site for correct worship.  That was merely her way of changing the subject, of getting Jesus off her case. 

What finally drew her attention and impressed her in the end was the Jesus – this stranger – knew her.  This man knew everything she had ever done or had done to her, and he loved her nonetheless.  She thought the water would be dangerous.  Instead, she found it refreshing and forgiving. 

She ran to tell the villagers.  Hearing her report they receive an invitation to go to the water.  We are invited to go the water, too.  Specifically, the water is the water of baptism.  There is a mystery hidden in the water.   

This water will wash you inside and out, and it will mark you as a “child of God, disciple of Christ, (and) member of the Church.”  It will make you a worshiper of the God you will henceforth honor in Spirit and in truth.  It will make you brother or sister to the Samaritan woman and all others who find new life in the water touched by Christ. 

The Samaritan’s invitation is for us, too.  Yet, we ask in an echo of Nicodemus, how can I be baptized again?  Is it possible to enter the font a second time or a third time and be washed again in water and the Spirit?  In one dramatic sense, it is possible. 

Lent offers us what was carefully described in the Fourth century by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan and mentor to St. Augustine, as “the second baptism” or “the tears of repentance.”  It can be far more difficult, some would say, more dangerous than our first baptism.  There is not one of us who goes through life “mistake free.”  Each of us, consciously or otherwise, sins.  “Perfection,” in thought and behavior, is not our middle name. 

Yet, we are not called to be long-faced or sad-minded like the ancient Pharisees.  Whether it is our first baptism into Christ or our second one into the spirit of Lent, let us pay attention to the water and take our cue from it. 

Listen to its splash and lift up our hearts.  Look at its bright glistening and light up our eyes.  Please, go near the water.  Don’t avoid it. 

By telling the woman at the well who she is, Jesus shows her who he is.  “I know that Messiah is coming,” she says, and he says, “I am he.”  It is the first time he has said that to another living soul.  Both stand under the high noon sun for one bright moment, while all the rules, taboos and personal histories that separate them fall forgotten into the well. 

This story is about relationships.  By confirming her identity, he reveals his own, and that is how it still happens.  The Messiah – the Christ – is the one in whose presence you know who you really are – the good and the bad of it, the all of it, and the hope in it.  The Christ is the one who shows you who you are by showing you who he is – who crosses all boundaries, breaks all rules, drops all disguises – speaking to you like someone you have known all your life, bubbling up, if you will, in your life, so that you go back to the village, speaking as boldly as he spoke to you.  “Come; see a man who told me everything I ever did.  Could this be the Christ?” 

Jesus accepted people as they were in such a way as to make them want to change.  He offered them “a spring of water welling up to eternal life,” but always left them free to accept or reject it.  Many rejected it and him because they were unable to accept themselves as they were.  Others accepted! 

The message is timeless and clear, but not easy.  Lent is a time to look at relationships – our relationship with God and with one another.   

We will always be reminded of this truth at every celebration of the Sacrament of Baptism.  We always pray: “Bless by your Holy Spirit, gracious God, this water.  By your Holy Spirit save those who confess the name of Jesus Christ that sin may have no power over them.  Create new life in all baptized this day that they may rise in Christ….”  Amen.   (Order for Baptism, Prayer of Baptism, part II) 

“Go!  Go to the water!”