"Resurrecting Waters," Sermon for Sunday March 23rd, 2014 by Nicole Collins

The oldest and deepest well known to exist according to Wikipedia is located in Cyprus, dating around 7500 BC. The name origin of the region of Cyprus means flowing tree. Another pair of wells from the Neolithic period, around 6500 BC, were discovered in Israel. One is in Atlit, on the northern coast of Israel, and the other is the Jezreel Valley.  These wells don’t really go too deep nor are really all that wide but were dug for a particular purpose, to fulfill a particular need...

Such is the similarity in the journey of the spirit’s formation—our living witness as disciples of Christ Jesus the Messiah, the TRUTH of living water—font of GRACE!  I have yet to watch the new TV series that just started up called: “Resurrection...” but have to wonder—are we immersed in a culture of denial that we actually DO NEED God?

Super hero pilot series Smallville ended three years ago, ‘Ancient Aliens’ replaced that time slot on the History 2 channel and now we have a show about resurrection.  TV exec’s and struggling actors and actresses are digging that well in the wilderness of our worldly selves needing but still fighting to feed that spiritual thirst for the living water of New Life—liquid GRACE: Jesus Christ! I doubt they had this song on their lips: “¹O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! ²Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!”

That meal we share together at the table each and every Sunday is one we could use spiritually—daily as our internal reminder that we need to be FED, we need to be FILLED, that we need to open our mouths and be filled down to our very souls!  The Word and testimony shared, of gathering together is to both be building that foundation of faith and living into the lifestyle of GRACE.  In order to live into the lifestyle of GRACE we need to be fed and we need to feed our neighbors through love.

The Gospel writer didn’t have a water cooler as the set for his scene with Jesus and the Samaritan woman’s social exchange, he had a well.  What a profound image and symbol to be the fixture of interaction between the purveyor of Grace, living water himself—Jesus the Christ and a person very bound to the world in sin and condemned by the world for sin—the Samaritan woman!

The heart of the Gospel today is in these key verses: ^10b... “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Is it just the notion of living water that is a spiritually explosive revelation for us or could it be the fact that God is Spirit and Truth combined?  God as Spirit and Truth combined and shaped as the seed of faith planted within us needing to be reaped!  But are we often like struggling church structures bound to the demands of the world over and above God’s with our bricks becoming merely stacked and the mortar of our faith crackling away?

Having sat upon many council meetings in different communities of faith, you see and experience the sad reality of “survival.” Just before last week’s council meeting, the Pastor & I drove through the downtown area of Joliet to gather more of a sense of where and how the community of Santa Cruz began and where their future lies.  Travelling east, we went by where the former mission house stood which is now long gone.  The building was not only torn down but the foundation was buried and grown over with grass as if it never existed at all...

The community has obviously resurrected and grown significantly in its shared ministry with First Lutheran church. They are two different communities entirely on one level but on another a true family where the labels of German and Hispanic blend to BE the people of God FOR the people of God.  Spiritually reflecting upon the former mission building in light of the well in today’s Gospel, no matter where the circumstances of our lives lived in Christ take us as disciples journeying down that same road... We are built by the GRACE of God—we are spiritual structures ourselves of the Living God’s work!

We are living vessels, members of the same priesthood—the priesthood of all believers commissioned and commanded to live into our transformed hearts (the tabernacle of the Holy Spirit), centered in Christ, fed by Living Water and the Word.  The world however finds ways in being and becoming our stumbling blocks to reaping that faith much like the lack of faith and tolerance that tore down the former mission project’s building, burying it away as if it had never existed in the first place!

Just a little further down the road, a few random turns and twists, sits the old Joliet state prison now a side attraction in memory of the Blues Brother’s famous beginning scene of “We’re on a mission from God.”  The untouched, empty structure, with its gnarled barb wire fences and its emptied, darkened windows is now just a symbol.  It is now a symbol of imprisonment and a Hollywood attraction, a completely different purpose and function not necessarily an improvement, mind you more than a reminder!

We are our own structures of faith in one regard and in the other we are built by and for our Heavenly Father—most fearfully and wonderfully made, indeed!  Jesus upon closing his life-giving conversation with the Samaritan woman challenges the disciples spiritually: “³¹Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

For us to truly and truthfully understand this challenge from Jesus means facing head on those stumbling blocks to our faith.  It means facing the wrecking ball of indifference and cynicism whether or not your foundation is completely solid... but facing it nonetheless with hope and perseverance as St. Paul says this morning to the Romans: “¹Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

The woman at the well much like ourselves was longing and thirsting for God without even realizing it, truly—truthfully!  We are all sinners and fall short of the Glory of God, this is true BUT we are all planted.  We are planted upon this earthly plain and we are planted with the seed of faith and watered most generously with the living waters of GRACE.  As St. Paul continues to illumine for our understanding: “⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”

Luther echoes our spiritual challenge in his commentary to the Romans: “Step by Step he, (the Apostle), leads us toward love, which, as he says, we have as a gift from the Holy Spirit.  He shows us thereby that we must ascribe all that we might claim for ourselves to God who by Grace grants us His Holy Spirit.  We must understand these words as an added motivation or instruction of the Holy Spirit, showing what we can glory in tribulation, though this is impossible by our own strength.  It is not the effect of our own power, but it comes from the divine love which is given us by the Holy Ghost.”

We can never know God’s timing but are spiritually disciplined to trust and hope upon his guidance, building and watering so that we may become life-giving ourselves.  Disciples extraordinaire humbly built by the power of the Cross and resurrected for servant leadership—living witnesses, FREED from our imprisonment bearing fruit for the Kingdom of God!

AMEN

Sunday March 23^rd, 2014; Year A; SOLA Lectionary; 3^rd Sunday in Lent        Nicole Collins

Psalm 95:1-19; Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-8; & John 4:5-42