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Third Sunday in Lent
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael Moffitt, March 15, 2020


The Importance of Pure Living Water


Text: John 4:10–15

One of the first things I observed when traveling in Africa is the importance of good, clean water. We were staying at the Cathedral compound in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city, but were warned to not drink their water. We bought a dozen cases of bottled water first thing. As we moved out of the city to visit churches in the rural areas, I watched many, many people walking with big yellow water buckets hoping to find a water hole that hadn’t dried up.

The daily need to find water took up much of the lives of those we came in contact with. The children were not able to be in school, the adults couldn’t work full time because the water sources were often miles from villages. The able-bodied members of a community were forced to spend much of their day simply finding and transporting water. The typical container used for water collection in Africa, the jerry can, weighs over 40 lbs. when completely full. Children as young as five years old were sent to help in the process of water gathering. Some of the women would carry two cans on their backs.

In addition to the grueling process of gathering the water is the fact that it was likely contaminated with bacteria and diseases like cholera, amebic dysentery, typhoid or hepatitis A. Many millions of dollars have been spent on helping impoverished nations solve the problem of the lack of water through modern innovations including wells, rainwater gathering systems and water purification methods.

Our church in Roanoke adopted the town of Gahanga, Rwanda and sent teams there twice a year helping them develop ways to overcome the water problem. We raised enough capital to build an effective rainwater recovery system that would serve to provide clean water to those who live in the town. Once this was accomplished, we helped them build a school and helped local adults start micro-businesses. The last time I traveled there was in 2014 and the school had grown to 1100 students and had taken third place honors in academics out of all the schools in Rwanda. Their lives had totally changed, and they couldn’t wait to show us all that they had accomplished. No longer did you see people walking around with the yellow Jerry cans looking for water, and because the water problem was solved they could now begin to build an infrastructure for the growth of their little community. Today they are a thriving center of commerce located 20 kilometers from Kigali.

The need for fresh clean water is certainly not a recent problem because the human body has always required water in order to live and flourish. The Mayo Clinic claims that the average human needs approximately three liters of water daily in order to function properly.

Throughout the many years that we developed relationships with our brothers and sisters in Rwanda one thing became abundantly clear. Though we had the financial resources to help them with the water problem and other things to build a stable local economy, they taught us a great deal about what it means to worship the Lord passionately and to love their neighbors unconditionally. It ended up being a win-win situation. They also showed us how a Christian community could effectively teach those around them about the importance of the “living water” offered by Jesus.

The Lord often chooses to teach us spiritual lessons through examples of physical needs that we have. We have two examples of that this morning through our Old Testament and Gospel readings. In both cases we will see that it was God who initiated the relationship between himself and those he came to save.

In our Old Testament reading from Exodus 17:1–7, God through Moses led Israel out of Egypt by many miraculous events designed to reveal His fatherly care and ability to move on their behalf and against their enemies. As our story begins we find Israel being led through the wilderness of Sin to Rephidim, which was in the area of Mt. Sinai. There was no water to be found there and Israel began to complain and quarrel with Moses accusing him of leading them out of Egypt to their death from lack of water. It’s amazing how quickly they turned from God. Apparently things were really heating up because Moses cries out to God, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

As is always true, God intentionally brings about circumstances in order to demonstrate his power and faithfulness to his people. God instructs Moses to take the staff that he used to strike the Nile while in Egypt and to gather some of the elders of Israel to walk ahead of the people to the rock that was at Horeb. Listen carefully to what came next Exodus 17:6,

“Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.

God himself identifies with the rock and at least two important things were revealed about God in this story. First, in the Old Testament “Rock” is often used as a metaphor for royalty. Here the Rock seems to represent divine kingship and the water represents the good provisions of the Divine King. In Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses, he refers to God four times as the “Rock” (32: 4,15,18.31). One of those examples is Deuteronomy 32:4,

The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.

You’ll find in the “Song of Moses” that God is lifted up as a faithful and strong King who is well able and willing to meet every need of his people. In the next verse (5) Moses accuses Israel of turning away from the overtures of their God,

“…they acted corruptly toward him, to their shame they are no longer his children but a warped and crooked generation. Is this the way you repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your creator, who made you and formed you?”

When reading Deuteronomy 32, I put it down asking myself, how could they? And how could we turn away from the love and provision of such a King?

The second thing we should glean about God from this Exodus 17, Dr. Edmond Clowney in his book, The Unfolding Mystery - Discovering Christ in the Old Testament, suggested that when God stood upon the rock and commanded Moses to strike the rock, he was the Christ figure who took the penalty of man’s sin and unbelief upon himself. After all that God had done in delivering Israel from their bondage in Egypt, all the ways that he had demonstrated his divine power and authority on their behalf, they had quickly turned upon him in a rage because they grew thirsty. In doing so they expressed their opinion that God was unfaithful and was not to be trusted.

God could not let that sin go unpunished, so he took the blow on their behalf as he stood upon the rock. God demonstrated that he was not guilty of mistreating his people and the water that poured out from the rock was to be seen as a reference to the water of life that flows from the throne of God. Jesus offered this water in the temple where water was symbolically poured out during the feast. John 7:37–38,

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”

This Rock at Horeb was understood by the Apostle Paul as a type of Christ in 1 Corinthians 10:4, “and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”

The Israelites were very privileged by receiving supernatural provisions from the Holy Spirit just as the church receives nourishment from the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist. Ezekiel 47:1–12 refers to the water flowing from the temple, the place of God’s royal enthronement on earth. The rock that gave Israel water during the exodus fit within this royal example. In that sense Paul saw the water giving rock in the wilderness as a demonstration of God’s royal, lifegiving care for his people. In this way the rock foreshadowed Jesus, the final, lifegiving King.

Everything that God did for his people Israel, ends up being a foreshadowing of what he will continue to provide to his people through Jesus Christ.

Psalm 95 that we read this morning is a song of praise to God, “For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods…” and because this has always been and will always be true the reader is reminded at the end to not make the same mistake as Israel, “do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.”

Our Gospel reading this morning from John 4:5–26 should also be seen through the lens of our Old Testament reading. God chose Israel as a people for his own possession in order to bring hope and restoration to all nations. They failed to live into the calling on their lives but instead over and over chose to break away from God in order to be like the other nations. Time and again God brought judgment upon them. Finally, there was only a remnant of those who loved the Lord and followed him faithfully. Last week we saw how Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee and a teacher of the law and the prophets. He chided him for being blind to who Jesus was. On the one hand, Nicodemus proclaimed that it was clear from the miracles and signs that Jesus performed that he was from God, but then he questioned Jesus’ statement that he must be born again from above by saying “how can these things be?” Jesus answers that if he was truly a teacher of Torah then he should recognize who Jesus really was.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus shows what it would look like for God’s people to be faithful to the command and will of his Father in Heaven. Again, we see another example of the Divine King taking the initiative in coming after those people who are lost and broken.

There was no love lost between the Samaritans and the Jews. It was said that when the Jews were traveling between Galilee and Judea they would rather go around Samaria and have to cross the Jordon River twice than travel through Samaria. However, Jesus not only decides to travel through Samaria, but he stops and engages a Samaritan woman in conversation. Nothing about this story would have been acceptable to the Jews. The Jews saw the Samaritans as half breeds and wouldn’t eat with them or enter their homes lest they be defiled. The Samaritans had a similar disdain for the Jews. Jesus stops at the well at Sychar and when a Samaritan woman comes up at noon which was in the heat of the day he engages her in conversation. We soon find out in the story that she is coming at a time where she would likely be alone. We come to understand that to the Jews and the Samaritans, she would be seen as an immoral woman to be avoided. She has been married five times and the man she is living with at that time was not her husband. Jesus knows who and what at she is but asks her for a drink of water and even she is shocked by the request. Not only was having anything do with a Samaritan forbidden in Jewish legislation and custom but for a Jewish man to speak with a Samaritan woman was unthinkable. To make matters worse Jesus was asking to drink from a utensil of a Samaritan thereby defiling himself according to the Jewish social legislation. Even the Samaritan woman was shocked at such a request and asks Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” At this point she doesn’t realize that Jesus knows exactly who she is and the immorality within her life, but he is coming to rescue her. As the reader we should pause and reflect on the mercy of our divine King and see this as an example of how we should live.

Even though Jesus was thirsty and needed water, he had come to meet the need of the woman and those within her town. So, Jesus answers her,

“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.”

We don’t have time today to fully unpack all that goes on in their conversation but see that ultimately she comes to understand who Jesus is and becomes the first evangelist in the Gospel of John. She goes and invites those in her community to come and see the man who had told her all about her life and offered her “living water.” Could it be that in Jesus’ words she found hope, possibly for the first time in her life? Could the living water offered by Jesus clean her from the inside out? Was love like that really possible? Something in the woman’s description of her conversation with Jesus caused the whole town to come see Jesus and he stays with them for two days. At the end we see the result of Jesus stopping to speak with someone who was a social outcast to her own people and someone to be avoided by the Jews. Listen again to John 4:39–42

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

What an amazing story of the love of Jesus changing the life of someone who even in her own town had no hope of a life that was fulfilling. The result was that an entire town would be transformed because Jesus showed up. Not everyone initially believed, but because of those who did, the town would never be the same again.

That’s the power of “the living water” that Jesus offers. It causes healthy life-giving growth as opposed to the consequence of drinking spiritually polluted water that brings disease and death. In our Epistle reading from Romans 1:16–32 we see the Apostle Paul’s prophetic warning about what will happen when the gospel is not preached, and God’s word is ignored. I encourage you to go back and read this again asking God to show you why those who call themselves Christians must be about the business of testifying to the hope they have found in the good news of the gospel. Paul is encouraging the reader to be like him in Romans 1:16–17,

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Paul saw the gospel for what it was, the only hope, but he also knew the effect that turning away from it would bring about. Consider these words from almost 2,000 years ago and compare them with our society in America today,

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…..Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,  foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Its chilling isn’t it? Throughout biblical history God has always pursued his people and given them the opportunity to be obedient and blessed. We are being encouraged by many Christian leaders around the world to repent of our sins and the sins of our nation. There is a biblical model for God’s people to repent on behalf of their nation. Consider Daniel 9:1–9 and Jeremiah in the Book of Lamentations. I encourage all of us to bow down to the Lord inviting his forgiveness as well as changing our hearts and vision to see through his eyes and to have his heart for the lost. These can be exciting times if we invite God to use us for his glory. Psalm 34:4–5,

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered from all my fears.5 Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. Shalom!


©2020 The Rev. Mike Moffitt

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