Stuck In The Middle With You

This sermon was preached on June 28, 2009, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the day was John 5: 1-9. For the children's message, we talked about the story from Winnie-the-Pooh in which Pooh gets stuck in the doorway to Rabbit's house (having eaten so much honey)--and I referred to it during the sermon--so a portion of that story is reproduced here.

"So (Pooh) started to climb out of the hole. He pulled with his front paws, and pushed with his back paws, and in a little while his nose was in the open again ... and then his ears ... and then his front paws ... and then his shoulders ... and then-'Oh, help!' said Pooh, 'I'd better go back,' 'Oh bother!' said Pooh, 'I shall have to go on.' 'I can't do either!' said Pooh, 'Oh help and bother!' ...

Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn't because he was so tightly stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said: 'Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?' So for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end... and in between Bear felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer. And at the end of the week Christopher Robin said, 'Now!'

So he took hold of Pooh's front paws and Rabbit took hold of Christopher Robin, and all Rabbit's friends and relations took hold of Rabbit, and they all pulled together ... And for a long time Pooh only said 'Ow!' ... And 'Oh!' ... And then, all of a sudden he said 'Pop!' just if a cork were coming out of a bottle. And Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all relations went head-over-heels backwards ...and on top of them came Winnie-the-Pooh free! "

A. A. Milne

Well, here we are, beginning the fifth chapter of John, and already we are beginning to see the Gospel writer introducing a different mood into his narrative. The first four chapters have been rich with signs and scriptures, prophecies and callings, miracles and metaphors.

We’ve seen Jesus’ divinity announced by John the Baptist and we’ve heard Jesus call the first disciples. We’ve seen Jesus turn water into wine at Cana, drive the moneychangers out of the temple in Jerusalem, and heal the son of a royal official of Capernaum. We’ve seen Jesus reach out to Nicodemus the Pharisee and the Samaritan woman at the well, and we’ve heard Jesus teach about living water and being born of the Spirit. And with these signs, and miracles, and metaphors, Jesus has proclaimed his identity as the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the World—and he has drawn many of the people around him to faith.

When we reach the fifth chapter of John, we begin to become aware that, as Jesus the Light of the World reveals himself more and more clearly, there are clouds looming on the horizon—clouds of opposition and persecution that begin here in chapter 5 and gather strength and force in chapters 6 and 7—so much so that, in chapter 7, the religious authorities have already reached the boiling point and sent temple police to arrest him.

Our reading for today from chapter 5, the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda, marks a turning point in John’s story, the moment when the Pharisees decide that Jesus must be stopped. From chapter 5 onward, the religious authorities begin to understand just who and what Jesus is claiming to be—and they are determined to do away with him. As time goes on, their opposition to him only intensifies.

But that’s not where we’re headed today. Today, we’re going to focus on the miracle.

In today’s reading we see Jesus, in Jerusalem for a festival, approach the pool of Bethesda. Jesus sees many people lying around this pool—the gospel tells us, “many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed’—all hoping to find a cure for their ailments in the healing waters. Jesus focuses all of his attention on one man—a man who, we are told, has been ill for thirty-eight years, and asks him what at first glance seems to be an obvious question: “Do you want to be made well?”

Instead of answering Jesus with a yes or a no, the man begins to make excuses: “Sir I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me”—and I know it doesn’t say this directly in the text, but it certainly implies it—that not only has the man been disabled for 38 years, but he’s been sitting beside the pool for 38 years--trying to get into the water for 38 years, and never making it to the front of the line—for 38 years. Over and over, again and again, for 38 years, this man has been doing the only thing he knows to do in pursuit of healing—and over and over again, for 38 years, the healing just hasn’t happened.

So I see this as a Dr. Phil moment. Imagine Dr. Phil, the afternoon TV psychologist, leaning out over the pool, fixing his eyes on this disabled man, and saying in that inimitable Texas drawl, “So son, how’s that workin’ for you?”

The disabled man may want to be healed. But what he’s doing about it just isn’t working. He’s doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result—insanity, right? He’s stuck—stuck in a system, stuck in a groove, stuck in old patterns, stuck in the past. Stuck, like Pooh in the rabbit hole, a "wedged bear in great tightness."

Maybe this man thinks he’s doing the only right thing in the only right way; but certainly, he can’t imagine or envision any other way a different way of thinking, or doing, or being—any other way out of his dilemma. His paralysis is not only physical—it’s mental, and emotional, and spiritual as well.

In fact, he seems to meet all the criteria for being “stuck” itemized by one personal trainer I read about—and the personal trainer was talking, of course, about being “stuck” in your process of diet and exercise, but it’s a pretty good description of our man by the pool nevertheless: “ Your energy drops dramatically; You suddenly become undecided, confused as to your next step; Now, playing the game becomes more important than achieving results.”

That certainly seems about right, doesn’t it? Especially that part about playing the game being more important than the results. The man by the pool seems much more committed to the process of getting to the water than he is to the result of being healed.

That place by the pool of Bethesda isn’t so different from the world we’re living in right now. And aren’t we all now, or haven’t we all been in the past, “stuck”—physically, emotionally, mentally—or spiritually?

I think it would be very hard right now not to feel stuck—and if you’re not, I congratulate you! I feel stuck every time I turn on the TV or open a newspaper. It is very hard to see the American automobile industry floundering. It is very hard to see newspapers going bankrupt and folding up. It is awful to see banks fail, and homes foreclosed, and jobs lost, and our wars go on and on. It is hurtful to see churches getting smaller. It is harrowing to be stuck in relationships that stagnate, or to watch someone you love sink into dementia, or to flounder in the grip of unremitting depression.

Or maybe, if we look deep within ourselves, our stuckness is really a stuckness in behaviors or ways of thinking that are easy, compelling, and destructive—or maybe, like Pooh with his little "honey problem," we’re stuck in the grip of sin, floundering around with something we know is wrong, we know needs to change, we know needs to be healed, and yet—we just can’t find a way to stop.

Whatever our issues may be at any moment of our lives, it is excruciating to feel the world changing shape around us, and to feel that the rules and relationships and institutions which have served us so well in the past might just be becoming irrelevant. We may want to heal ourselves, our culture, our economy—maybe find a new direction for our church—but we feel like we don’t have the tools—like the disabled man at Bethesda pool, and indeed all the people gathered by that pool to compete for healing--we’re so stuck in what is that we can’t imagine or envision what could be.

I recently read a wonderful article, an interview with a professor from Harvard Business School named Timothy Butler, called “Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse.”

In the article, Professor Butler—who is also a psychologist, psychotherapist, and career development counselor-- talks about this experience we all face from time to time in our lives—this sensation of “feeling stuck”—as a time of crisis for us, and as a time of opportunity. In fact, he says, “Without it we cannot grow, change—and—eventually—live more fully in a larger world.”

Dr. Butler calls this time of “being stuck” a time of “impasse.” He says, “The meaning of an impasse is a request for us to change our way of thinking about ourselves and our place in the world. At impasse our model—our cognitive map of life and of the way we’re going to fit into it—is no longer working. Continuing with our usual approaches to problem-solving will not help us break through. Impasse means that we need to change our whole approach to the problem. We need to change our repertoire of ways in which we approach life’s challenges.”

In our gospel story, the disabled man at the pool is at an impasse. He is stuck; his map of life and the way he’s going to solve his problems is no longer working. He needs to change his whole approach to the problem.

And sure enough, someone—someone named Jesus --reaches out to the disabled man—across the void of impasse-- and gives him something new to try—a completely new approach—something undoubtedly out of his comfort zone. “Do you want to be made well?” he asks him. “Stand up, take your mat, and walk.”

Now, this is a man who can’t even get himself to the edge of the pool. Jesus tells him to do something unexpected, impossible, beyond his imagination, and ours—and he even does it on the Sabbath, a time when work of any kind—even a healing like this—would have been against the religious law.

And therein we have the miracle. Jesus tells the man to get up and walk—and at once the man is made well, and he takes up his mat, and he walks. Jesus’ miraculous and gracious intervention changes the man’s whole approach to his problem, sets him free to live more fully in a larger world, and transforms the time of impasse into a time of redemption and grace.

Jesus’ healing of the man by the Bethesda pool shows us that despite getting stuck in old patterns of being and doing; stuck physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually; that we need to face those times of impasse with new eyes and new ears, with a willingness to leave behind patterns and processes that just aren’t working any more, and with attention to new ways of interpreting and ordering our life experience.

Jesus’ healing of the man by the Bethesda pool shows us that it is Jesus’ presence, and power, that can make us whole: that can push, or pull us, out of the depths of sin, or hopelessness, or despair--and that we need to be alert, awake, and attentive to his presence and his voice as he calls out to us.

By bringing healing to the man by the Bethesda pool in an unconventional and unexpected way, Jesus challenges our conventional understandings of what the world is like, and how the world is ordered, what God is like, and how God chooses to be active in the world. Jesus shows us that new possibilities for understanding the world and our place in it exist, and that the way to these new possibilities is in him and through him.

Like the man by the Bethesda pool, sometimes when we’re stuck—whether we’re stuck in emotional distress, in physical need, in sin, or some combination of the above--, it isn’t tradition, or routine, or persistence that’s going to get us moving again. Sometimes, when we’re stuck, we have to give up our reliance on the past, and our investment in the safe and the familiar, and take a leap of faith.

Sometimes, when we’re stuck, what we really need to do is to take Jesus’ hand and trust in him. Or we need to see in the outstretched hands of our community--pushing us, pulling us, prodding us--the outstretched hand of God.

In his article, Dr. Butler talks about that time of being stuck, that time of impasse, as an opportunity to look at our situation with new eyes and ears; an opportunity to listen, to begin to go deeper into the self; and an opportunity to deepen our insight into the nature of who we are. “Each impasse we face,” he says, “is an opportunity to look a little deeper and understand better what works for us. The more we know ourselves, the less we are thrown by the next impasse.”

And I am pretty sure Dr. Butler wouldn’t mind if I added just one more thought here: that each impasse we face is also a spiritual opportunity--an opportunity for a deepening of our insight into the nature of God.

Pooh certainly takes the time for some spiritual reflection when he asks for "a sustaining book, such as would help and comfort a wedged bear in great tightness." And who helps Pooh to reflect, and grow--or in his case, shrink!--and then to be popped free of his great tightness? His companions and friends, of course--his fellowship. You could even say that Pooh turns his time of impasse into a time of redemption and grace.

The miracle at the Bethesda pool shows us in a powerful way that the God we worship--the Christ we know—reaches out to us when we’re stuck, calls us out of our sin, and pain and paralysis, and—if we choose to take his hand and believe in him--both sets us free to live more fully in a larger world, and transforms the time of impasse into a time of redemption and grace.

The miracle shows us that God is always calling us out of ourselves and into something new. It brings us confidence that, in partnership with God in Christ, we can discover new, unprecedented, creative ways of knowing and worshipping God-- organizing the life of faith and organizing our lives in faith—and bringing God’s kingdom to reality in our church and in our world.

And most of all, Jesus’ healing of the man by the Bethesda pool shows us that, ultimately, it is Jesus’ presence, and power, that makes us whole: that can push, or pull us, out of the depths of sin, or hopelessness, or despair—restore our relationships—and bring us the healing, the redemption, and the new life we seek.

As people of faith, let us know in our hearts the confidence promised by the gospel. Let us leave our stuckness, our sins and systems behind and get up, take up our mat, and walk. Let us take Christ’s hand, follow him out of the impasse of the past, and into the graceful future of life in him.

Amen.

Hello, It's Me

This sermon was preached on June 21, 2009, at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. There were two texts for the day--Exodus 3: 13-15 and John 4: 19-26.

For those of you who were here last Sunday, our destination this morning in John’s gospel—chapter 4—is familiar territory. We spent some time in last week’s sermon looking at the first part of this chapter, listening in as Jesus, resting beside a well on his way back to Galilee, encounters a Samaritan woman and asks her for a drink of water. When she wonders aloud that he would choose to speak or interact with a Samaritan such as she, Jesus tells her, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

But that isn’t the end of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman—in fact, Jesus talks at greater length to the woman at the well than he does to anyone else in any of the gospels. Our scripture reading today continues their conversation as they move from the subject of water—and living water—to a discussion of right worship, which we know from Biblical scholarship was a source of conflict and bad feelings between the Samaritans and the Jewish people of that time.

The woman opens the topic, telling Jesus that “Our ancestors”—the Samaritans—“worshipped on this mountain”--a place called Mount Gerishim in Samaria—“but you”—the Jews—“say that the place the people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

It’s a seemingly unresolvable religious conflict between their peoples: but Jesus surprises the Samaritan woman when, as so often seems to happen in John’s gospel, Jesus changes the ground rules and lifts their conversation from concrete physical place to expansive spiritual concept: “God is spirit,” Jesus tells her, “and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Worship in spirit and truth.

So what kind of worship is that? Do Jesus’ words, directed at the Samaritan woman and her faith community so long ago, have anything to do with us? We’re not Samaritans, we’re Christians—and not only Christians, we’re Presbyterians. We’re already believers. We’re already here sitting in church on Sunday morning showing, as my mother in law would say, “whose side we’re on.” We’re reading Scripture, and singing hymns, and hearing a sermon, and talking and thinking about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know how to do church. We’ve got this spirit and truth thing down!

And of course we do. But.

I know that you as a congregation have been in dialogue recently about your ministry, what the future holds for this church, and how God is leading you to serve him and the community. It’s an opportunity to speak a prophetic word, to explore new things, to take a leap of faith, to use your holy imaginations in co-creation with Christ.

I also know that for all of us times of transition and change—even if that transition and change is barely visible on the horizon—can be deeply unsettling, and even frightening—as we imagine—or fail to imagine—a new reality, and wonder about our place in it.

And this experience isn’t new, or unique to this congregation in this place and this time--Portland, Oregon in 2009. It’s an experience that has faced every Christian community, in every place, in every time that Christians have gathered together. In a very real way we could say that every moment in our congregational life is—and has been—and will be—and perhaps should be—a moment of change, a moment of challenge, a critical moment on which the future of our fellowship turns.

At this particular moment in our community of faith, it seems to me that we, like so many other Christian communities before and after us, can look to Jesus’ words about worshipping “in spirit and in truth” to guide us, to form us, to reassure us, and to challenge us as we ponder and strategize and dream together about ministry, and worship, and being church—now and into the future.

Let me hold up for you this morning a few of the things I see in this passage, and in the concept of worshipping in spirit and in truth—a few of the things that speak to us where we are today and illuminate what is—for us as a congregation and a community—the very thing that makes of us a church—that makes us an authentic community of Christian faith.

Pastor Greg was kind enough to give me a wonderful book on the Gospel of John, called “Written That You May Believe” by new testament scholar Sandra Schneiders. One of the things she says characterizes this gospel is that, in John, there are no “second generation” Christians—people who never meet Jesus for themselves. Time after time in this gospel, the telling of the good news and the hearing of good news is always followed up with an authentic personal encounter with Jesus.

We see this in our gospel passage for today; the Samaritan woman forsakes her water jar, goes into the Samaritan village and tells the Samaritans there about Jesus; but they come to belief only after they come to Jesus and see and hear him for themselves. In verse 42, we read that the Samaritans say 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 truly the Savior of the world.” As John envisions it, it is the personal encounter between us and Jesus that calls us into relationship and brings us to faith; and it is in the context of that relationship that we find the truest expression of worship in spirit and in truth.

So that’s the first word for us this morning. Worship in spirit and in truth happens in the context of our relationship with Jesus. It is the result of our personal encounter with him—not only that one first, blinding moment of personal salvation but an ongoing, unfolding, living, growing, covenantal revelation that continues to touch us, and move us, and guide us, and companion us, all the days of our individual lives and all the days of our life together as a congregation.

The second element of today’s text that I’d like to lift up for your consideration—and the element I believe is really the heart of what it means to worship in spirit and in truth—is found in verse 26, when Jesus tells the Samaritan woman something amazing. He says, “I am he”—incredibly, entrusting his heretofore hidden identity as the Messiah to this chance-met Samaritan woman, persuading her to abandon her errand and her water jar, and sending her forth to proclaim Christ to her people.

Jesus says, “I am he.” It is the first of what we call the “I am” statements that fill the gospel of John: “I am the gate,” “I am the good shepherd,” “I am the way,” and “I am the vine.” But more than that. Jesus isn’t just saying in some kind of obscure way, “Hi, it’s me, nice to meet you.” In the original Greek text this phrase is “ego eimi”—and we could translate it as simply “I am.”

“I am.” That’s right, it’s strikingly similar to God’s revelation of himself to Moses in our first reading this morning from the book of Exodus: where Moses, astonished by the bush that burns and is not consumed, says to God, “What shall I tell the Israelites is the name of the God of our ancestors?” and God replies “I am who I am. Tell them ‘I am’ sends you.”

When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman “I am,” he is not only claiming to be the promised Messiah. He is claiming to be nothing less than God himself. He is revealing himself as the God of Moses and our ancestors—and he is also revealing himself as the God who calls all people, even the Samaritans—into relationship with him.

Jesus is telling the Samaritan woman that the first, most critical element of worshipping in spirit and in truth is not the “where” of worship—or indeed the when, or even the how-- but “whom.”

True worship is not achieved by doing the right things in the right way, saying the right words, singing the right songs. True worship is not achieved by doing at all. It is achieved by being; it is achieved by drawing near to God, experiencing God face to face and heart to heart, entering into relationship with the One Who Is, in whose presence we can be who we truly are.

One of my hospice chaplain friends tells the story of a man who had everything going for him. Let’s call him Dan. Dan had a prestigious job as a top administrator of a computer company in Silicon Valley, a seven figure income, a beautiful, palatial home. He had a Mercedes, a Porsche, and a Jaguar. Dan’s wife was beautiful and loving, and his kids were high achievers. And on top of all those other things, Dan was a gifted musician. He was a genius with the guitar, played guitar like Eric Clapton.

And then Dan got a very cruel disease, ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. And everything changed.
Dan became progressively paralyzed and weak. He lost the ability to drive the Mercedes, the Porsche, and the Jaguar. As time went on, he couldn’t work. He lost his income and his home. He lost the ability to hug his kids, be intimate with his wife, or even go to the bathroom by himself. And the worst moment of all, the very last straw, came when Dan’s son put his beloved guitar into his arms and Dan couldn’t play it any more—even worse, it slipped out of his hands to the floor.

This man told his hospice chaplain that if he could have taken his own life at that moment, he would have. He had lost everything that had once defined him as a person. He couldn’t “do” anything any more—he couldn’t even move. He could just lie there in the bed. That was his existence, and he was in an existential crisis.

And yet. All that time and space of lying in the bed, unable to move, eventually brought Dan an amazing revelation. He had lost everything that had defined him—and yet—he realized that he was still there. The awful and devastating disease made him understand that he—Dan—the real Dan, the essence of Dan, the authentic Dan, you could even call it the soul of Dan—was more than the sum of his roles, responsibilities, and actions in the world. He was truly and deeply and simply himself. If you will, he had become spirit. He had become “The Dan Who Is.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about yourself that way, thought about who you are—who you really are—I know I don’t think about it very often. It’s a little scary to think about, actually. Who am I, down deep, if I’m not mom, or daughter, or wife, or the one who works, or the one who likes romance novels, or the one who eats pie before dinner, or the one who preaches, or the one who drives kids around town.

Who are you--the Terri who is, the George who is, the Pat who is—once you’ve peeled back all the layers of your roles, and responsibilities, and activities—all the layers of the “You who does.” It’s kind of a mystical notion, kind of hard to get your head around.

But John is a pretty mystical gospel. And I’m pretty convinced that when the “You who is” comes together with the “God who is”—that this coming together in relationship of our authentic selves with God’s authentic self in Christ is worshipping in spirit and in truth as the Gospel of John envisions it.

The coming together of our authentic selves with God’s authentic self is how we can make worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our own lives. And the coming together of our authentic corporate self—“the congregation who is”—with God’s authentic self is how we make worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our congregational life—whatever the words or music we use, whatever the location or circumstance we might find ourselves in, whatever the leadership, whatever the budget, whatever the choices or challenges. When the God who is comes together with the congregation who is—now that’s worship. That’s ministry. That’s the church.

There’s one more aspect of this gospel passage that struck me as I prepared this sermon and that I want to lift up to you today as we consider this notion of worshipping in spirit and truth. And that is, did you notice that the Samaritan woman asks questions? She asks: “How is it that you ask a drink of me?” “Where do you get that living water?” and then, even after meeting Jesus and believing in him, she says to the Samaritans in the form of a question, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

And Jesus doesn’t seem at all threatened or irritated by her questions. On the other hand, he seems to welcome them, and to use her questions to draw her closer to himself.

Meeting Jesus and coming to believe in him does not answer all the Samaritan woman’s questions. It doesn’t stop her from thinking, and wondering, exploring and growing.

Perhaps meeting Jesus, believing in him, and coming into relationship with him, has given her the opportunity, and the confidence, and the curiosity, to keep asking questions. Perhaps it is in the questions—and not the answers-- that she continues to grows closer to the God who is, and comes to know her true authentic self, the Samaritan woman who is. Perhaps this questioning, curious seeking is also a hallmark of worshipping in spirit and in truth.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens in the context of our relationship with Jesus. It is the result of our personal encounter with him—an ongoing, unfolding, living, growing, covenantal revelation that continues to touch us, and move us, and guide us, and companion us, all the days of our life and all the days of our life together as a congregation.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens when the "God who is" encounters the "you who is"; and it is the coming together of our authentic corporate self—“the congregation who is”—with God’s authentic self that makes worshipping in spirit and in truth real in our congregational life—whatever the location or circumstance we might find ourselves in.

Worship in spirit and in truth happens when we are not afraid to be questioning, curious, seeking—knowing that God is not threatened by the questions, that God welcomes the questions—and that the questions are evidence not of our doubt, or of our disbelief—but just the opposite—visible and concrete evidence of our deep, ongoing and authentic relationship with God.

On this day--and all of our days--let us worship together in spirit and in truth.

Amen.

Living Water

This sermon was preached on June 14, 2009 at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the morning was John 4: 7-14, and the worship service included a baptism.


It’s just water—just ordinary water from the tap. It came to us today, as the Portland Water Bureau motto says, “from forest to faucet”—from the Bull Run watershed high in the Mount Hood National Forest, through lakes and streams and dams and pumps, through miles and miles of industrial piping underneath our streets and yards and sidewalks, carried in a pitcher from the church kitchen sink, and poured out here into our baptismal font. It’s just water, ordinary water from the tap.

And yet, when little Oliver received the sacrament of baptism in our midst a few minutes ago, this water wasn’t ordinary at all. This water, so familiar and so useful to us for drinking, and cooking, and bathing, and swimming, and washing the car, and doing the dishes—when we used it in baptism, this water became more than ordinary. It became sacramental: a central sign, and seal, and symbol of our Christian faith. It was set aside for sacred use. You might even say it became living water.

Our gospel reading for today from the fourth chapter of John, which tells us of an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well, is not primarily about baptism. But it brings us, in compelling and evocative terms, the image of living water that illuminates not only our understanding of baptism but our understanding of the Christian faith that we profess to live and live to profess –our understanding of the nature of God, the person of Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

In our gospel passage, Jesus pauses by a well, and strikes up a conversation with a Samaritan woman who has come to draw water. Jesus doesn’t wait to be recognized or greeted; instead he reaches out, asks this woman, a stranger, for a drink of water. When she responds to him in astonishment, Jesus reveals that he is the bearer of living water, telling her, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Now Jesus isn’t talking here about literally whipping out some hidden canteen of water from underneath his robe. Jesus is talking, as he so often does in John’s gospel, in metaphor; he is offering the Samaritan woman, and all of us, no less than himself, the Son of God, the promised Messiah; he is offering the Samaritan woman, and all of us, the spiritual reality of his presence and his power. The living water he offers the Samaritan woman, and all of us, is nothing less than life itself, life in him, and life forevermore.

It is this same living water Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman that little Oliver experienced today in the sacrament of baptism. Before he can even form the idea of God, or say God’s name, Jesus has called him by name into the Christian community, claimed him as his own, and offered him the living water of grace, redemption, and eternal life. And it is this same living water that Jesus offers to all of us, freely and unconditionally and graciously, today, on our own baptismal days, and every day of our lives.

If you do a little research on “Jacob’s well,” the place where Jesus and the Samaritan woman talked about “living water,” you’ll find that it’s a little bit special. It’s a famous well, a place that the gospel of John’s original readers would have certainly known about, just the same way we know about the origins of, say, Perrier, or some such.

In particular, Jacob’s well is said to tap into not an underground cistern or area of still water, but instead it seems to tap into an underground river, so that the water isn’t just sitting there, quiet and contained, but sweeping along of its own volition—powerful and uncontrollable, lively, fresh, and always renewing itself. It’s an appropriate setting, isn’t it, for a discussion of “living water,” especially when we remember that medieval theologian Meister Eckhart famously said, “God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.”

The image of God as a living, rushing river is beautifully captured by the Christian singer/songwriter Stephen Curtis Chapman, in his song “Dive,” which is one of my very favorites. Perhaps some of you know it? Chapman writes:

There is a supernatural power
In this mighty river's flow

It can bring the dead to life
And it can fill an empty soul

And give a heart the only thing
Worth living and worth dying for

But we will never know the awesome power
Of the grace of God

Until we let our selves get swept away
Into this holy flood

So if you'll take my hand
We'll close our eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith

Come on let's go

I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in

How interesting, and how fitting, that Jesus and the Samaritan woman ponder the nature of God and the presence of the Messiah, as somewhere deep beneath their feet a living river rushes by—a physical representation of the spiritual reality of the living water they discuss.

And now, I’d like to think a little bit about Perrier.

If you go to France, and sit down in a bistro or restaurant, and order a drink of water—“boisson de L’eau”—the waiter will ask you something puzzling. It’s especially puzzling if you speak really bad French, as I do! The waiter will ask you “avec gaz?” Which means essentially exactly what it sounds like—with gas.

What he’s offering you is a choice between still water—water from the tap, or in a bottle like this—and sparkling water, like this Perrier right here. And let me ask you what’s the difference? There’s a little something extra in this one, the Perrier. It’s infused with little bubbles of gas—we Americans call it carbonation—little bubbles of gas that move, and pop, and fizz, and tickle your nose. And if you shake up this bottle and open the lid, what will happen, do you think? Perhaps those little bubbles will get all excited and push the water out of the bottle in a great foaming gush.

This Perrier water has bubbles of gas—maybe we could say, air, or breath, or spirit—that make it move, and sparkle, and expand, and seem to breathe.

Here’s the thing. Perhaps the gas that infuses the water in the Perrier bottle is kind of like the Holy Spirit—the breath of God--that infuses our ordinary baptismal water and makes it sacramental. Perhaps it is the movement of the Holy Spirit—the breath of God—that infuses our ordinary lives in baptism and makes us not only receivers of living water but enables us to be that living water for others.

So I hope that the next time you sip a “boisson de l’eau avec gaz,” whether in Paris, in downtown Portland, or at your own dining room table, that you will remember the Holy Spirit; that you will remember your baptism; and that you will experience, again, the presence and the power of God in your life, bubbling and splashing and overflowing.

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “The water that I will give will become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” As theologian Jurgen Moltmann puts it in his book The Spirit of Life, “ The well of life is not in the next world, and not in the church’s font. It is in human beings themselves. If they receive the life-giving water, they themselves become the well-spring of this water for other people.”

As we experience it in baptism, living water is water infused with the Holy Spirit to become that visible sign of the invisible grace we know as the living love and presence of the risen Christ. As we are touched and washed and made wet by the physical water which sprinkles on us, pours over us, or immerses us--so are we touched and washed and made new by the living water of the Spirit working in us, and with us, and through us—quenching our spiritual thirst; claiming us as members of God’s family, and, as Jesus puts it in our scripture passage for today, equipping us to “gush up to eternal life”—or as we say in our rite of baptism, “to continue forever in the risen life of Christ.”

The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive--

On our baptismal day, on this day, and every day,
Let us say together,

We’re diving in!

Amen.