Living Water

This past week The New York Times had an article followed a day or so later by letters to the Editor about the need for water in the midst of the current drought that has been plaguing the Southwest and the far western states.  The drought is severe causing litigation proceedings between farmers and environmentalists.

Meanwhile in some Midwestern states water is raging at flood stage levels because of record amounts of melting snow.  People are filling sandbags in efforts to protect buildings and riverbanks.  And, on the East coast ocean levels are rising and could pose a threat to beach houses and some of our cities.

The drought in California is the result of climate change.  Temperatures are much higher as they are all over the world.  There is consequently an increased demand for water for agriculture as well as for industry.  As the Times article states, “We are now unambiguously altering the climate, threatening water supplies for human and natural systems.”

Farmers have gone to court noticing the need for water in cities and for people, but they feel agriculture has been pushed to its limit.  Water is needed for crops to grow. Climate geologists have noted, “Residents of the arid West have always scrapped over water.  But years of persistent drought are now intensifying those struggles, and the explosive [population] growth — and thirst — of Western cities and suburbs is raising their stakes to an entirely new level.”

This sounds like a modern version of our readings today from the Book of Exodus and Moses’ struggle with the Israelites.  And the conflict between farmers and environmentalists is like a modern-day version of the division between the Jews and the Samaritans. 

Moses’ patience was tested as he led the Israelites out of Egypt and across the arid desert to the promised land.  He cried out to God, “What shall I do with these people?  They are almost ready to stone me.”  The Lord replied and said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.  I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb.  Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.”  Moses called the place Massah (which means quarreling) and Meribah (which means testing), because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord.

Quarreling and testing was the order of the day.  The present struggle in our Western states is causing quarrels and tests for everyone.  We can no longer argue about whether climate change is real; it is, and average temperatures, in spite of our recent experience of cold weather in New England, are rising.

The story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria is about water and the division between the Jews and the Samaritans.  It is similar to the struggle between the ancient Israelites and Moses, their leader.  Nor is it unlike the struggle for water between farmers and those in the cities in our drought-stricken states.

Jesus was traveling through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem.  He stopped along the way to rest by a well.  He was tired out by his journey.  While sitting there, “A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’”

Drawing water in his day was something that women did.  Moreover, a Jew would not normally ask anything of a Samaritan. “The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" … Jesus answered 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." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”… Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but 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."  The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."

The point of this story is that God provides water, the water of life or “living water” to Samaritan and Jews alike.  But the Samaritan woman told Jesus that the Samaritan “ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”  As one commentator points out, In the first century AD “Samaritan tribes worshiped God on Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem, the preferred Jewish site.”  Jesus responded to the woman, “believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. … 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.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

The woman upon hearing this  “left her water jar and went back to the city.  She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! … So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word.  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 truly the Savior of the world.’"

The division between the Jews and the Samaritans was resolved over the need for water, water to quench thirst and water to provide life itself.  The divisions and the struggles over water for cities and farms in our country depend on our accepting the reality of climate change and global warming and then taking appropriate steps to deal with it.  This means changing our dependence on fossil fuels, practicing energy conservation, developing new and renewable energy sources, and being responsible stewards for the creation that God has given to us.  It is a big task.  It is both political and religious, and it is about our understanding of the resources of food and water as part of the gifts we receive from God.  May the water that God gives become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life for all people.  Amen.