Third Sunday in Lent, March 12, 2023: Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42; Psalm 95
We need water to live. We need it on multiple levels. We need it for our bodies, and we also need it to grow the food we eat. This winter I suspect we have all had conversations that simultaneously express being tired of the rain and cloud and grateful for it, knowing we need more.
So the anxiety of the Israelites in the desert was understandable. And while Moses named the place Massah and Meribah for their quarelling, the Lord gave them water. The same staff which had opened the Red Sea for them, moving the water out of the way, now gave them the life giving water.
Today we read all of one of the psalms we say regularly in Evening Prayer, psalm 95. But after the glorious call to praise that is part of the daily office, we hear the Lord speaking to the Israelites, castigating them for hardening their hearts. The Lord confesses that this made him angry: “They put me to the test, though they had seen my works”. But he still gave them water, as another demonstration both of the Lord’s power and care for them.
Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, a central gathering place in any pre-modern town. Jesus needed something to drink, and she had the jar that could provide it. At the same time he offered her “living water”. She does not understand what that might be. But the living water means you will never be thirsty again.
“Since we have been justified by faith”, Paul begins our epistle reading. This is a powerful proclamation. Paul continues: “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We are justified by faith: it’s not what we do, it’s what Jesus has done. It is no wonder that Martin Luther, anxious that he had not done enough for salvation, found his comfort in Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Jesus is the living water. It is the water we need to live. We affirm this when we do a baptism, or when we renew our baptismal vows at the Easter Vigil. We can be overwhelmed by Jesus’ teachings. But when we remind ourselves that this is living water, it offers comfort that we will be taken care of. All that we need to do is to have faith.
“Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.”