Living Water As Spirit of Truth

3 Lent  A              March 19, 2017
Ex.17:1-17           Ps.95:6-11     
Roman 5:1-11         John 4:5-42

Lectionary Link

Why do the Samaritans have a special status in the Bible and in the Gospels and in the book of the Acts of the Apostles?  Are Samaritans Gentiles?  If they are Gentiles why are they given a different status than say the people who are called Greeks or who are native of the various areas in the Roman Empire?  Samaria is a region.  Samaritan referred to someone who lived in the region to the North in Israel and to people who were members of a different sect of the Torah religion.  The Samaritans during the time of Jesus were the hated former members of the unified kingdom of Israel.  After King Solomon, the unified kingdom of Israel was divided into the northern Kingdom of Israel, located in the area of Samaria and the Southern Kingdom of Judah which claimed Jerusalem as the capital and spiritual home.

The Samaritans, during the time of Jesus, regarded themselves to be the true conservatives of the Torah.  They believed that the Jews who returned after the exile in Babylon and Persia brought back a different religious expression of the Torah.  The Samaritans believed that they retained a more traditional understanding of the Torah and that Mount Gerizim near the ancient Shechem was the location of the true temple.

Recent population census indicated there were 777 Samaritans left in the world.  Their DNA tests show that they share a common heritage with the Jews but also indicate others strains shared with other people in the Middle East as well.  The Jews during the time of Jesus are presented in the Gospels as those who despised and shunned the Samaritans.  The Samaritans are given their own unique status in naming;  they are not grouped with the Gentiles because they shared common lineage and a Torah based religion with the Jews.  The Samaritans were despised because they were not regarded to be "pure bred."  They supposedly had intermarried with Gentiles and lost their genetic purity.

One might say that Jesus was closer to the Samaritans than to the Jews in Jerusalem.  Why?  He was from Galilee in the north of Israel and so he lived closer to the region of Samaria and would have had more geographical proximity with the Samaritans.  He must have been close because one of the criticism leveled at him was that he was a Samaritan.  I guess that was better than saying that he was a glutton, a drunk, mad and in league with the devil.  These were other criticisms of Jesus that are found in the Gospels coming from the mouths of his opponents.

What is the significance of the Samaritans in the Gospels?  One of most famous parables in the Gospel is about the Good Samaritan.  I would proposed to you that Samaria functions within the symbols which the Gospel preachers used to speak about the church and its mission.  St. Paul and the early preachers proclaimed the church as the "new Israel."  And what would be new about this "new" Israel?  Well, it really wasn't a land-based country in this new understanding.  St. Paul said that the walls of division and enmity had been broken down by Jesus Christ.  Jews and Gentiles were now friends and practicing fellowship and mutual respect within this new Israel.  And because the church came to Samaria, the church as the new Israel was believed to be a re-unification of the once separated Israel into two Kingdoms.

Can we now appreciate this discourse of Jesus and the woman at the well?  It highlights important aspects of this practice of the church as the new Israel in the preaching of the church.  In the new Israel, there was neither male nor female.  The disciples in the Gospel story are presented as males who carried the bias of cultural separation of men and women.  But Jesus is shown to be unafraid of women and he is unafraid of a foreign woman who was despised by Jews.  Jesus is shown to be breaking a highly restrictive social taboos.  Jesus was shown to reveal himself as the messiah to this foreign woman. 

This discourse with Samaritan woman is also presented as an origin discourse of the church in Samaria.  The Acts of the Apostles indicate that the church spread into Samaria and this Gospel reading would indicate that the Jesus Movement in Samaria was planted before the crucifixion, before the resurrection and before the day of Pentecost.  This Gospel is a testimony to the deep roots of the church in the region of Samaria and among those who had been members of the Samaritan Torah-based religion.

It is instructive for us to look at the appeals made by Jesus to the Samaritan woman.  We are tempted to honor regional or denominational loyalties as being the main issue of religion.  I'm Episcopalian and the bishops says this is how to worship.  I'm Roman Catholic and this is how the pope says to worship.  You can only do authentic worship in my Episcopal Church, my Roman Catholic Church, my Lutheran Church, my Methodist church.  What does Jesus say?  God is Spirit and you have to worship God in Spirit and in truth.  And  God's spirit can be on Mount Gerizim, in Jerusalem, in the Episcopal Church, in the Roman Catholic Church, in the synagogue.  God's spirit is not limited by gender, race, location or even religion.  So, essentially Jesus was saying, "Don't limit God to your own small little local understanding of God and your particular pieties."

What do the words of Jesus in this Gospel teach us about understanding God?  Jesus teaches us not to be too literal in our understanding.  The Samaritan woman was talking about drinking water; Jesus was speaking something inside of a person whose deepest inner thirst could be quenched and relieved.  When a person converted to Judaism they had to be baptized.  It is called mikvah.  The water had to be "living water."  Jesus promised the Samaritan woman a baptism  with living water that would be inside of her.  This baptism is a different kind of cleansing and a different kind of thirst quencher than what one gets with actual water.  The disciples were speaking about Jesus eating food.  Jesus was speaking about experiencing another kind of inner sustenance which could do something substantially different for the soul than what food could do for the body.

So how can we practice the Gospel that we've read today?  First, by always being the peacemakers; offering friendship.  If we believe God is Spirit, then we will believe that there is always the possibility for peace.  If we want to over-emphasize our differences, we will not be peace makers.  Next, let us practice the Gospel as a message of unification and re-unification of all people.  Are men and women different?  Are gay people and straight people different?  Are Roman Catholics and Episcopalians different?  Are Jews and Christians and Muslims and Atheists different?  Are Americans and Canadians and Chinese different?  Yes, yes, yes but is the Spirit available to everyone who exists in a world of differences?  Yes, and we should seek this inner baptism of the living Water of God's Spirit to help us find love, justice and unity in a world of differences.

Those who worship God must worship God in Spirit and in truth.  Truth here could mean honesty and sincerity.  The secret to living in the midst of differences, small and extreme differences, is to exert one's energy of worship in Spirit and in honest sincerity. 

The Gospel of Jesus to the Samaritan woman was this: God is Spirit and those who worship God must worship God in Spirit and in sincerity.  And this is the same Gospel for you and me today.  As we center ourselves upon the One Spirit, we can negotiate peace with people who are different; not to overcome or deny difference but to partake of the only thing that can unify us, even God as Spirit.  Jesus invites us to worship in the one Holy Spirit.  Jesus came to share the secret of discovering that God's Spirit is one in and through us as we worship as very different people.  Amen

Sunday School, March 19, 2017 3 Lent A

Sunday School, March 19, 2017    3 Lent A

Themes:

Jesus meets the Samaritan Woman at the Well

What is the meaning of Samaritan?  The Samaritans were people who long before the time of Jesus belong to the unified nation of Israel.  Israel became separated between the Northern and Southern Kingdom.  They never reunited.  The Samaritans had a religion like the Jews and used the books of Moses.  Their temple was on Mount Gerizim.  The temple of the Jews in the Southern Kingdom was in Jerusalem.

The Jews and the Samaritan, were enemies even though a very long time ago they used to be part of the same nation.

Jesus is sharing his teaching with the enemies of his own people.  Jesus is the one who said to “love our enemies” and he loves the Samaritan people.  He, in fact, revealed to this woman that he was the messiah.

There were churches that were started in Samaria and so Samaritans became followers of Jesus.  In the church, the ancient Samaritan Israelites were reunited with the Jews from the Southern Kingdom of Judah.  So many in the church called the church the “new Israel” because Israel was God’s chosen people.  In Jesus Christ, the Gospel is that all people can be chosen people, including Jews, Gentiles and Samaritans.

Jesus also used water to help us understand what it feels like inside of us when we get good news.  Imagine yourself on a very hot day and you get very thirsty.  Imagine the good feeling inside of you when you drink a glass of refreshing water.  Jesus promised that we could feel something like refreshing water inside of us when we discover the presence of God’s Spirit within us.

So the Gospel is such good news to us, it makes our insides feel as though we are drinking the most refreshing water on a hot and thirsty day.

Sermon

  What if I owned all the water in the world and I shared it only with my family and friends, and nobody else.

  Would that be fair?  Why not?

  Everyone needs water to live and so everybody should be able to get enough water to live.

  Would it be possible for me to really own and control all the water in the world?

  Could I control the rain and the lakes and the rivers and the ocean?  Not I could not because I am not big enough to control all the water of the world.

  But what is greater than all the water of the world?  God is greater than all  the water of the world.  And God is our creator and maker and so we as people who were made by God, we need God.

  And there were some people who live during the time of Jesus who were trying to control God.  And they were acting as though God did not belong to anyone but to just them and their family and friends.  And they were saying that foreigners and many other people could not have God.

  Jesus came as Son of God to correct this problem.  Jesus met with a Samaritan woman at the well and he had a talk with her about water.   Many people did not think that God liked the Samaritan people, but Jesus like them.  The Samaritan woman thought that Jesus was talking about water; but Jesus was talking about God, the Holy Spirit being available to everyone inside of each person and being like a wonderful fountain of water flowing inside of us.  Close your eyes and try to visualize this: There is something like a wonderful water fountain inside of me and it is bubbling within me and it makes me feel peaceful and full of joy.  And the Holy Spirit belongs to everyone.

  Just as I cannot own all the water of the world and I should allow everyone to have water because everyone needs water; Jesus came to say, “God belongs to everyone, not just to a few people who thought that they could keep God away from others.”

  And so Jesus met with many people who had been told that they could not know God in the right way.  And he welcomed them to know God and to know God’s love.

  Do you and I want to try to keep water away from thirsty people?  No we don’t.

  Do you and I want to keep God away from people who need to know God?  No we don’t.  Because God loves everyone and God belongs to everyone.

  Jesus came to show us that God belongs to everyone.  And when he left, he told his friends to keep telling this important message:  God loves everyone and God belongs to everyone.  Can you remember this?

  Let us be like Jesus and remind people that God loves everyone and God belongs to everyone.  Okay?

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

March 19, 2017: The Third Sunday in Lent

Gathering Songs: Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us with Your Love; I’ve Got Peace like a River, Jesus Stand Among Us; Freely, Freely

Liturgist: Bless the Lord who forgives all of our sins.

People: God’s mercy endures forever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us with Your Love (Renew! # 289)

Refrain: Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you.

Kneels at the feet of his friends, silently washes their fee, Master who acts as a slave to them.  Refrain

Neighbors are rich and poor, neighbors are black and white, neighbors are near and far away.  Refrain

These are the ones we should serve, these are the ones we should love, all these are neighbors to us and you.  Refrain

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Litany of Praise: Praise be to God! (chanted)

O God, you are Great!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have made us! Praise be to God!

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Praise be to God!

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Praise be to God!

Liturgist: A reading from the Book of Exodus

The Lord 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 did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 95

Come, let us sing to the LORD; * let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving * and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.

For the LORD is a great God, * and a great King above all gods.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus, said, “But 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 said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you." Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" Then the woman 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! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do 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. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, `One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."  Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He 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."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist:          The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:                        And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering

Offertory: I’ve Got Peace Like a River (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 122)

I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river in my soul.  I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river.  I’ve got peace like a river in my soul..

I’ve got love…. 

I’ve got joy……

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of God.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

All may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

 And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast. 

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Jesus Stand Among Us (Renew # 237)

Jesus stand among us in your risen power: let this time of worship be a hallowed hour.

Breathe the Holy Spirit into every heart; bid the fears and sorrows from each soul depart.

Post-Communion Prayer. 

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song:  Freely, Freely (Renew # 192)

God forgave my sin in Jesus’ name, I’ve been born again in Jesus’ name.  And in Jesus’ name I come to you to share his love as He told me to. 

Refrain: He said freely, freely you have received, freely, freely give.  Go in my name and because you believe others will know that I live.

All power is given in Jesus’ name, in earth and heaven in Jesus’ name.  And in Jesus’ name I come to you to share His power as He told me to. Refrain

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God! 

Interior and Exterior Baptism

3 Lent     a           March 23, 2014

Ex.17:1-17           Ps.95:6-11     

Roman 5:1-11         John 4:5-42

Lectionary Link 

    In the history of the Christian church, one can find the manifestations of several kinds of fundamentalism.  Two forms of fundamentalism might be called ecclesiastical literalism and the other might be call biblical literalism.  Ecclesiastical fundamentalism is found in churches which tend to give too much power to the people who are a part of the hierarchy; such people have attained even the so-called “infallible” status in some matters of church order.  Other Christians have come to read the Bible in such a literal way that they believe the actual words of the Bible are causatively absolute of this world; as if because the words are in the Bible, it made the world to happen.   So to them the world is but a few thousand years old and the whole world order is going to climax in a battle at Armageddon.  Often in the history of the church, people with different fundamentalisms have been opposing each other to control the message for the peoples of their faith traditions.

  What’s the solution to fundamentalism?  Read carefully the Gospel of John.  The discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John include satirical presentations of literal interpretation.  The literal Nicodemus said, “How can I get back into my mother’s womb to be born again.”  The woman at the well says, “Jesus, you don’t even have a bucket to draw this “living water.”  Jesus said that the “Pharisee who could see were blind, and the blind man was the one who truly saw.”  On the way to raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus told his disciples that Lazarus was asleep.  The literal disciples said, “Well Jesus, isn’t sleep good for him?”  And Jesus said with my very uncharitable and misrepresenting paraphrase, “You dumb literalists, Lazarus is dead.”  In the living bread discourse the persons who interpreted literal cannibalism walked away from Jesus when they thought that Jesus meant literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood.  And yet there has been a history of transubstantiation literalism that has been founded upon this phrase of Jesus in John’s Gospel, the very one that was mocking such literalism.

  John’s Gospel is the last Gospel written and it is artfully written and it contains in it the layers of what has happened within the church for eight or nine decades and it interweaves the church practices of these decades within a narrative discourse of the life of Jesus.

  The church of John’s Gospel has become a Gentile church but the writer wants this Gentile church to know that the roots of Jesus are within the Judaic tradition and it is a church which wants to continue to include Jews.  The church of John’s Gospel is a church which baptizes for initiation and also practices the Eucharistic meal.  The writer of the Gospel of John tries to retrace the meanings of these liturgical practices within a presentation of a narrative of the life of Jesus and the writer creates “might have said” discourses of Jesus.

   The discourse which we have read today is called the living water discourse and in it is a baptismal discourse, with the spiritual meaning of baptism.  The setting at the Samaritan well tells us that the church of Gospel of John has overcome the enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans.  It indicates to us that Jesus as a man and a Jew is not practicing either ethnic nor gender nor sectarian segregation which would have characterized Jewish custom of his own time.  The woman at the well was a member of a hated group, the Samaritans, she was a woman and therefore unapproachable by a man and she belonged to the Samaritan religion based on Mount Gerizim and possessing their own versions and translations of the Hebrew writings.  So we could assume that the church of the writer of John’s Gospel had overcome in Christian practice these previous barriers to fellowship.

  Baptism was not invented by Jesus; it was not invented by John the Baptist.  Water purification rites were a part of the Jewish religion in its various forms of historical development.  Many water pools for Mikveh or baptismal pools have been excavated by archaeologists in the vicinity of the Temple complex in Jerusalem.  Such rites were even described by some rabbis as “new births” and so the teachings about water purification rites made figurative reference to the amniotic fluids which attend natural birth.  You understand why Jesus questioned Nicodemus’ lack of understanding about being born by water and the Spirit.  As a Jew, why did he not know the rabbis teaching about the new birth of water baptism?   There were also different kinds of water purification rites.  Women had to do monthly water purification rites so homes that could afford it kept tanks or large stone jars around for such practices in the home (so it makes it almost hilarious the event of Jesus turning 155 gallons of purification water into wine for a wedding feast).  “Mom, you want some wine for the wedding?  Poof.  How about 155 gallons of wine, will that be enough?”

  Jewish water purification rites also had requirements for the type of water which could be used.  The highest form of baptism had to have “living water.”  Living water meant there was motion involved; an ocean, a lake, a river or stream, or a fountain or the living river underground which was drawn from a well.  The Jordan River was living water for the baptisms of John the Baptist.

  In the metaphors of the Gospel of John, we are instructed that the Holy Spirit is a stream of living water or a fountain within.  This is a complementing metaphor to the understanding of water as an external bathing and cleansing.  The message is that we need to practice both external and internal cleansing.  John the Baptist said, “I baptize you with water; but Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  In Christian symbols then, the Spirit is the cleansing of refining fire and the continuous fountain of interior cleansing of a rising and bubbling Holy Spirit within us.  This interior energy of cleansing is the essence of the living water discourse that we have read today.

  This cleansing was available to non-Jews, to Samaritans, Greek and Romans.  This baptismal practice was also consistent with a requirement for non-Jews who wished to convert to Judaism.  In addition to circumcision required of males, baptism was required for a person to be cleansed from their old “pagan” ways and be born through the amniotic waters of baptism into their new family of faith.  Early Christian baptism, obviously integrated this notion of proselyte baptism in the formation of the Christian rite of initiation.

  John’s Gospel is no refuge for the literalist.  It begins by suggesting that Jesus is the Word of God from the beginning.  The very Gospel is based upon the creativity of “Words.”  John’s Gospel teaches us that we cannot get to anything; we can only interact with words.  When we posit that there is a Holy Spirit, we ask, “what’s that?”   It’s God like breath or wind?  How is God’s Spirit literally breath or wind?   It’s like a Presence we feel with us.  What is feeling and Presence?  It’s like something close.  What does something close mean?  So you see how John says word is what creates our human experience.  And words create other words to explain former words in an endless referential pattern.  And yet we feel there be to a Greatness beyond all referential words and it is so great we can only believe we know that it is there without controlling it with words that we must use to recognize the Greatness beyond words.

  But let us embrace the words about the Holy Spirit being living water within us.  This Lenten Season we are invited to the practice of mediation.  Let us use this Living Water or Interior Fountain metaphor as visualization for our meditation.  Let us visualize our deepest life energy or desire as this Living Water of God’s Holy Spirit which is always able to arise in us and cleanse and forgive and wipe the slate clean for us to take on another day in bubbling and flowing delight.

   We have been baptized with the external water of baptism; let us forever be baptized and re-baptized and re-purified by the Living Water, the Spirit of God whom we can discover within ourselves.  Amen.