3rd Sunday in Lent
March 19, 2017
Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; John 4:5-42
Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RLB4cFT-tc
I learned a couple new jokes this week. Y’all ready? What
kind of lights did Noah put on the ark? Flood lights. And Pastor Jorge shared
that when at a pastors’ meeting in his native Cuba, whoever prayed for the
meeting would be told, “Don’t pray like God’s mercy.” Why? Because God’s mercy
is never-ending. God’s mercy is abundant and eternal. Their prayer should not
be eternal! This morning is now our third week transforming our membership vows
into four-letter words. We did ‘pray’ and ‘here,’ for faithfully participating
in the ministries of this church through our prayers and our presence. This
morning we are looking at our promise to participate faithfully through our
gifts. Gifts makes a very easy four-letter word, give. You know, you can’t have a gift unless you give it away, or it was given to you. There has to be some sort
of transfer in order for a gift to be a gift. We talk at least once a week at
church about gifts, when we offer our gifts to God through our offering. We
also give thanks on a regular basis, thanks for our food, thanks for our
blessings, thanks for everything God has given to us.
In the church, we often talk about giving in terms of the
three T’s: our time, talent, and treasure. We give our time: volunteering with
Streets of Hope and participating in ministries, like coming to eat breakfast [midweek
Lenten service]. Our leaders give their time to see to the administration of
our church. Our choir gives their time to practice
and singing. Our Sunday school teachers give their time to plan their lessons
and gather their materials. Everyone gives their time to do the first two
membership vows of praying and being here. We also give our talent, our
God-given abilities, whether they are musical or organizational or a passion to
work with children or to work with numbers and finances. Some of these seem
like natural abilities, things we’ve enjoyed or been good at our whole life;
others of these are skills we’ve learned, sometimes in order to use them in the
church, or things we’re interested in and so we’ve learned more about them.
Finally, we give our treasure. We give financially to support the ministries of
this church. It might seem like we give in order to keep the lights on and the
doors open, but the truth is that we can’t do any ministries without those basics. We can’t have Sunday school if
we don’t have heat and electricity. We can’t do breakfasts (Lenten foods) if we
don’t keep up with the kitchen. So, if you ever get stuck feeling like you’re
just keeping the lights on, remember the ministries that won’t happen if we
don’t have power. You support those ministries with your giving. I once surmised
that if everyone gave ten percent of their time, talent, and treasure, if
everyone tithed in all the ways they give, then we’d definitely have enough.
The truth is that it can be hard to give, especially if it’s not a habit. And
it can be hard to give more, if you’re used to giving at a certain level.
I
challenge you this week, if you’re not giving ten percent in one of those
areas, to increase it for one month, and see what happens. If you’re not giving
ten percent, try it for one month. If you’re not spending the time with God and
involved in the life of the church, ten percent of the day is 2 ½ hours; or ten
percent of your time awake, because sleep is important, is 1 ½ hours, try
giving more time. Or, if you’ve been holding back and not sharing a certain talent
or ability or interest, try giving more in that area, and see what happens. The
thing is, we will always have enough. God always provides enough. It’s not a
zero-sum budget. Remember that joke? God’s mercy is never-ending, and so is his
goodness and his love and his faithfulness. The life God offers is abundant,
it’s overflowing, it’s extravagant, it’s generous. There will be enough.
Let’s
take a look at how God provided and gave to his people in the Scriptures we
read this morning. In Exodus, God’s people are wandering in the wilderness,
following Moses, who is following God. And the people start complaining. We’re
hungry. We’re thirsty. We have to go potty. Are we there yet? The sun hurts my
eyes. We don’t have enough. We don’t have water to drink. Water is a basic
need; you need water to live. Moses, give us water. They argue with Moses, they
grumble and whine and complain. When we are missing one of our basic needs,
when we’re hungry, when we’re thirsty, when we’re sleep-deprived, we do not act
our best. I know I don’t. And so the people test God and even question their
deliverance. God brought them out of slavery, and now they’re grumbling that
maybe life was better back in Egypt, back when they were enslaved. God brought
them out of that, and in their thirst, they forget their salvation. They forget
God saved them. They forget God loves them. They forget what God has done for
them. And they start saying “Gimme.” And they start a Back-to-Egypt committee. So,
God does give them water, because they need it. God gives us what we need to
provide for our basic needs. God knows, and you’ve gotta trust, rather than
argue. God has freely given us our salvation; don’t forget that. You belong to
God and God loves you abundantly and extravagantly.
At
the same time, God also gives the people a consequence for testing him, which
we read at the end of our psalm. The psalmist tells us, “Don’t harden your
hearts, like you did at Meribah and Massa, in the wilderness, when your ancestors
tested me and scrutinized me, even though they had already seen my acts.” And
so God says, “They will never enter my place of rest.” Because of their
grumbling and testing God, that generation is not allowed to enter the promised
land. That’s part of why the Israelites wander in the desert for forty years,
because God has said that everyone who complained doesn’t get to go into the
promised land. They had to wait forty years, a generation, for everyone to die
off. There are consequences for our sin. When your hearts are hardened, you focus
only on yourself. You forget what God has done for you. You forget that you
belong to God. You forget God’s extravagant love, and it’s hard to give that
love and forgiveness to others. It’s hard to be generous when your heart is
hard. God knows your need, God sees your need. Don’t think he doesn’t. That’s
what the Israelites thought. God doesn’t know we’re thirsty; God doesn’t know
we need water. God knows. God is going to provide. It will be what you need
when you need it, if you have faith and trust in him. God gives freely and
lavishly and abundantly. Sometimes, though, not on our schedule. Sometimes we
get thirsty first. Sometimes God makes sure we know we’re thirsty before giving
us water so that we appreciate it all the more.
Giving
water is also the theme in our Gospel reading. Jesus is passing through Samaria
and stops at Jacob’s well to rest. A woman comes to draw water and Jesus asks
her to give him some water. It’s quite odd that that’s Jesus’ first question
and how he begins this whole conversation, and the woman calls him on it. Why
are you, a Jewish man, asking me, a Samaritan woman, to give you
something to drink? Jews and Samaritan did not associate with each other; they
didn’t talk to each other, and Jesus is asking something from her. Second, note
that it’s the middle of the day. Noon
is not when most people went to the
well to get water. The woman was trying to avoid everyone, and here’s Jesus,
ignoring social convention, asking her for water. Bizarre. And so is Jesus’ response.
Count how many times you hear a variation of the word give. “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 gift of God,’
and if you knew, then you would ask him to give you living water. Well, the
woman catches on quick and asks, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never
be thirsty and will never need to come back to this well for water.” Jesus
tells her to ask, and she does.
Except,
of course, Jesus isn’t talking about literal water that you ingest with your
body; he’s talking about the Word of God. Remember what he told the devil in
our reading two weeks ago? “People shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that comes from God.” Jesus is the Word of God; the Gospel writer, John,
makes that clear in his very first chapter. “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus is the Word of God. Another
description of the Word of God is in the book of Hebrews, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and
piercing …; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
That’s what Jesus is doing here in this conversation, because then he asks the
Samaritan woman to go get her husband, and she admits she doesn’t have one. Jesus
says, “You’re right. You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with
now is not your husband.” Because Jesus told her who she was, they could then
have a conversation about worship and salvation and the Messiah. Because Jesus
gave her living water, she could then be freed from this past to move forward
and use her past as part of her testimony that she gave to others. She could
tell what God had done for her and give that story to others, so that they,
too, might come and see. That was her gift. “Come and see this man who has told
me everything I ever did. I think he’s the Messiah, the Savior, of the world.”
And many did believe because of her testimony and others went accepted her
invitation and went to see Jesus in person to see for themselves.
You
have something to give as well. You have a story to tell as well. Each one of
us has a story of how God has acted in our lives, how God has saved us, how God
has transformed our past, how God brought us out of Egypt, out of a dark place.
You may have sat there thinking, no, Pastor Heather, I can’t give anymore; I
can’t do your challenge to increase my giving in some way for a month. I
already tithe, I already give a significant amount of my time to the church, I
don’t have any hidden talents to share. Sorry, Pastor Heather, can’t do it. If
you were thinking that it is completely impossible to give any more of your
time, talent, and treasure, then two things. One is that Scripture says
“nothing is impossible with God.” Two, let’s add one more T to that list, your
testimony. Tell people what God has done for you. Give your witness. And if
you’re really unsure or hesitant about that, then I have good news. Witness is
our fifth membership vow, so you’ll hear more about it in two weeks! Time,
talent, treasure, testimony; you always have something to give. Think of “The
Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein; even when all that was left of the tree was a
stump, the tree still offered the stump as a place to sit. If you are feeling like you have nothing more to
give, first, sit, and rest. Then, know that that feeling actually isn’t
accurate. Be encouraged, be comforted, you do
have more to give. I know because God loves us lavishly and extravagantly and
abundantly and so there is always more to draw on for those with eyes to see
and ears to listen. God’s mercy isn’t a zero-sum; his love is not like pie that
gets divided up. It is never-ending, it is new every morning, that’s the thing
about living water. It’s a well that will never dry up. Thanks be to God.
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