Good Question: 3 Lent A

3 Lent A 2008 (RCL)
(Ex 17: 1-7; Ps 95; Rom 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42)


God loves a good question. God also loves a good questioner.

In the desert, while Moses fretted and the people complained, there were questions asked. They weren’t very sophisticated questions. “Where is there bread?” “Where is there water?” “Where is there meat?” Or, going deeper, "Is the LORD with us or not?"

God did grumble right back, and God did get pretty cranky with all the griping. But God responded. A people were forged in that desert, a people who asked questions even if it strained their relationship with God. “O that today you would hearken to God’s voice” sings the Psalm. “Harden not your hearts…”

How can we be a people who question God, and yet listen? How can we be a people who stand before God with our doubts and concerns yet not harden our hearts?

People listen best when they are at peace. People don’t harden their hearts when they believe their hearts have been healed.

God gives us peace and heals us through Paul’s words.
We are justified…we have peace…even in our suffering we have hope...God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. Christ died for us not when we were at our best but just as we are, broken, wounded, and sinful. We are reconciled to God and each other, we will be saved by the life of the living Lord.

It was that living Lord who made the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well so astounding.

She and Jesus shouldn’t even have been talking. She was a foreign woman from a despised minority. Jesus starts the conversation with a request—he needs something from her, he’s thirsty. But she picks up the thread and goes right back at him. “Why do you ask me for a drink?” “Living water, where do you get it?” Then, “Give me this water.”

Jesus leads them both deeper and deeper, deeper into her own life, and deeper into his call, deeper into God’s life. “Water, living water gushing up inside…” “Go call your husband…you’ve had five husbands…God is spirit, worship him in spirit and truth…the Messiah is speaking, I am he”

I love her attitude, the Samaritan woman, she’s full of life and history and she’s no shrinking violet. Attitude and nerve is not the same thing as a hard heart and a closed ear. She listens, she engages, and she receives the gift given to her: more than a jar of water, more than she bargained for, more than she ever imagined. It took a listening ear, and a heart ready and open to receive the astounding gift of God.

God loves a good question, and loves the questioner. What is your question today? What question does your life and soul pose to God? You may receive an answer you expect. But you may receive far more. You may hear silence that takes you to the depths, the depths of your own soul and the depths of God. You may hear strange words today, newness and strength, healing and forgiveness and a new start, a new life. Living water, gushing up, and the voice of One who says “I am.”