Just when I was feeling good about not living in New York after the August 14 blackout, eight days later, the power went off at our house about six one evening, for eight hours!  The temperature hovered right at 100 and without a stitch of wind, it quickly grew as hot inside as it was outside.  With each passing moment there was less and less we could do.  It soon became too dark to read even by candlelight.  At 8:45, after Nancy and I caught up on everything we’d needed to talk about for about a month, we finally gave up and just went to bed.  Once again I was reminded of how completely dependent we are on the power that comes from a source, invisible to us and outside of our house, to be able to live in it.  Without that invisible source, we were powerless.

Powerless.  The word sounds like it feels.  Helpless.  Impotent.  Inept.  Hopeless.  Makes me want to stop and take a breath after saying it.  Powerless.  Jesus always had an eye out for people like that.  Powerless, inept, helpless, impotent, hopeless people.  People who had absolutely nothing to offer him but their moral and spiritual bankrupt selves.  What else would have made him ask for a drink from a woman who actually needed what he had in order to slake the bottomless pit thirst in her soul? 

Reminds me of the way he started his first recorded sermon.  Once word got out that Jesus had a special place in his heart for the down and out, desperately sick and hurting people from all over started coming to him for healing.  The scripture tells the rest of that story this way.  “Now when he saw the crowds . . . he sat down . . . and he began to teach them saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:1-3, NIV).’”  Looking out at this mass of wounded humanity, his heart was not filled with judgment.  He didn’t stand, high and mighty, and lecture them with, “You should have known better!”  Instead, filled with compassion, the Lord of all creation sat down, on their hurting level, and said that the most fortunate are those who have absolutely nothing to offer God but their own spiritual bankruptcy; they’ll get all God has to offer, as a gift.

With each passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer.  God doesn’t help those who help themselves.  God helps those who can’t help themselves.  He has an eye for, a special place in his heart, for people who can’t help themselves.  So, Jesus, the son of God, strikes up a conversation with a woman who has used one man after another looking for . . . well, what was she looking for?  What do you think?  She wasn’t the first or last to look for something on the other side of the marriage altar to alter her existence, only to be disappointed time and again.  The first or last to be drawn into yet another relationship where she knew going in she was going to be used and then thrown away.  (Why do people do that to themselves?)  Like more and more people today, she’d finally just skipped the vows altogether.  It’s probably not going to last anyway, why bother with promises we know we won’t keep, right?  As well as any, Dwight Yoakum sings the theme song of a generation increasingly cynical about anything that smacks of long term commitment.  “Don’t try, to figure this out or ask questions ‘bout why.  Forever’s a promise no love can survive (Dwight Yoakum, Things Change).”  By the time Jesus caught up with this woman she was well versed in promises no love she’d ever known could survive. 

Now, here’s where this story gets tricky for those of us well versed in analyzing the sins of others 2,000 years ago as a distraction from our own.  Where this story goes from here for us this morning has everything to do with whether or not we see ourselves in it.  It was never meant to be a story used to instruct us in the fine art of conversational evangelism first.  And, my purpose in preaching this sermon is not to convince you that Jesus was who he said he was.  He said he was the “‘Messiah,’” the one sent from God for our salvation.  I figure that most of us are here this morning because we already believe that.  The purpose of this sermon is ask each of us if, though believing that Jesus is the savior, we still find ourselves with a mysterious and unsatisfied spiritual thirst, constantly restless for the next change, hoping it will finally be the one that makes the difference.  How is it that people who say they believe in Jesus can still be so miserably empty and restless?

I’ve heard this text analyzed and hermeneutically sliced and diced all of my life and repeated it the same way to others.  This woman was a Samaritan.  Jesus was a Jew.  Jesus broke every social taboo to be seen talking to a Samaritan, a Samaritan woman, a Samaritan adulteress at that and so on and so on.  There is so much here about how Jesus was willing to cross every racial, social boundary known to man in order to prove his love for this woman.  You’ve heard that sermon, haven’t you?  All those things are true.  But, so is this.  This story is not first a textbook example on how to do conversational evangelism.  First, this story was meant to be a mirror in which we reflect on our own emptiness and the compassion Jesus has for us, too.  Maybe that’s why we don’t know her name, the woman at the well.  If we knew her name, we might personalize this story just for her.  By remaining nameless, there’s room for our name in her story.  This is our story.  Do you see yourself in it? 

You see, just when I begin to feel like I know this woman and am feeling better that I don’t live in her skin, her story begins to sound more and more like my own.  Am I the thirsty one Jesus is talking about?  Like he did this woman, Jesus usually catches me off guard with that question.  Last Sunday, he used Robyn Byrd to ask it.  I’ve spent all week trying to figure out what raw nerve she struck when she said that “we are free to trust God, leaning on the promises of his grace and mercy to see our work to completion.  Then, as God’s creation, we are able to enjoy the rest of the labor - that is the grace of the labor, the non-worried-ness of the labor (Robyn Byrd, The Rest of the Labor, August 31, 2003).”  Her words, if you will, tasted like a cool drink of water at the end of a long, scorching summer day after hauling hay in a steamy field with not even a stitch of wind to cool the sweat running down the back of my neck.  After all these years of “trusting” Jesus, how is it that it’s still so easy, any minute of any day, to think that the significance of my life and my ministry lies just on the other side of the next sermon, the next invitation to wow people, finally getting everyone to see the world the way I do, getting everyone to like me, the next successful program or the next opportunity?  Am I, are you, really that different than this woman who was on man number six and counting?  Anyone here who claims to be a follower of Jesus who just can’t seem to get enough of . . . well, anything? 

OK, a little too personal, right?  Time for some crafty deflection.  First, the woman points to the well, the one her ancestor Jacob dug.  Then, she points to the mountain where the Samaritans worship, as opposed to Jerusalem, where the Jews worshipped.  Nothing like a good theological debate to keep the question about our current spiritual condition from getting too personal.  Jesus calls her back with these words.  “‘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.’” 

The question for this woman will ultimately be, as it is for us, not how we got to this place or how we compare to others.  The only question is whether or not, in this very moment, we’re making connection with that invisible source of life from beyond us, that power from without, that gives us life within.  The question isn’t who our ancestors worshipped or where or how, but whom we worship.  Too easily, we drink from the wells others dug for us, worship on mountains others defined as sacred.  We sacrifice ourselves on altars others built for us, even if we’re about to die doing it.  The real question - Is what you are worshipping giving you life or only sucking what little life you have left right out of you?

Kenny Wood tells the story of a young mother who had given birth to her second child, a little girl.  She was worried about how her five year-old son would accept his new sister into the family.  “One morning she couldn’t find (her son).  She hurried down the hall, and stopped at the bedroom door when she heard him talking.  She peeked around the corner and saw him in the crib with his sister.  He was saying, ‘I know you came from the same place I did.  Remind me about it.  I’m starting to forget (Kenny Wood, Chance Meetings, September 5, 2003).’”  How easy it is to forget, where we came from.  Worship, whatever else it is, means stopping to ask God where we came from, and waiting for an answer that comes from beyond us.  Too often we’re asking that question of things that cannot answer, like yelling into a deep well and hearing only our voice echo back.

All I know is that I have to ask and answer that question every single day.  I couldn’t agree more than I do with Joshua, “‘Choose this day whom you will serve . . . as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).”  I couldn’t agree more.  It’s just that I have to agree every single day, one day at a time.  It’s never automatic.  Any given day, I’m only one bad choice away from worshipping gods that take my life rather than give me life, that leave me powerless to do anything but look for the next distraction to keep me from thinking about how empty life can be without what only God can give.

To be Christian, we know, means to live our lives giving to and forgiving others.  Giving and forgiving?  How do we forgive those who have abused us or used us or hurt us?  Forgive our enemies?  For real?  How can we do that?  We can’t, unless we are empowered from some invisible source from without to live that way within.  Jesus made this woman a marvelous promise his love could and would keep.  “‘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.’”  On our own, we’re powerless.  If God gives us that kind of life, we’ll have the power to give, even to those who have taken from us.  Would you like to have that kind of life?  Who are you willing to ask for it?  Where do you expect to get it?

This past week I was at a meeting where I happened to sit by Kathleen Hardage at lunch.  Kathleen’s husband is the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Sulphur Springs.  Our conversation turned to women in ministry and how difficult a subject that is for some churches.  She told me of how her husband was ordained years ago in a small rural church in central Texas.  When the time came for the part of the ceremony where the congregation laid hands on her husband as a symbol of blessing, they asked Kathleen to join in kneeling with him.  Then, while all those in the line placed their hands on David’s head, something very beautiful happened.  Kathleen’s uncle passed through the line.  He was a tall, stately old judge whom everyone revered.  As he passed by, after laying hands on David, he leaned over Kathleen, put his hands on her head and whispered in her ear, “Whatever they’re giving him, I figure you could use a little, too.”

Whatever it was Jesus gave that nameless woman at the well that day, I figure I could use a little, too.  Not in my “life,” but today, right here and now.  I could use a little of whatever Jesus gave her.  How about you?  Listen to what Jesus told 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.’”  If you knew the gift, Jesus said.  If you knew who was asking.  If you just knew, you’d ask, and you’d receive.

Do you know?  Do you know the gift?  Do you know who’s asking?

If you knew the gift, Jesus said.  What was it he gave her?  Dignity?  Love?  Hope?  Respect?  Forgiveness?  Water for her thirsty soul?  I could use a little of that, too.  Otherwise, I’m totally, completely, hopelessly powerless.  I figure I could use a little of whatever it was Jesus gave that woman.

Anyone else need a little too?