REQUESTING WATER AT THE DINER
John 4:7-15

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
April 18, 2004 / Second Sunday of Easter

When I was young my family did not have very much money, so we never went on an extended vacation. So instead my family gave us one day outings: to the zoo, the planetarium, and so forth. One of the most common was that they took us to a diner to eat. It was a larger diner than the typical silver box car. But it tried to keep that ambiance, with the same art deco chrome trim. To us it was a big deal, but in reality it wasn't too many rungs above a greasy spoon.

The first thing the waitress would do, before we asked for anything, was to bring out gold glass tumblers with ice water in for each of us. The glass of water was part of the greeting. "How are you all doing today? How have you been?" The water glasses got handed out as the words of greeting got spoken.

I guess to me hospitality and greeting always go along with glasses of water.

But somehow that all has changed. I remember going into a place to eat on a hot summer day during a drought. The door from the kitchen to the dining room was propped open. Inside the kitchen I could see a large sign right next to where the waitresses and waiters would come out to serve us. It had large red letters. The sign was much bigger than any sign or advertisement offered to the customers – this in house sign of instructions for the employees. In its large red letters it said: "Do not serve water unless requested." Do not serve water unless requested.

That seems to have become the general rule. Most places now do not serve water unless requested.

Now I understand that it was a drought, and people were trying to conserve water. And I think it is a good thing to preserve water. In our industrial age we have put too much of our clean water at risk. We do need to conserve. Someone told me that there is enough water in swimming pools in America to drown the entire city of San Francisco. Just the other day I was walking past a car repair shop and a flood of water was coming out of their door down to the sewer. In industrial processes, car washes, making lawns green, cooling down power plants, making false water falls in front of Las Vegas casinos, in many many ways we waste water. We do need to conserve.

But I wonder if we really had to start with the friendly hospitable glass of water. "Do not serve water unless requested." But this is a diner. You go there for refreshment. Milk, coffee, wine: they all depend on water; as do tomatoes, oranges, grapes – even fish and grain. Yet, for the most pure refreshment you must request it.

So Jesus requests it: "Give me something to drink."

Jesus lived in a desert land, he knew about water shortages, but he requests it: "give me something to drink." To a total stranger – or at least so it seems – to a total stranger at that: "give me to drink." And in that request, and in that sharing the Samaritan woman at the well finds that her life is transformed.

Incredible things happen when thirsty people pass nutrients and refreshment around. You remember the Emmaus road. Jesus was not recognized physically. Jesus was not recognized in his teaching, nor in his ideas. But when Jesus passes food and drink around, "their eyes were opened and they recognized him." Jesus is made known in the breaking of the bread and the cup of water.

But our world says, "Do not pass out water unless requested."

So request it. Easter and hospitality are about sharing water.

Jesus at the well, could have waited until the woman went home. He could have then gone up and drawn for himself. Jesus had no bucket, but he would not travel the desert without some type of pouch to hold water. He could also have waited for the disciples to get back with refreshment. But instead Jesus uses water to create conversation, to create community, to create a posture of sharing.

Indeed this is always the way of Jesus: create community: call disciples, teach and feed crowds, stay with friends, pass food around the table. This is actually the model Jesus gives us for Christian living. Notice he leaves us no creed. He does not say believe these philosophical formulation and I will love you. Nor does he give a course in homiletics so that preachers will learn the nuances of the Aramaic language. Nor does Jesus put his time into building cathedrals. All those things are the kinds of religion that others create.

Instead Jesus tells stories about banquets, banquets where people invite the poor to come in, Samaritans who feed and nourish people stripped and robbed along the road, fathers that kill the fatted calf because their son has returned, wise and foolish people invited to wedding feasts. His community pulls corn as they walk along through a field, examines the health of fig trees, and goes fishing. Easter includes having breakfast at the seashore, and feeding the starving. The instruction to Peter is not to found a church in Rome, not to build a basilica, not to write a creed or an epistle, not to buy a fancy hat, it is to "feed my sheep." In community is our strength.

In my first parish they had a very beautiful stained glass window of Jesus talking with the woman at the well, today's scripture. But they had it on the back wall. Sitting in any regular pew in the church you could never see the window. But if you were in the pulpit you got to see it all the time. It think it was positioned back there by the same kind of people who like to put clocks in back of churches to remind pastors of how much time they are taking. Every Sunday when I got up to preach there was the woman at the well, and again the request echoing down through the ages, "give me something to drink." Preacher, "give me to drink."

But drinking has to be real, has to be communal. To give you to drink, I have to give it to you. Not think about giving it to you. Not believe I should give it to you. Not imagine the day when I might give it to you. To give you to drink, I must give it to you. It is communal, interactive, personal, real.

Do you know Robert Frost’s poem, The Pasture?

Frost says:

"I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long. – You come too."1

Sometimes we may be in a situation where we are not getting refreshment, not getting any water, when the water supply seems to be drying up. It may actually be that there is not a shortage of water, there may be plenty of water, but it is blocked, clogged, not getting where it needs to go. Sometimes we have to go clear the pasture spring, rake the leaves, bank up the mud. This business of quenching thirst and carrying glasses of water requires work. But to Frost, the good work of clearing the water, quenching the thirst is communal work – you come too. How dismal is life if it is all individualism, if it is all solitary, all alone. In this business of quenching thirst – you come too. In this business of sparkling refreshment – you come too.

And that I think is my essential definition of the Church. It is the message I want to deliver to our new members this morning. In this business of quenching the thirsts of the world, in bringing refreshment to the needy – you come too. Religion is communal. Jesus creates a community. Jesus forges friendships.

That is the essential way Congregationalism was designed to be different than the religions of its day. Some religions are all hierarchical. You’re supposed to go there and just get fed by some powerful pre-ordained person. Religion becomes a spectator sport while we just show up on Sunday to watch somebody do something. But Congregationalism is based on "you come too."

You can give drink to the thirsty. You can make a difference with your life. And you can become part of a group of friends, part of a group with whom you share values and dreams. Jesus tried to do everything he could to create settings where people would get to know each other: share their water and their wine, the bread and their fish, and their ideas, their hopes, their burdens, their blessings.

The only way to really quench our thirsts is with each other: in community, at home around the table.

This is the table of the Lord. You come too.

Amen.

1 – Frost, Robert, The Pasture, (from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathen; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1969), p.1.