Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

March 12, 2023

“Thirst and the Bottomless Well”

Readings: Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95, John 4:5-42

Today’s Gospel reading is one of the longest in the Church Year. Like last Sunday’s Gospel, it is an extended conversation between Jesus and a minor character.

Unlike last week, I won’t go through the conversation line by line. That would be too severe an ordeal, even for Lent.

Since the reading is so long, I can only touch on a few points, so I wanted to look at the primary motif of our readings this week: Thirst.

• In our reading from Exodus, the Israelites thirst in the desert wilderness and ask Moses to give them water.

• In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that those who drink the water from Jacob’s Well will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water he gives them will never thirst.

• And in Psalm 42, which we’ll later sing at the Offertory, the Psalmist declares that he thirsts for God “like as the deer thirsts for cool streams.”

Almost every human activity, every subject under the sun, has been utilized in Holy Scripture to illustrate glorious truths about God and the life in Christ. Food, drink, clothing, music, journeying— name a subject or an activity, and it probably appears in Scripture as part of a vast interconnected web of concepts and symbols.

So if we want to understand how thirst functions in Scripture, we have to consider what it is. What does it mean to be thirsty? It means to desire water. To feel the need for hydration.

Thirst is related to hunger, obviously, but there are a few key differences. Hunger cues us that we need to eat food, which provides energy and sustenance. When we go without eating, we feel tired or faint. Water is less about providing energy and more about providing what the body needs to function. The human body is 55 to 70% water. The body needs water for the brain to function and for organs to work, which is why when people become severely dehydrated, their body systems begin to shut down. Whereas a person can go without food for several weeks, one cannot go without water for more than three days.

Have you ever thought about why God has created human beings this way? Conceivably, God could have created humans so that they never had to eat or drink. Maybe they would just have an inner process that continually refreshed and replenished them, without having to take in something external to their bodies. Why did God create us this way?

I’m not saying I have the answer, but there must be a higher reason why humans must eat and drink. The human body, with all its needs and processes, with all its functions, from eating to drinking to sex, is sacramental of something greater. The body is a site of grace; it’s where we encounter God and each other.

(This is, by the way, the main thesis of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which theologians are still unpacking.)

The point is, thirst is basically the desire for water, the thing that we need to survive and function properly. Without water, we can’t think straight, our body can’t function internally, and everything shuts down. If you’ve ever been really dehydrated, you know how unpleasant it is, and we can begin to see the complaining of the Israelites more sympathetically. Had we been in their shoes, we probably wouldn’t have fared much better.

So to thirst for God is to desire God, and not just in a general sort of way, but in an intense way, in a way that recognizes that without God, we cannot function. When we separate ourselves from God, our minds cannot work correctly; our bodies are estranged from their source of life; our spirits dry up. Of course, a person can never truly be totally separate from God. He is “everywhere present and filling all things”—the only way to be totally estranged from God would be to just cease to exist. But a person can refuse to drink of the life-giving Fount that is God. A person can become spiritually dehydrated by ignoring God and not seeking out communion with Him. And when that happens, the effects on our spirits are devastating.

So one of the main points that Jesus is making to the Samaritan woman is that the deep thirst that human beings feel within themselves cannot be quenched by the things of this world. “Whoever drinks of this water will be thirsty again.” He doesn’t just mean this literally, that a person who drinks water from that well will be thirsty again. He means whoever seeks to be satisfied from the wells of this world will never be satisfied. The goods of this world cannot quench our desire, our thirst, because we were not made for the goods of this world but for God.

This is a harder truth for us to grasp in the modern era, since there is so much we could use to try to fill ourselves up. Food and drink are so abundantly available. So is entertainment, news, games, books and articles to read, places to go, things to do. A person with even a middle-class income and a connection to the Internet can keep themselves occupied for months, without prayer or silence or any of the deeper life that comes from living in the Spirit. Their bodies and minds are constantly filled and constantly moving, but their spirits are dying of dehydration and slowing to a halt.

Jesus comes to give to us the Life that He draws from the Father. It is hydration not from this world but from above. He draws from a deeper well, the deepest of all wells: the fathomless depths of God. The inmost life of God, which cannot be obtained through worldly activities, no matter how noble or exalted, is conveyed to us through our Lord Jesus Christ. “The eternal life that was with the Father was made manifest to us” (1 John 1:2).

And not only does Jesus satisfy our thirsts, but he does so in a way that is re-newing and replenishing. “The water that I give him will become in him a spring welling up to eternal life.” The Samaritan woman had to trek to the well, and lower the bucket, and then take the water back into town. It was a laborious process, and they had to do it every day. But the gift that Jesus gives is self-renewing, like a spring that bubbles up of its own accord. Such is the life of the Holy Spirit in our souls.

One of the great tasks of the spiritual life, especially for us in the West, is to not lose our thirst for God. Do you desire God? Is your need for God’s presence in your life such that, without it, you feel like you’re dying of thirst? A good measure of this is how long you can go without praying. Someone who is earnest in the spiritual life can’t go days on end without praying. It feels wrong. You feel like you’re isolated from your Source of Life.

And that’s part of where fasting comes in. We eat less food, so we can feel hungry for God. We cut down on frivolous activities, so we can attend to what is truly worthwhile. We fill up less on the world so we can be filled up with God.

This week, as you go throughout your daily activities, see what it is you go to when you feel stressed or empty or restless. What is it you reach for to satisfy that inner thirst? Then consider reaching for God instead. Read Scripture. Chant some psalms. Pray with your own words, if you can find them. And if not, then pray the Jesus Prayer or some other short prayer, like “Lord, have mercy.”

God is our Fountain of life, the bottomless well that we can draw from over and over. He is our Life, and without Him, we can’t function. And despite her misunderstandings of much of what Jesus had to say, the Samaritan woman recognized this.

May we say, with her, “Sir, give me this water, that I may no longer thirst.” Amen.