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Gift of the water of Life
A man was crawling through a desert and soon he was approached by another man who was riding on a camel so when that rider came near to him this man whispered through his parched lips “Please...Can you give me water….”
The rider replied him that “I am sorry because I don’t have any water with me but I could sell you a neck tie”.
The crawling man again whispered “Necktie? But I need water!”
Again the riding man said “There are only four dollars a piece”.
The man replied “I need water”.
“Okay two for just seven dollars”.
The thirsty man exclaimed “Please I need water”.
“I don’t have any water I have only ties” said the salesman and headed off into a distance.
By this time the man lost all track of time because he was crawling through the desert for many days. With clothes tattered and skin peeling under the restless sun he soon came near a restaurant. With his last breathe of strength he staggered to the door and confronted the head waiter.
The dying man again pleaded “Water.. Can I get… water”?
The waiter replied to him “I am sorry sir; our dress code requires a neck tie”.
A tie that can save a man from thirsting to death. Salvation can come from the most unexpected places.
If anyone understands how salvation can appear in very strange forms out in the desert, it’s the Israelites from today’s reading. For the fourth week now, we are traveling with them in the wilderness, on their journey from a captive people, slaves to Pharaoh, to the land flowing with milk and honey that God promised to give them. We’ve been with the Israelites when they ate a Passover meal of lamb and unleavened bread, ready to leave Egypt at a moment’s notice and run to freedom. We’ve been with them at the banks of the Red Sea, where they believed they would either drown or be slaughtered by Pharaoh’s army, and God parted the waters for them. We’ve been with them when they were starving and watched God send them manna in the morning and quail at night. God has done an awful lot for the Israelites, saving their lives at every turn, often without being asked.
And now, the Israelites are ready to repay God. And how do you think they do that? Did they call a big prayer and praise meeting? Did they stay up all night long singing to God? Did they dedicate their first-born children to God’s service? Nope. They decided to complain, again, about their predicament. Their refrain is starting to get old; for the third time, they give into their fear and doubt and start to revolt against their leader Moses. “Why did you bring us out here to die in the desert? We had plenty of water along the Nile in Egypt. Here, we have nothing but sand and rocks!”
By this time, Moses is scared. He sees the crowd, the mob that is gathered around, picking up the stones and rocks and they are ready to throw them at him. Those stones are looking like instruments of death, not the possibility for life.
And oh, how we are like the Israelites. When we are stuck in a bad spot, we look around us and only see death, destruction, hopelessness, barriers and roadblocks. It takes a level of holy imagination and God-given faith to see beyond the stones, beyond the fear, beyond the dryness and to be patient enough to wait for abundance and life and waters that flow freely.
Mike was laid off. I was six months pregnant with Jackson and still had one year of seminary left.
We were afraid, we were scared. We could not see how any good was going to come from the situation. I don’t believe that God created the situation we were in. But I do believe that God gave us strength and wisdom to look for God in the situation. God gave us supportive and loving people who were ready to help us. God gave us new possibilities that we were able to take, possibilities that brought new life and new hope to us. Where we first only saw lifeless stones, God showed us that when we trust in God, then even the stones can flow with life-giving water.
This example of God saving God’s people in a most unusual way, like here when God brings life-giving water from stones, is throughout scripture. God takes the prophet Ezekiel out to a valley of dry bones, the most desolate, hopeless place on earth. There, he tells Ezekiel to breathe on the bones, and before his very eyes, God’s spirit sweeps over the bones and knits them back together, muscle to tendon, tendon to bone and makes an army of people ready to serve and praise God. God brings life from death.
At the tomb on Easter Sunday, Mary approaches a rock that that contains the body of Jesus. That rock is more than just a barrier – it’s a symbol of the death of her dreams, of her hope for a better future for her and her people, of the destruction of all that is holy and good. It is a lifeless stone. But when Jesus emerges from behind that stone, full of life and glory and newness, her sorrow is turned into joy and her despair to new hope. God overcomes death with life. God turns what seems like a dead end into a new beginning.
When the Israelites looked around, all they could see was barrenness, dry land, desert stands and stones. They didn’t have the holy imagination or trust to see anything but death. But God took those stones and through Moses, turned those stones into life-giving pools of water, enough water to save the people, to give drink to their children and to quench their animals’ thirst. They received the gift of the water of life from a most unexpected place. Their salvation came in an unusual way but from the usual source: God who loved them and loves us, God who cared for them and cares for us, God who saved them and saves us. The water that poured forth from that rock not only quenched the Israelites of their thirst, it empowered them to go forward as God’s people to fulfill God’s purpose for them.
The gift of the water of life. Water can cleanse, water restores, water nourishes, water protects. In the womb, we are knit together under God’s care in water. In our baptism, ordinary water becomes holy when God’s spirit moves across it and it flows over us. On the cross, water flowed from the side of Jesus, God’s immense, incredible love for us literally overflowing onto our broken and hurting world.
Brothers and sisters, we have been offered a drink of water today in this time of worship. You may have a situation that seems like a lifeless, dead stone in your life. Try as you might, you cannot overcome it. Our world is filled with such stones. The stone of racism. The stone of war. The stone of greed and corruption. The stone of envy and hurt and pride. What stones need to be cracked open and let the healing water of God’s love flow in and over and through them? Do you have a stone of anger or physical illness or addiction or grief? Come, now, and receive the gift of the water of life. Come touch these waters as a prayer that God will take the stone that surrounds you this day, that blocks your living fully in God’s care, and open it up.