Readings of the day: Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42
What are some basic needs for human
survival?
We need water to survive. At room
temperature, without exercising, the average healthy adult human being can
survive for a few days without water. We need food. The same healthy adult
human being at room temperature and with minimal exercise can survive for a few
weeks without food. We also need sleep…
But how often do we think of God as
essential to our survival?
We encounter in our readings today several
people who are concerned for their basic needs for survival. In Exodus, led by Moses and having fled
slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel find themselves in the middle of a hot,
dry desert. Before the story of our first reading begins, the people of Israel
have run out of food. They complain, “We’re hungry,” so God gives them manna, a
strange flaky food from the sky. This satisfies their hunger, but soon they are
without water.
Let us imagine this, as I can having been in
the Holy Land in the summer heat: The temperature is over one hundred degrees
every day in the desert. A large group of people, young and old, healthy and
unhealthy, have been on the move for years. They know they will survive for
much less time than at a comfortable temperature and if they were not carrying
loads in the heat, and so they complain to Moses again: “We’re thirsty. We’re low
on manna. I’m tired. I’m too hot. I’m bored. He looked at me sideways. I need
to go to the bathroom. Are we there yet?!”
“Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? …
Is the LORD in our midst or not?”
Now let us imagine Moses responding to
the people’s endless complaining: “Up until now you had a point. Traveling
through the desert under load is hard work. We have limited food and water.
It’s hot and dry. But this is better than slavery in Egypt. Remember what the
LORD has done to get us this far, and please stop doubting whether the LORD is with us
or not!”
At least, amid their doubt and
complaining, the people Moses leads recognize their most basic need: To
survive, they need God. They have this need for God in common with the
Samaritan woman at the well in today’s Gospel reading. They have this need for
God in common with all of us.
Yet, like the Israelites under Moses and
the Samaritan woman at the well in John’s Gospel, we do not always recognize
the ways in which God makes God’s self present to us; the ways in which God
satisfies our need for him. To the Israelites, God is present through Moses’
leadership and through a series of signs by which God, through Moses, frees
them from slavery and meets their other basic needs such as for food and water.
To the Samaritan woman at the well,
Jesus’ divinity is initially hidden. Jesus appears as one with basic human needs
that we all share; as a weary traveler who begins by asking the Samaritan woman:
“Give me a drink.”
Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan
woman begins with this focus on the most basic of human needs. The woman can
meet Jesus’ need for water. The woman’s needs are more complex. Jesus works
through many layers of the woman’s need: For acceptance; for human community
and relationship; for a home for worship; and ultimately for the presence of
God.
How many of us have ever begun a
conversation with someone, only to realize that the basic need of the other
person that we have sought to meet soon leads to discovery of this person’s
more complex needs? Not many of us, I imagine, would begin by saying to
another, “I think your most basic need is for God,” especially if the person is
not Christian or even religious. Might we begin instead with basic hospitality;
offering food and drink, then a listening ear; conversation; friendship? It is
wonderful to be able to identify and to meet another’s spiritual needs, but
this is often only possible after more basic needs have been met.
The conversation between Jesus and the
Samaritan woman progresses from most basic to most complex need; from the need
for water to the need for God. Jesus asks the woman for water. The woman is an
outcast in many ways: She is a Samaritan speaking with a Jew. She cannot
worship either in Jerusalem, the Jewish center of worship, or on Mount Gerizim, the Samaritan center of worship. She has had “five husbands, and the one” she
has “now is not [her] husband,” and so she is rejected in her village. She is a
woman in a male-dominated society. Here she finds herself in the noontime heat
in a desert, risking her life for water from Jacob’s well.
The Samaritan woman has been rejected
everywhere else, and so has nothing to lose. But Jesus accepts her, even over
the objection of his own disciples. Beginning with basic hospitality in spite
of his own hunger and thirst, Jesus brings God’s presence to her; a spiritual
home neither in Jerusalem nor on Gerizim but in him. Only then can the
Samaritan woman recognize that Jesus “is truly the Savior of the world.” Only
then can she bring this message back to her own village, which then welcomes
Jesus.
What (or who) is at the same time the
most basic yet most complex need for human survival? This need is God.
Yet it takes time, hospitality,
deepening of relationship, and often the meeting of our other most basic needs‒
for water, for food, and for sleep, for example‒ for us to come to recognize our
most basic and yet most complex need, without whom there is no life; the need
recognized by the people of Israel led by Moses and then by the Samaritan woman
at the well and the villagers of Sychar.
This need, most
essential to our survival, is God and God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who “is truly
the Savior of the world.”
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