Living Water for All

Give us, give us living water.

I grew up in the era of the Irish Band, U-2.

I am not sure if you all are familiar with them,

but they were one of my favorite bands.

They actually are from the neighboring town from me

and they had some great songs.

They used to play in the bars just around the corner from our home.

So we would go see them literally as a little band

that would play in our local bar.

One of the songs that caught on is

“I still haven’t found what I am looking for.”

Do you remember that song?

It is a classic.

Bono, the lead singer and the writer of many of the lyrics,

spoke about how he was searching for God

and that deep within his soul,

there was an unsettled part of him

that he could never find what he was looking for.

And it is not just him.

Bob Dylan on this side of the ocean,

has lots of other songs like

“Every Grain of sand”, “You gotta serve somebody.”

The list goes on.

Even Taylor Swift has a couple songs

that have searching for God.

Each of them have their own way of expressing

the same internal yearning for God in their lives.

It is in every generation.

It is in every single one of us.

The reason why is because

God put that yearning in our hearts.

He created us to yearn and to desire him.

So our yearning for him is, if you would,

the seed of God within us.

Now, the challenge is that we do not always search

in the right places for him.

We search in all the wrong places.

In fact, the great theologian and priest, Ron Rollheiser,

 in his book “The Holy Longing,”

talks about how we search in all the wrong places.

This holy longing, this eternal divine desire within us

is there but we name it wrongly in our society.

We go searching for money or material goods

or power or friends or attention or popularity, you name it.

We are searching in all the wrong places

and it can turn destructive.

Because we can search for it in alcohol,

we can search for it in drugs and

in all sorts of other addictions that can happen.

But the same yearning is there.

Ron Rollheiser speaks of it,

trying to name the holy desire is important for what it is.

Because if we do not, then we will,

continue to look for it in all the wrong places.

If we could name it for what it is,  

that it is God yearning within us,

calling for us to return to him,

to return to the fold,

then we will find eternal happiness.

We will find not only eternal happiness,

but eternal happiness here and now.

The challenge for us is to listen to that.

The great Saints have even spoken of it.

St. Augustine tells us “my heart is restless until rests in you.”

This is one of the great quotes of his time.

The challenge for us then is to attend to it.

It is to attend to it, to find a way in which

we could listen to that cry within us and

then give attention to it in the right way.

They are the same actual words

that are used in today’s Gospel, this living water.

And this smart woman knows that she is yearning for this

and in some ways was looking in all the wrong places.

She has obviously had five husbands.

So she was trying and looking in all the wrong places.

The reason she is there at midday,

is because no one goes to the well at midday.

It is too hot to go out to the well at midday.

But she goes there so she can avoid people.

It was shame that brought her at midday.

So then the question is,

why does Jesus go there to meet her?

He goes to meet her where she is at her weakest moment,

her most shame-filled moment.

The truth is that is what God does for us.

He comes searching for us.

Not only does he put the seed within our heart to desire him,

but then he goes searching for us.

He comes searching for us and he meets us wherever we are.

And what he does to the woman today at the well.

He meets her at her worst, most shame-filled moment publicly,

having to go to the well at midday where no one else will be there.

And that is where he meets her.

What does that say about our God?

It says, our God is ever-merciful.

Our God is ever kind, he is always calling us to him

and is meeting us where we are in our brokenness,

in our woundedness, in whatever place we are.

Today, we are do the first of the scrutinies

for the people who are in what is known as the OCIA,

the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults.

They are coming into the faith, the fullness of faith.

They have been seeking to fulfill the desire,

this holy desire that has been within them.

And they have come to name that they want the Lord.

And so we welcome them in.

This the first of three scrutinies we will do.

Then we will welcome them at the Easter Vigil

into the fullness of the faith.

It is the beginning of their journey into the faith.

Or it may feel like the end of the journey for them,

but it is actually the beginning of a new journey.

But for us, it is a renewal of our journey

to watch them go through these scrutinies.

We hear those scrutinies as

the same scrutinies we need to hear for ourselves

because we need to go on this journey every year

to renew our own holy desire.

To inflame that fire of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

To use the language of today’s Gospels,

to go to the living waters,

to those streams of living waters,

to allow our soul to be refreshed.

But it is not enough that we just do it for ourselves, my friends.

That is good.

But that is not the fullness of our discipleship.

The fullness of our discipleship is to take what we have tasted,

this living water, these streams of living waters

and we are called to go and do exactly what Jesus did,

to go to those places of shame, of blame,

the existential peripheries of our society

to welcome those who feel shamed and broken and left out

that might in indeed be like the woman in today’s scripture.

Those who are divorced, remarried,

who feel left out, who feel excluded.

We are called to meet them wherever they are

and to offer this same living water.

Those who are LBGTQ, we are called to meet them;

or those who feel them left out,

or those who are immigrants, whether they are illegal or illegal,

who now feel persecuted.

We are called to meet them.

Those who are broken, those who feel wounded,

those who feel desperate.

My friends, that is our destination every single week.

It is not just a once in a a year occasion.

We are called to take these living waters,

take the bread of life that we receive from here,

and to share it with those

who so desperately need that fresh living water.

And you and I might be the only person this week

who offers it to them.

If you get an inkling to be kind and gentle

and not judgmental to someone in any of those categories,

then this is your moment.

This is our moment to bring the living water to them,

to meet them at the well of their life today.

While we welcome the scrutinies for the OCIA people,

we welcome it also for ourselves

that we too need to hear the scrutiny.

We too need to become what we receive,

the living water for all to be refreshed.

Give us, give us living water.