Break a Few Eggs : The Living Water

Due to an unfortunate error, there will be no video for this week's sermon. Hope you will still consider reading the blog, however!

Hello and welcome back once again to Making Waves! We are thrilled that you are joining us this week as we kick off once more a new series. For this series, we will be leading all the way up to Easter Sunday on April 16th, with the exception of next week, as my lovely wife and I will be away on a retreat with some close friends.

Speaking of Logan, I’d love to share with you our regular Sunday morning routine. A super secret look into the weekly life of a pastor and his wife. It’s like TMZ, but better.

I wake up quite early on Sunday’s so as to best prepare for the sermon that day. I piddle around and make myself a personal pot of coffee. I lounge around rehearsing my sermon, rewriting sections, reviewing myself. Finally, it gets to be about 7am and Logan is starting to slowly but surely wake up and so I move from the living room to the kitchen for my favorite part of the day.

You see, it’s this part of the day that I get to do one of my favorite things and Logan gets to do one of her favorite things. At about 7:30am every Sunday I begin to make some of my famous veggie omelettes and Logan gets to eat some of my famous veggie omelettes It’s a win-win! We throw in jalepeño, onion, bell pepper and more than enough cheese to last us a lifetime. Then we get to sit down and enjoy a meal together to kick off our day. It is, without a doubt, one of the highlights of my week.

Occasionally, when I’m making the omelettes, I’ll think about just how amazing the egg truly is as a food source. No doubt all of us have likely cooked a dish that utilizes eggs before, and goodness I know that I have! An egg is a wonderful of example of something that becomes something else. It goes from being a gooey liquid substance into a fried piece of deliciousness. It becomes something that can provide nourishment to our bodies and another excuse to overdose on cheese.

But nothing last forever, right? If we want an egg to eat, we have crack open a shell and then when it’s gone - it’s gone. But we couldn’t have made that delicious omelette, the reward of our labor, without first breaking a few eggs, right? Surely you’ve heard the cliché “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” before? Over the next several weeks, we will be taking a look at how this phrase might relate to our Easter story. We all relate eggs to Easter, but few of us even know why. So, let’s take time over the next month or so and really delve into what this Easter time means for us. Maybe we’ll even manage to fit in some eggs-cellent puns along the journey together.

Without any more rancid puns taking their toll on us poor yolks, let’s dive into the Word, shall we? If you’d like to join us in your own personal translation, I encourage you to do that, otherwise, feel free to follow along with the following passage listed below. We’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version today, from the Gospel according to John, chapter 4, verses 5 through 30. Hear now these words:

“5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.”

-John 4:5-30 (NRSV)

Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable in Your sight, O God, for You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

If you are one who is reading this who proclaims to be a Christian, who has been baptized and professes Christ as your Lord and Savior, think for a moment on these questions:

Why are you here today?

Why are you a Christian?

Why do you follow Jesus?

Why have you confessed Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promised to serve him as your Lord in union with the church that Christ has opened to all people of all ages, nations, and races?

Why have you committed yourself, according to the grace given in you, to be a faithful member of Christ’s holy church and serve as Christ’s representatives in the world?

How are you living out this vow made at your baptism?

Now, I am certainly not expecting you to one-and-done these questions. Heck, you may not even be able to answer all this questions from where you are in your faith-walk right now. THe reality of these questions are that they aren’t meant to be answered at one point in your life, but instead take a lifetime to answer. Yet many of us treat them as a one-time answer and then continue on in our lives without considering them again. Some of you may recall these questions from personal experience, perhaps others of you may be familiar with the liturgy revolving around these questions. For those of you not quite sure where these questions spawn from, these are the question that you are asked at the time of your baptism, or confirmation if you were baptized as an infant.

What makes these questions so truly unique is that our answer is not in the form of traditional words on a paper. No, instead our answer to our baptism in shown in our life and in our actions.

That’s what I love about the encounter that we read about above. I’ve always related so much to the passage of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. It’s always been such a fascinating relationship forged between the two of them. Let’s start by breaking down exactly what we read in the text. First and foremost, we know that Jesus is worn slap out by his journey. So, he’s resting by Jacob’s well, when all of a sudden a Samaritan woman shows up at the well. Remember from our parable of the good Samaritan, these people are not very much liked by the Jews. Hated, in fact. Right off the bat in this encounter, the woman has a mark against her by being a Samaritan. We read on to find out that she is not only a Samaritan, but has also been married so many times that you can barely count them with one hand and is currently living with a man who is not even her husband. So, what we know so far about this Samaritan woman is that, A) she is of the wrong religion, B) she is a divorcee, a big Jewish no-no, and C) she is of loose morals living with someone that she isn’t married to according to law. And oh yeah, she was a woman! None of these characteristics seemed to mesh with whom the pharisees would have attributed with the typical audience of the Messiah. In the Jewish times, there really couldn’t have been a much worse person for Jesus to have associated himself with unless she were also a tax collector!

But, let’s keep reading. Despite this woman’s obvious propensity towards a life that most of Christ’s followers would have deemed less-than-satisfactory, she does have some redeeming qualities that make her a fascinating character. We see, first and foremost, this Samaritan woman is nothing if not well-educated. When you step back and take the passage at face-value, we have a woman of the wrong traditional background going toe-to-toe with the wisest of the wise, Jesus Christ. Even the pharisees and leaders of the temples couldn’t always manage a serious discussion with Jesus. But look at verse 9, where the woman is aware of ritual purity for the Jewish people. A typical Jew would certainly not take water that had been tainted with the touch of a Samaritan. How about verse 12, where she cites back to the Holy scriptures of the Jews, knowing the historical context of the well like a good Seminary student from Duke? How about knowing about worship spaces in verses 19 and 20, or knowing the true role of the Messiah in verse 25? I’d imagine that there are few of us so well-acquainted with Old Testament law that we would be able to hold our own in this theological cage-match with Christ himself.  And yet, this Samaritan woman does exactly that.

Think of this woman even in comparison to another character we read of in the gospel, Nicodemus. A man who is actually of Jewish descent and knows of Jesus’ true claims and yet can barely hold his own in the presence of the Messiah. No less, he goes to Jesus in the dusk and in the shadow of the crowd and tree, whereas this woman approaches Christ at noontime in broad daylight in the center of city-life!

And then, most interesting of all is what the woman does when she learns of Christ’s true nature. After Jesus proclaims himself, the Samaritan woman doesn’t remain a cynic and skeptic like Nicodemus. No, instead there isn’t an ounce of mistrust in her heart and instead she goes out on her own and begins to spread the news of Jesus to those that she sees, essentially becoming the very first Christian missionary to deliver the Good News to the world on her own. Not Paul, or Cephas (Peter) that would be the rock of the Church, but instead the first missionary was a tainted, despicable woman.

So what convinced this woman so deeply of Christ’s genuine nature and call? Was it because he knew of her life and of her actions? Perhaps. But maybe it was due to the fact that Christ saw within her a thirst that was not being quenched by the water she was drinking. Perhaps Jesus saw something within her that was deeper than anything that mortal man can see. Jesus understood her deeper, and knew that she needed the Living Water. So, what on earth is this living water?

Let’s look to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Without a doubt an incredibly interesting city. Home to many descendants of Czechoslovakia, the location of the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library, it also houses the African-American Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa and the Masonic Library and Museum. Not to mention that it played an important role in the Muslim culture of the United States, Cedar Rapids also is home to the National Muslim Cemetery, unique in that all the graves face Mecca, and the Mother Mosque of America, the longest operating mosque in North America, which was dedicated in 1934. It has been home to Muslim immigrants, primarily from Lebanon and Syria, with some living there since 1895.

Cedar Rapids is named for the Cedar River, which snakes its way through the center of the city. The headwaters for the river are in Dodge County, Minnesota. From there, the river runs south through eastern Iowa, on a roughly parallel path with the Iowa River, until the two rivers come together and eventually flow into the mighty Mississippi River. The Cedar River has served as an important commercial waterway, transporting goods from cities planted along its path, since the mid-1800’s for settlers from Europe, and much further back in history for native American peoples. In this way, the waters of the Cedar River have given a great deal of life and prosperity not just to Cedar Rapids, but to other port cities that were built along its banks.

Downtown Cedar Rapids, located primarily on the eastern bank of the river, is home to many thriving industries, especially those related to grain processing. A large Quaker Oats mill sits prominently on the east bank, north of the city center. General Mills and Cargill also have facilities there, as well as several other significant companies. It is a thriving heartland city that is now enjoying a resurgence, thanks in part to massive revitalization efforts that have come about because of a natural disaster.

In 2008 historic flooding devastated the city of Cedar Rapids. For three solid weeks, communities on both sides of the Cedar River struggled to cope with rising waters. The river eventually crested at over 31 feet, surpassing all previous floods on record. 1,126 city blocks were left underwater on both banks. 7,749 properties were evacuated, 5,900 of which were homes and 310 of which were city public facilities (information from Wikipedia).

Homes in the neighborhoods located on the western bank were generally of lesser value in the real estate market than neighborhoods further out from the city center, or on the eastern bank. Some were rental properties; others were owner-occupied. People who had been struggling already lost everything in the flood, and many had little means with which to replace their basic possessions, let alone rebuild their homes. The building that housed Matthew 25 ministries itself had to be demolished following the flood.

Only two years into their mission to revitalize this struggling city community, the founders of Matthew 25 faced a tough decision. Should they relocate to a different part of the city, or should they remain and rebuild alongside their neighbors after the devastation caused by the waters of the Cedar River? They chose the latter.

According to the website, after founding the ministry in 2006 “to help strengthen and elevate neighborhoods on the west side of Cedar Rapids, Iowa,” only two years later, Matthew 25 was forced by the shared disaster to reach out to their neighbors in new and unexpected ways. They turned flood waters into living waters by partnering “with other organizations to invest more than $6 million to empower people to rebuild 25 blocks and renew their neighborhoods – Block by Block.” Their efforts to respond to the changing needs of their neighborhood, and especially to a natural disaster, did not go unnoticed. “The Block by Block program has been recognized statewide and nationally as a model for disaster recovery and neighborhood revitalization. More than 250 families were able to move back into their homes because of the work of Matthew 25.”

Not only did Matthew 25 help to rebuild people’s homes after the flood, but they began new programs specifically geared to help their community continue to grow and revitalize in other ways. They built a tool-lending library so that people who needed tools lost in the flood to make their homes livable again could borrow what they needed to get the job done. They created Iowa’s first urban farm and the Cultivate Hope food program on abandoned lots where houses had to be torn down. They began reaching out to support and connect with young people from all of the different cultural, religious, and racial backgrounds who called their neighborhood home. They offered services to help their neighbors make their homes more energy efficient.

In sum, Matthew 25 responded to the devastating waters of the 2008 flood by pointing to the living water of grace and healing love offered through Jesus Christ.*

So, what is this Living Water that we desire so strongly? What are we so thirsty for that we can hardly handle being separate from it? Living Water is the spiritual nourishment that we receive from the Holy Spirit that is the embodiment of God’s amazing grace. The grace that washes us as white as snow and that we hardly deserve as sinner, but that we so heartily thirst for as children of God. A grace that, when we drink it, we can hardly handle not reacting like the Samaritan women and passionately wanting to go and share the nourishment with the world beyond us. Longing to share the refreshment with everyone around us. It becomes our mission, our lifestyle. We no longer can be satisfied by the physical water or nourishment that the world can provide, instead we desire the deep fulfilling of our spiritual appetite.

And so, the first egg that Christ came to break open for us was the egg of the living water, which we have symbolized through the blue egg. I encourage you to dye some eggs along with us. Or perhaps keep an eye out this Easter season for some eggs that are dyed blue. Each time you see one or think of one, imagine the grace that God offers to all of us through the living water of Christ. The living water which is available to Jews and Samaritans alike, Christians and Sinners, men and women, broken and healing.

*Matthew 25 article borrowed from UMC Discipleship website.