Water A Reminder Of Divine Blessings

When was the last time you received a cup of cold water from someone who nourished your body-thirst? H ave you noticed how biblical truths sometimes cause a disquieting moment? One of those moments came to me last week.

As a Sandpoint City Council member, I tried to decide how to vote on a water boundary issue. What came to me were Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:45, about God causing rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

For years I thought the verse suggested God “dumps” on everyone alike. But while visiting in arid Israel, I discovered Jesus was really pointing to the radical hospitality of God.

In the Middle East, rain is an undeserved blessing on the good, the bad and whomever else is left! As it certainly is everywhere.

But most of us take rain - water - a bit too much for granted, though little reminders can occasionally jiggle our complacency.

In last Sunday’s “Good Paper,” what might have been a ho-hum report on the Spokane aquifer for some became a vital piece of information for me.

Then I received a Sea of Galilee picture postcard from a friend traveling in Israel. She happened to mention that the Galilee was noticeably low because of a lack of rain.

In a span of five days I had three reminders in my mind and heart of how vital water is for individual life and its tremendous impact on the political body we call community.

As God’s radical host, Jesus invited people to remember how critical water is to the sustenance of God’s human community. I suggest that’s why Jesus refers to water so often in the Gospels, both literally and symbolically.

It is in the context of inviting people to love their enemies that Jesus reminds them how God’s blessing falls on those they hate - and on those they love.

How often do the waters of Galilee buoy the hopes of Jesus’ fishing disciples through the miracles they see and the fish they catch? And what about the radical visit Jesus has with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well?

Spend a few reflective minutes reading in John 4. Consider how Jesus is the radical host in two ways: first, as he cracks Jewish tradition by actually speaking to a Samaritan woman; then as he invites her to visit the taproot of God, which he calls “living water.”

When she misunderstands his meaning through her own literal fixation on water, he moves her into a new look at water as the life-giving source made available by the God of both Jews and Samaritans.

While she was willing to settle for manually drawing water from the well, Jesus introduced her to the artesian faith-spring that nourishes those who drink from God’s blessing for all people.

As long as we are in the Gospel of John, slip on over to the 13th chapter for a most dramatic water story.

As Jesus and his disciples gather for the Passover meal, Jesus twists a very ordinary act of hospitality into a most radical act.

It was customary for a servant or a woman in the house to wash the feet of dinner guests as they arrived. Much like we might wash our hands before we eat our host’s meal, these men were invited to sit and have their dusty feet washed.

But who was the servant? Jesus? It couldn’t be; it shouldn’t be! But it was.

I can only imagine how melodramatically Peter reacted as Jesus came close to him. His words as we read them in John probably don’t do the scene justice.

But when Jesus finally convinced Peter that if he didn’t let him wash his feet, he would wash his hands of the disciple, Peter went typically overboard: “Then, Lord, not just my feet, but my hands and my head too!”

What do you suppose went through Peter’s racing mind as Jesus knelt before him, gently pouring water over his dusty feet and drying them with a towel?

Perhaps Peter thought of all the times his master spoke of water. Or how Jesus saved him as he floundered in faithlessness next to the boat.

Perhaps he was just trying to make sense of Jesus’ extreme and profound act of being his servant in that moment.

“I have set an example for you by washing your feet. Now do the same for each other and anyone else you meet.”

Jesus didn’t talk about washing feet to the Samaritan woman. But he did ask her to serve him something to drink.

He then proceeded to offer her a taste of the faith-spring, available to all who are willing to serve another person in the spirit of unconditional compassion.

Until now, I had never connected the “living water” story with Jesus washing his disciples’ feet in any way. Perhaps they weren’t intended to be connected.

But for me, the connection is there. I’m a firm believer in servant ministry. Now that I think about it, I do sip, even gulp, God’s living water and refresh my spirit when I offer myself to someone in the simplest of ways.

Whether you are a sipper or a gulper of water, whether the water is wet or metaphorical, God offers it to you as a radically hospitable gift.

When was the last time you received a cup of cold water from someone who nourished your body-thirst? Did it touch your soul-thirst, too?

If so, God’s radical host gave it to you so you would be strong enough, grateful enough, to pass it on to someone else.

xxxx