Living Water.

This is a sermon I preached at St. Andrew's UMC in Edgewater, MD on 3/27/11. I drew heavily on my previous life as an English major for this one. Back in college, I learned that a good way to write a paper is to take two or more texts and "put them in conversation." That's pretty much what I did here. The texts are John's story of the woman at the well (see below), the amazing book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and this piece on the Huffington Post by David Lose of Luther Seminary. I let these three great pieces of writing have a little conversation, and my sermon pretty much wrote itself. I also owe credit to the organization charity:water, whose website is the source of the water facts I cite.

John 4:5-42

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 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.) 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 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.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

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?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Living Water: John 4: 5-42

Just before Christmas, I read a truly extraordinary book: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit. Clearly, I’m not the only person who finds this book amazing, because its been at or near the top of the New York Times bestseller list for months. I hope you will all run out and pick it up after church today. I promise that what I’m going to tell you is only a tiny piece of this amazing story.

Unbroken is the true story of Louie Zamperini, who grew up in Torrance, California in the 1920’s. As a kid, Louie was a notorious delinquent, on the fast-track to jail or worse. Then, when Louie was 15, his older brother Pete got him to start running. With Pete as his coach, Louie discovered an extraordinary talent. Starting in tenth grade, Louie broke records at his high school, then at regional track meets, then at national meets. He won his first 2-mile race by a quarter of a mile. In 1934, he set a national high school record for the mile-run that stood for 19 years. Newspapers called Louie the “Torrance Tornado.”

Louie in training, pictured in Unbroken.

In 1936, Louie qualified to run the 5,000 meters at the Berlin Olympics. He only came in 8th, but he still ran the distance faster than any other American that year. He returned to his hometown a hero, and immediately set his sights on the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo. Louie, his supporters, and his fellow athletes all believed that he would win gold in 1940. Unfortunately, World War II ended Louie’s Olympic dreams forever.

In April 1940, war erupted in the Pacific and the planned Tokyo Olympics were cancelled. In 1941, Louie was drafted and began training as a bombardier. By 1942, he was in Hawaii, serving as part of a tight-knit crew on a B-24 fighter plane. In his off hours, he ran laps around the base. On the morning of May 27, 1943, Louie got up at 5am and ran a mile in 4 minutes, 12 seconds. On his way home, he was stopped by a commanding officer and ordered to his plane for a rescue mission. Counting Louie, 11 men left on that mission. Just a few hours in, the B-24’s engines failed, and the plane went down. Only Louie and two other men survived the crash.

Louie and his fellow soldiers soon found themselves drifting on a small life raft, far out on the Pacific, with only a tiny supply of food and water. During their first night on the raft, one of the other men panicked and ate all of their food. Within only a few days, their situation was desperate. They were starving, baking in the hot sun during the day, and freezing at night. They were surrounded by sharks, which they had to physically beat off the raft. Worst of all, they were dying of thirst. A human being can survive for several weeks without food, but will die after only 3 to 5 days without water. Louie had never been a religious man, but once the men’s water ran out, he started praying. In one desperate moment, he led his fellow castaways in a prayer for water: “If God would quench their thirst, he vowed, he’d dedicate his life to him.” Shortly after Louie said his prayer, it started to rain.


Thirst is a powerful thing. Louie knew that, the people in this morning’s Gospel text knew it, and millions of people in our world today still know it. As part of my preparation for this sermon, I looked up some facts about water around the world, and they are shocking. Today, in 2011, about 1 in 8 people around the world don’t have access to clean and safe water. Around 42,000 people die every single week from drinking dirty water, and 90% of them are children. In Africa, people spend an estimated 40 billion hours a year walking back and forth to wells to get water. Most of the people who do this walking are women and children, who can be robbed and attacked on the road. In some countries, the water supply is controlled by private distributors, and people have to spend more than 10% of their income just to get water. In this country, where water is free and plentiful, we sometimes forget how vital it is. For those who don’t have it, water is literally the key to life and freedom.

We need to understand the power of water and the experience of thirst to understand today’s Gospel text. Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well outside her city. She probably goes to this well every single day to get water for her family. In fact, she has probably walked between home and this well nearly every day of her life, from the moment she was strong enough to carry a bucket. By the time she meets Jesus, she is probably bent over with back and neck pain from carrying heavy buckets every day. Perhaps she has been taunted, robbed, or attacked on her daily walks. The Samaritan woman is clearly intelligent and interested in the big questions of life. Still, when it comes down to it, her life is bound and defined by water. No matter what she might think, say, do, or want out of life, her first priority every day is going to that well.

Its only when we think about water, and what it means to the Samaritan woman, that we truly understand the power in what Jesus says to her: “those who drink of the water that I will give to them will never be thirsty.” To never be thirsty- imagine what that would mean to this woman. Have you ever wished for a few more hours in your day? She would get those hours if she didn’t have to go to the well. She would be freed from fear about what might happen to her on her walks, or what might happen if she can’t get to the well, or what might happen if the water from the well is dirty. She would be safer and freer than she has ever been before. That’s what Jesus is promising when he talks about living water.

Of course, we know that Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He’s not offering this woman actual water, but he must be offering something equally valuable. Something that will make her safe and free. So what is it? Jesus offers the Samaritan woman something as simple and as powerful, as beautiful and as terrible as water. He offers her the truth: the truth about who she is and the truth about who he is.

First, Jesus confronts the Samaritan woman with a truth about herself. When she asks him for living water, he asks her to go get her husband. She admits that she has no husband, and Jesus fills in the details: she has had five husbands and lives with a man who is not her husband. Traditionally, Christians have interpreted this to mean the woman is guilty of some sexual sin: lust, adultery, or even prostitution. In this interpretation, Jesus’ statement is seen as condemnation- he won’t allow her to hide her sinfulness from him. Maybe this is true, but some people see other possibilities in this story.

Women in Jesus’s time were treated as little more than property, and could only achieve security and safety through marriage. The Samaritan woman might have been widowed several times and had to re-marry again and again for her own protection. Or, she may have been forced into repeated marriages. In Jesus’ time, a woman who lost her husband might be married to her brother-in-law or another relative, whether she wanted the marriage or not. Or maybe the truth is a little of both. Maybe this woman went through so many bad things that she started to think of herself as a bad person, and started to do bad things.


Louie Zamperini would understand that. Miraculously, he and one his fellow castaways survived on their raft for 47 days. During those 47 days, they wrestled sharks, pulled birds out of the sky for food, got shot at by Japanese planes, and watched their fellow castaway die. Each man lost more than half his body weight. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of Louie’s ordeal, because he and his companion weren’t actually rescued. They were captured by the Japanese.

After being pulled out of the ocean, Louie spent two horrific years as a prisoner of war. He and his fellow survivor were moved from camp to camp, where they were starved, beaten, interrogated, and forced to do hard labor. Over and over again, their captors promised to kill them, and they watched enough other POWs die to believe it. Louie’s captors did everything they could to take away his hope. Even worse, they took away his dignity. One of Louie’s guards took a particular, sadistic interest in him. For two years, he subjected Louie to unrelenting humiliation and cruelty. To cite just one example, Louie’s guard once lined up all of his fellow POWs and made each of them hit Louie as hard as they could. Louie was punched 220 times and nearly died.

Amazingly, Louie survived to the end of the war. His POW camp was liberated, and he returned to the US a national hero. His family welcomed him home, he received countless honors and awards, and he even fell in love and got married. Yet, underneath this celebration, Louie was suffering. Louie had physically survived, but his mind was tormented by fear and shame. He had flashbacks of the war by day and terrible nightmares whenever he tried to sleep. Within a few months, he was drinking heavily. He became consumed with the idea of returning to Japan and killing his captors. He grew hostile to his wife and family, picked fights with strangers, and became convinced that God hated him.

Louie was not alone in his struggles. Hillenbrand writes that over 80% of the Pacific POW’s who survived World War II suffered some kind of psychological illness. Their suicide rate was 30% higher than average, and more than 25% developed alcoholism. As Hillenbrand writes, Louie and his fellow POW’s were “torn-down men… Many felt lonely and isolated, having endured abuses that ordinary people couldn’t understand. Their dignity had been obliterated, replaced with a pervasive sense of shame and worthlessness… Coming home was an experience of profound, perilous aloneness.”


I think Jesus sees this same sense of shame, worthlessness, and aloneness in the Samaritan woman. That’s what makes his conversation with her so powerful. When Jesus says “you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband,” he might be naming her sin, or he might be recognizing her suffering. Either way, its what comes next that really matters: he keeps talking to her. In fact, he tells her the most important truth about himself: that he is the Messiah. Jesus’ words to the woman are important, but there is something even more important going on in their conversation. Jesus is saying to this woman “I see the truth about you. I see everything you have ever gone through, and everything you have ever done… and I still want you. I value you, and I need you to help me spread my message.”

I don’t think this is a story about condemnation. I think it’s a story about grace. Jesus sees the Samaritan woman for who she truly is. He sees all of her hurts and all of her faults, all of the things that she is most ashamed of. Yet, he also sees her worth: her intelligence, her purity of heart, her thirst for knowledge. In fact, he chooses her for a very important job. The woman at the well is the first person in John’s Gospel to go and tell others about Jesus.

And what does she tell them? “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” To me, that doesn’t sound like the words of a woman who has been put to shame. If Jesus had been condemning her morals, I don’t think she would have run to tell her neighbors about him, or urged them to go and experience the same thing. The Samaritan woman has experienced grace and she wants her neighbors to experience it too.


For Louie, grace came in the form of a young, unknown, traveling preacher named Billy Graham. By 1949, Louie had hit rock-bottom. He had squandered his money through bad investments, his alcoholism was out of control, and his wife had filed for divorce after finding him shaking their newborn daughter. That fall, a 31 year-old Billy Graham came to California for one of his very first tent revivals. In the beginning, he had no press and almost no audience. Within a few weeks, Graham’s preaching was drawing huge crowds. Louie’s wife begged him to go to the revival with her, but he refused. She went alone and came home saying she no longer wanted a divorce. Louie was happy, but his heart was still hardened toward God, and he still refused to go hear Billy Graham for himself. Louie’s wife badgered him relentlessly until he gave in.

The night that Louie first heard Billy Graham, Graham preached about God’s love and God’s judgment. He told the audience that God knew everything they had ever done, that God could read their very thoughts, and would hold them accountable. Louie got angry. He thought “I am a good man.” But he also got uncomfortable, because he knew the kind of man he had become. Even more, he felt what Hillenbrand describes as “a lurking uneasiness,” an awareness of “a memory he must not see.” When it became too overwhelming, Louie grabbed his wife and ran from the tent.

The next night, Louie’s wife convinced him to go back to the revival. That night, Graham preached about God’s miracles, and God’s promise of grace in the midst of suffering. Louie thought about all of the terrible things he had survived. He got upset and tried to run away again, but suddenly a memory exploded into his mind. He remembered his prayer on the raft: “If you will quench our thirst, I will serve you forever.” Suddenly, it started raining. When Louie felt that rain, he turned around and walked to the alter to surrender his life to God.

Like the Samaritan woman, Louie’s experience of grace led to a feeling of safety and freedom. As soon as he got home from the revival, he poured all of his alcohol down the drain. That night, Louie had his first sleep free from nightmares about the war. The next day, he sat at a park and read a Bible that had been issued to him during the war. Hillenbrand writes that Louie realized “He was not the worthless, broken, forsaken man that [his captors] had striven to make of him… That morning, he believed, he was a new creation.”


In addition to safety and freedom, the Samaritan woman and Louie also found purpose in their experiences of grace. This is very important. Grace isn’t just about Jesus knowing our pain and our faults and loving us anyway. Grace is about Jesus knowing our pain and our faults, and still calling us to do his work. Its through that work- through sharing our experiences of grace and becoming instruments of grace for others- that we let go our shame and pain and discover our worth. Just as he explained grace to the Samaritan woman by talking about water, Jesus explains purpose to his disciples by talking about food. When they urge him to eat, he tells them “I have food to eat that you do not know about… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” Like water for the thirsty or food for the hungry, Jesus tells us that the experiences of receiving grace and doing God’s work can satisfy our deepest needs.


After his conversion, Louie began a new career as a Christian speaker. He also bought a campground and turned it into a nonprofit camp for delinquent boys. Through his experiences of grace and meaningful work, Louie overcame his feelings of shame and anger about the war. In 1950, he returned to Japan, where he met with many of his former captors and offered them forgiveness. In 1998, at 80 years old, he ran the Olympic torch through the site of one his former POW camps, on its way to Nagano, Japan. Today, Louie Zamperini is 94 years old, still running, still living independently, and still sharing the grace he received. When he learned that Laura Hillenbrand wrote Seabiscuit and Unbroken while suffering from a debilitating illness, Louie gave her his Purple Heart.

Louie at 93, with the torches he carried for 5 Olympics,
pictured in the January 2011 Runners World.

After her encounter with Jesus, the Samaritan woman brings her neighbors to meet him. After two days with Jesus, they tell her “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” John doesn’t tell us what Jesus said to these people, but I imagine that he treated them just like he treated the woman at the well. He saw them, listened to them, acknowledged their deepest and darkest truths, and told them he had work for them. If Jesus were here today, I imagine he might say the same things to us:

“You, who are in pain and ashamed- I see your truth, I still love you, and I have work for you.”

“You, who grew up with an alcoholic or abusive parent- I see what you went through, I love you, and I have work for you.”

“You, who are struggling with addiction and ashamed of your own behavior- I know everything about you, I still love you, and I have work for you.”

“You, who lost yourself in a bad relationship- I see your pain, I value you, and I want you to build up my kingdom.”

“You, who are sick and in pain- You, who are grieving and feel all alone- I’m here for you, and I have very important jobs for you.”

“You, who have suffered prejudice and discrimination because of who you are- I see your true worth, and I have work for you.”

“You, who are young and feel like nobody listens to you- You, who are old and feel like your good days are behind you- I honor you and I need you to do my work.”

“You, whoever you are, whatever you have been through, and whatever you have done- I know everything about you, and nothing can take away my love for you. Come, and do my work.”


Amen.