A Life Giving Stream

Exodus 17: 1-7. The Israelites had been set free from Egypt, delivered through the Red Sea, fed by Quails and Manna but still they can ask “Is the Lord among us or not?”. The passage makes three points. Any religion based on “signs and wonders” is liable to be superficial and always leave people wanting more. It will tend towards self-centredness and wish fulfilment. Second, God works through these imperfect vessels anyway – including us today – to fulfil his purposes. Third, anyone called to lead God’s people is liable to experience their ingratitude.

Romans 5: 1-11. The result of our justification is “peace with God”. We may find talk of God’s wrath difficult but salvation from the wrath of God are the terms in which Paul explains the gospel. This peace and hope of salvation also affects the perspective we have on the present, especially our sufferings. They can be seen as character building, or as the refining of our characters. Reconciled with God through the death of Jesus we now have this hope of salvation through his resurrection life.

John 4: 5-42. Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well is rich in theological ideas. Central is the one that true worshippers of God will worship in Spirit and in truth, not at Gerizim or Jerusalem. Talk of the Spirit as “living water” is supplemented by the notion that doing the will of the Father is “spiritual food”. This story is also remarkable for providing a rare unequivocal declaration of Jesus’ status as the Messiah in verse 26.

Water is the very stuff of life, essential to all life, essentially and particularly human beings. The Persian word for a well-watered walled garden is “Paradise” a word that has made it into the Bible and into English usage.

Water quenches and cleanses, it keeps us alive. So when Jesus uses water as a metaphor for the Spirit of God, those meanings carry over.

“Living water” is a phrase used to describe fresh flowing water, as opposed to still, stagnant water – a difference close to the heart of a people used to hot and desert conditions.

The spiritual water Jesus offers the Samaritan woman and all people who ask for it, will keep us permanently sated.

But we must actually want to drink from this stream. There is an old adage,

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”

In spiritual terms the desire to drink, to ask God to fill you with his Spirit, is synonymous with the actual drinking of that Spirit.

You, in asking God to fill you with his Spirit is asking to be filled with God for as Jesus says,

“God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

God is not confined to a particular place – either to the Temple in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim as the Samaritans insisted.

He is not excluded from any particular place by the same token.

God is here in this place, just as God is present everywhere.

What we do in this church building is consciously focus our attention on God, and explore what his Spirit is saying to us and how God might be trying to guide us.

Asking to be filled with God’s Spirit is the unarticulated intention of every church community gathering.

I believe in the real presence of God in this assembly. For what is the alternative – the real absence of God?

At the start of the Eucharistic prayer we affirm His presence. I either say “The Lord be with you” to which you reply “And also with you” or much more pointedly “The Lord is here” followed by “His Spirit is with us”

We consciously drink of God’s Spirit from the moment we sing our opening hymn to the final blessing. In communion we sacramentally take God into ourselves in bread and wine – though today through the bread alone.

The result of being filled with living water is then fleshed out by Jesus using the metaphor of food to describe the doing of God’s will.

Jesus says “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work”

Being filled with God’s Spirit has consequences. It affects our values and the way we relate to other people and the whole planet.

After discerning God’s will, we try putting it into action through our words and deeds.

There is no blueprint for dealing with any of modern life’s situations, except keeping close to God in worship, reading the Bible and praying to God in Spirit and in truth and waiting for a path to become clear.

But we have a great set of reference points. We start with Love and we end with love.