Blogging toward Sunday

By Edwin Searcy
Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42
Sunday, February 24

Thirsty for life

The texts speak of thirst for life. The people thirst for water in the wilderness. The Samaritan woman at the well meets the One who gives the water of eternal life. Paul speaks of God’s love being “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

The metaphor of thirst needs no translation from the ancient texts. Alchemists once picked up the language of “spirit” and applied it to volatile substances as they sought eternal youth. From this redefinition alcohol became known as “spirits.” The desire to slake our thirst for companionship, to fill up the dark places of loneliness and guilt with “spirits” leads to multinational corporate empires that market beer and soft drinks by portraying the ways that these drinks help one make friends.

I once visited the World of Coke in Atlanta. At the conclusion of a journey through the history of Coca-Cola (created by a pharmacist trying to help Civil War vets cope with chronic physical pain), I watched a wide-screen video that showed people in every culture drinking the life-giving elixir. Singers chanted, “Life. . .life. . .life,” then the doors opened and I was ushered to a huge magical font. I placed a cup on its edge and water shot up from the center of the fountain, landing on a sensor above my glass so that the life-giving drink poured freely. I could drink as much as I wanted.

The word “spirituality” has many positive connotations in our day. Jesus speaks to the woman at the well about worship in “spirit and truth.” Spirit is from the Latin word for “breath,” although the word originally also meant “hope” (the word “despair” means “to have lost spirit”). In Hebrew ruah means wind, breath and Spirit of God. Jesus links this spirit, this breathing, this hoping, with truth-telling. He tells the woman the truth about her life. His dialogue with her speaks her into new life. It literally in-spires her.

I remember the day when Paul’s statement that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us” spoke to me. I was with a vintner in his vineyard, and asked about the effects of a huge fire the year before, when the valley had been filled with smoke for three weeks. He said that it had been a very hard year for the vines; they had suffered greatly and had worked very hard to produce fruit. The result, however, was a very beautiful vintage. Apparently the plants’ struggle had produced a wine with complex characteristics, a wine that would mature well with age. The vintner was reminded of people he knew who had weathered difficult events and whose character was rich, complex and mature.

I wonder if this is what a community justified by the faithfulness of God revealed on the cross is meant to embody. Not a “cheap grace,” in Bonhoeffer’s terms, but a costly one, marked by shared suffering through which we discover “God’s love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

Edwin Searcy is a pastor with University Hill Congregation of the United Church of Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (www.uhill.net).

Comments

[frank hernando]

I like your illustation of the vintner whose vineyard suffered yet endured the fire and out of that experience the vines produced a wine with complex characteristics, a wine that would mature well with age. This captures the present day experiences of many who are discriminated even in their own country, and similarly in working in another country as migrant workers. Thanks a lot.

[doubting thomas]

Thank you for the good words. Can you say more about how you trace "spirit" i.e., pneuma back to hope? Also interesting to note that the German for spirit, "Geist", can be traced back to the old German "gaescht" which has to do with the process of fermentation, the yeast used to make beer. I think that popular spirituality often goes overboard on spirit, too airy, at the expense of soul. Bonhoeffer brings a lot of soul to this sermon.
"And if you lift up to us the cup of bitter suffering, filled to the brim, we will take it out of your good and loving hand." D.B. 1945 "Von Guten Maechten"