The general subject of the Old Testament Lesson and the Gospel appointed for today is “appetite.”  The specific appetite which is the theme of these two readings is that of thirst.  . . . Now, appetites are good things.  They were invented by God to keep us alive.  . . . You get up in the morning, not having had anything to eat or drink for a lot of hours, . . . and just before you run out of all the sugar necessary to keep your brain and, hence, your heart and other important muscles working . . . your appetite kicks in and inspires you to go hunting for a bowl of cereal or a slice of toast.  And with breakfast under your belt you feel alive and have energy to face the day.  . . . And all the other appetites have a similar function; including thirst, which keeps you from turning to dust before lunchtime.

    Trouble is, you see, . . . we human creatures, tainted as we are by the Original Sin; . . . tainted as we are by an unwarranted knowledge of superfluous good and superfluous evil; . . . we human creatures not only understand the good of God’s system of appetites, . . . but we understand the evils which threaten it as well.  . . . And so, we know that we can faint without food; . . . we know that we can die without water.  And knowing the evils that beset us, . . . we anticipate our needs.  We make plans to satisfy our appetites before they happen.  And if we can’t make provision for our appetites, . . . we become anxious; . . . and when we become anxious, . . . we become distrustful and mean-spirited.

    And that’s what happened at Rephidim.  All the people of Israel, newly freed from slavery in Egypt, . . . all the people of Israel arrive at Rephidim, . . . look around, . . . see no water, . . . and they become anxious.  They become anxious, and their anxiety makes them mean-spirited.  They say to Moses,

Give us water to drink.  . . . Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?

Now, . . . when all this takes place, it’s only been about two months since leaving Egypt.  And you remember how that went:  the invisible and silent Angel of Death passed through all the land of Egypt killing all the first-born that were in that land, but passing over the houses of the Israelites who were protected by the blood of the paschal lamb.  . . . And the pharaoh was so utterly shaken by the great slaughter that he commanded Moses to remove the Hebrew people from the land.  . . . But the pharaoh repented of his leniency and sent an army after Moses and his people to kill them all.  And there the children of Israel were:  the Red Sea in front of them and a vicious army coming up behind.  But the Lord God told Moses to strike the Red Sea waters with his staff, . . . and he does, and the sea parts so that all the Israelites can run across to the other side.  And the Egyptian army follows them.  But as the last little old lady comes wheezing up the bank with her skirts gathered about her, Moses strikes the waters again . . . and the Egyptians become fish food.  … It’s only been two months since God has twice delivered the children of Israel from death with miraculous and astonishing grace, . . . and here are the people accusing Moses and God of conspiring against them; . . . of being insensitive to their needs(!); . . . because they see no water, they become anxious.  . . . They see no water with which to satisfy their thirst when it shall come, . . . and they become anxious and mean-spirited; . . . they see no water and, like Eve, mistrust God . . . so that they become resentful and faithless.

    Remembering this helps us understand what the Gospel Lesson is getting at.  . . . Jesus is all by Himself at Jacob’s well (the same Jacob we also know as Israel); … Jesus is all by Himself when a daughter of Jacob, who is a Samaritan, and (by the illogical interactions of religion, politics, and culture which prevail in the Middle East) a Samaritan woman is anathema to someone who is Jewish, even though they’re both children of Jacob; . . . Jesus is all by Himself at Jacob’s well when a Samaritan woman comes to draw water from the well.  And, being thirsty, Jesus asks her for a drink.  And she gives Him a cup of water.  And as He’s drinking, the woman is staring at Him . . . until she can contain herself no longer and says, “How is it that mister purer-than-me isn’t afraid of being defiled by my Samaritan cup when he’s thirsty enough?”  . . . And Jesus says, “You don’t have to mistrust me.  I won’t treat you with contempt.  I will be as kind to you as you have been to me.  If you wish it, I will give you living water!”  . . . And, by stages, we discover that Jesus has asked for water from a very unhappy and anxious woman.  Widowed at an early age, the prospect of being on her own so terrified the Samaritan woman that she accepted the first offer of masculine “protection” that came her way . . . and has, since then, become entangled in a series of arid, servile relationships.  . . . And, like her ancestors at Rephidim, seeing no hope . . . she mistrusts God, . . . Who is, at any rate, a very distant God, full of squabbles and contradictory statements.  … But Jesus repeats His offer to the woman; . . . He says “I shall give [you living water].”  . . . Just as God preserved the lives of the children of Israel with water from the Rock which Moses struck at Rephidim, . . . so Jesus, the Rock upon Whom you may build your spiritual home so that the floods of unspeakable sorrow and evil will not cause it to fall; Jesus, the chief cornerstone upon Whom shall be built the new Jerusalem; . . . so Jesus, the Rock, shall be struck with a spear on Good Friday so that blood and water shall pour forth from His side to give the world life everlasting.  . . . Jesus shall give us living water.

    “But,” Jesus says, . . . “you cannot have hope; . . . you cannot have the good things God desires to give you; . . . you cannot have living water until you surrender your spirit to God:

the hour is coming, and now is, [Jesus says]; . . . the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him.  God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

You may have the thirst, but you must depend upon God to supply the water; you may have the appetite, but it is God who sustains your life.

    Nothing changed for the forbears of the Samaritan woman when they encountered this truth about God at Rephidim.  . . . Psalm 95 suggests that they were too anxious for themselves to worship in spirit and truth; . . . they were too anxious for themselves to bow down and bend the knee and kneel before the Lord their Maker in utter self-surrender.  . . . But it is different for the Samaritan woman.  Something comes to life in her because of her conversation with Jesus.  She is less self-absorbed and more solicitous of the thirst of her neighbors.  . . . And so, leaving her jar at the well, she rushes off to tell everyone, “Come, see a man who may be the Christ!”

    . . . Do you remember the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus last Sunday?  . . . Nicodemus desires to apprehend the Kingdom of God; Nicodemus desires to understand the Kingdom of God well enough to approach it; . . . and what does Jesus tell him he must do to have what his heart desires?  . . . What does Jesus say?  . . . That Nicodemus must be born again by water and the Holy Spirit!  . . . And that very same thing happens to the Samaritan woman.  The Lord Jesus names the sin; . . . the Lord Jesus names her dependency upon carnal relationships; . . . Jesus names the disordered affections which chain the Samaritan woman to unhappiness, . . . and her life is different; . . . her anxious appetites no longer govern her life, but, instead, she is before God as a newborn daughter; . . . she is before God utterly given over to depending upon His grace . . . and nothing else.  It is such a joyful experience to be unfettered from her anxious appetites . . . that she runs off to encourage everyone to drink from the well of grace that is Jesus.

    May God satisfy your appetites this Lent by giving you the grace of self-surrender.  May God slake your thirst with the living water of His Spirit . . . so that you might be an unanxious presence in the world; . . . so that by your word and the Word of Christ . . . all the people around you might be refreshed as well.