It was an incredibly dry summer and rather late in the season. My friend Mary and I were backpacking in the mountains of West Virginia and we could not find water. Being the meticulous person that I am when it comes to backpacking, I had read the trail descriptions carefully and consulted the maps and was certain I knew where water was supposed to be but none was to be found. As we hiked along to where a stream was supposed to be we became increasingly worried and thirsty. "I’m sure its right around here somewhere" I said to Mary. Three hours later we still had not found water. The trail was a ridge walk along the top crest of part of the Appalachian Mountains and although this was many years ago, I still have vivid memories of the sun beating down and the thirst. As you can see, we did not in fact perish on that trip but at the time I was not convinced we would make it out alive. And then, finally toward the end of the day, we came upon a small pool of water and a trickle of a stream but it was enough, it was enough.

Today’s gospel reading from John, the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Woman at the Well is a rich story with a complex weave of themes. It is a story about being thirsty but the thirst is not for water as we know it; it is a story about spiritual thirst. It is also a story about questioning racism, a story about crossing boundaries with regard to women and a story that turns cultural norms upside down.

Interpretations of the story of the woman at the well have tended to miss the variety of themes, focusing more on the comment about her five husbands than on the other details. As renowned preacher Fred Craddock observes: "Evangelists aplenty have assumed that the brighter her nails, the darker her mascara and the shorter her skirt, the greater the testimony to the power of the converting word." However, this kind of emphasis misses things such as the fact that this is the longest recorded dialogue between Jesus and another person in all of scripture; it misses the fact that Jesus is talking to a Samaritan, someone from a despised class of people; it misses the fact that he is talking to a woman, another thing that simply was not done, as well as a whole host of other interesting little tidbits that comprise the bulk of this compelling story. And maybe, just maybe the Samaritan woman was the victim of five divorces. After all, at this particular time and place in history, women had no say whatsoever in their marital status; they were bartered away like commodities by their fathers and disposed of at will by husbands who no longer wanted them.

Given all of this, the fact that Jesus is talking with her is all the more extraordinary. Women had no importance and the Samaritans as a race were considered not just unworthy but a group to be avoided. That Jesus was even going through Samaria was shocking. Samaria was the bad side of town, a place where half-breeds lived since most people believed that Samaritans were only partially Jewish. Full-blooded Jews wouldn’t touch the place. But here Jesus is in the middle of the day, with the whole neighborhood watching, breaking multiple codes of conduct. Good Jewish boys just did not do things such as this.

By crossing the boundaries and breaking multiple codes of conduct, Jesus awakens in this woman a thirst for living water. He awakens in her a desire to know God. We also have that desire for God, that desire for living water. What is living water in today’s world? Aside from the obvious places of worship and being in a Christian community, living water is going to a concert such as the beautiful concert our soloists did a week ago, living water is a good book, living water is tea with friends, living water is being outdoors enjoying God’s creation or going to a sports event. We search for living water in our hearts and souls because we are surrounded by dead water, the dead water of mindless television shows, the dead water of surfing the internet, aimless wandering in the mall longing for stuff that we neither need nor can afford…

February is Black History Month and one of the Detroit Symphony’s programs this month featured works by black composers. During the concert we attended, a largely black choir sang this fabulous work called Ezekiel. Hearing this piece satisfied some of my thirst to cross racial boundaries. While the news headlines focus on all that is wrong in Detroit, perfectly decent and ordinary people go about doing wonderful things, providing music that satisfies spiritual thirst.

This year the vestry and the stewardship committee will be working with Kristine Miller the Director of Stewardship and Planned Giving for the Diocese. She has given us a book to read, a book called The Giving Myths by Stephen McSwain. I can’t tell you how much I love this book. I love it not just because I think I will be a great book for the church to read; I love it because it speaks to my thirst to give. Ever since leaving Washington State in July of 2005 to come to be the rector of this church, my husband and I have lived with the crushing burden of our unsold home back in Washington. It is a long painful story but one from which we are learning a great deal about ourselves. Reading The Giving Myths is a reminder of why this part of our life has been such a burden. It is not because of what we don’t have or can’t have; it is because our financial giving is no where near where it has been in the past. We stand with the woman at the well, thirsty for being able to return to the kind of giving which we have always done. I know this is part of why my husband has been putting in about 20 hours a week working on this youth house project. It is a way of satisfying that thirst. My husband is not alone. Many others are satisfying their thirst to give by putting in an abundance of hours on this project.

The woman at the well is an exemplary evangelist. She leaves her water jar at the well to run back into town to tell everyone that she has met the Messiah, the one who satisfies the real thirst of our souls. We are told that "many Samaritans from that city believed because of the woman’s testimony." The gospel of John gives importance to the testimony of women more than any of the other gospels and this story is one of the best examples. It is a story that satisfies our spiritual thirst.

For all of us who have embarked on this Lenten journey, the story of the woman at the well cries out to us to identify the places of thirst in our lives. Where are the longings? If we look deep into the well of our own souls, we will find those places of thirst and we will know how to satisfy them.