A month ago, when it was in the 20s day after day, you could walk up Trout Brook here in town on the solid, snow covered ice, ice a large minister could safely walk on. Granted, I had waded long stretches of it when it was open so I know it’s mostly knee deep or less, so I don’t tread gingerly or fearfully on the ice. At worst, I’d get wet to the waist if I broke through, but hardly a disaster.
Walking up Trout Brook in January or February is like following a little trail through the swamp, vines and overgrown saplings. Every now and then, you'll come to an opening in the ice. Black water surrounded by gray slush surrounded by firm ice. These openings are springs bubbling up at 55 degrees year round – the springs we got Springdale from and the original name of Dover, the Springfield Parish of Dedham, for that matter.Anyway, if you stand quite still long enough and watch the spring openings in the creek ice closely, eventually you’ll see little trout finning around, occasionally dimpling the surface. If there weren’t any springs, the trout would be down near Claybrook in deeper water for the winter.
When the ice breaks up in the spring, the trout spread out all over the creek because they no longer need to be near the relative warmth to survive. However, in June and July when the shallow water heats up to 70 or 80, those trout will be right back near the springs with their noses tucked into that 55 degree water, dependent on the cold, oxygenated water for their survival. Which was why I walked the ice of January and February. Now I know where they'll be when I come visiting during the summer.
Springs of living water gushing up to eternal life. I don’t know what you imagine when you hear this promise of Jesus, but I bet it is not Trout Brook in Dover with small springs and even smaller trout. Maybe you visualize something like Old Faithful in Yellowstone or Silver Springs in Florida, something dramatic and spectacular, but not some non-descript swamp creek in town. So many of us miss the streams of living water gushing up to eternal life that Jesus promises us, because we think “It’s got to be something more." And yet, I think this expectation that streams of life gushing has to be something more than what we see right before our eyes is delusional. I think Jesus means exactly something everyday like Trout Brook in most cases most of the time. I think Jesus would have us imagine ourselves relating to God like those trout relate to the springs of Trout Brook. While we may spread out and drift away, we are dependent for survival on the spring of life which is our God. We are truly happiest, most well balanced and provided for when we are headed upstream into the flow of those living waters.
Our Gospel story this morning points out with brilliant irony, paradox and the use of intentional misunderstanding all the ways we try to avoid the very gift of new and abundant life Jesus offers us. Let’s watch the Samaritan women and see if we can see ourselves. For starters, what is the woman doing at the well at noon when all the other women would have come first thing in the morning or again before dusk? She is clearly an outsider, an outcast, maybe a difficult personality. But isn’t that the truth for many of us, that we are dispositionally self isolating, maybe even actually isolated, and we live parched, thirsty lives? We may call it Yankee reserve, a rose by another name...
Then she throws up all the cultural norms which stand between her and Jesus – her ethnicity as a Samaritan against his as a Jew – an opposition which was fierce and merciless as only sibling religious animosities can be, the Samaritans holding an archaic form of Judaism which Jews like Jesus no longer practiced. The Jews thought of the Samaritans as dirty, unclean people, ritually defiling, while the Samaritans returned the favor with sticks and stones as the Jews passed through Samaria on their way to Jerusalem. Neither were people the others would eat with, let alone touch. And then to top it off, she points out the gender divide. Men and women did not interact socially, let alone Samaritan women and Jewish men. We may feel we are without prejudice, or with only harmless prejudices, but all of us have categories of people we like more than others and we can see the violent wreckage of ethnic, racial and gender prejudice in the news everyday. It’s so hard to draw close to God and get into those living waters with so many of “those people” crowding “us” out and disturbing us with their presence. And yet, the woman knows – “give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water,” she says. She knows how desiccating and exhausting her “us and them” world makes both her spirit and her life. She is ready to let her walls fall.
Then Jesus goes right to the elephant in the middle of the room of this woman’s life. He invites her to come back with her husband. He does not speak a word of judgment, although some of us think we hear moral indictment. He merely point out the obvious, “you have had five husbands and are now living with some other guy.” The truth that Jesus is scratching at is the truth which all of us know, because we all know broken relationships and all the other painful human messiness when aspirations of love for an abundant future are shattered or just allowed to erode into dust. Who knows why she was divorced. I’m sure there was blame enough to go around. She had probably received the measure she had given and gave as good as she got. But can you imagine how difficult her life would have been in a small town? with a bunch of ex-husbands and ex-in-laws around, a reminder of past and present bitterness, disappointment and self-recrimination or damning resentment waiting around every corner and peaking out of every doorway? Well, maybe you can’t, but this woman’s life is messy and her spirit must have been very restless and conflicted. Maybe that’s why she was alone at the well at noon, because she knew no one else would be there.
Jesus doesn’t damn, shame, or blame her. He invites her, “go home and get your husband," welcomes her exactly where she is, but she dodges the invitation and tries to argue dogma. Which is better? Samaritan or Jewish worship and practice? Forget about this or that. Spirit and truth is what God desires. Yourself, exactly who you are and where you are, with exactly whatever baggage you are carrying. Come, drink and bath in the streams of living water gushing up to eternal life. Be refreshed. Be renewed.
Did Jesus really walk through Samaria? I'm sure he did. Did Jesus stop along the way at Jacob's Well? Why not? Did Jesus talk with a Samaritan woman and say the things he said in our lesson this morning? Who knows. We'll never know for sure. Is this a true story? You bet. John has brilliantly walked us through every duck and dodge all of us grasp at to avoid drinking deeply and bathing fully in the streams of living water Jesus tells us about.
Our thinking mind gets us wondering whether it's true or not, whether the Congregationalists have it more correct than the Catholics or the other way around, that maybe we ought to try out Buddhism or bicycling, that we read this really great article about praying a certain way, this is sort of a woman's thing or this is really for men, are those streams warm or cold living water?, that ..and so on, and still we hold back.
Our ego mind reminds us of all the pain in our life and all the ways life has shortchanged us or owes us so much more, of all the reasons we have to be fearful, cautious, angry, resentful, of all the things we have to do right after church today, let alone before the end of the month, and so on, and of course we hold back.
And if our spiritual hearts tug at us, ask us to open to these living waters Jesus promises, if we begin to see that indeed "the harvest is abundant and ripe, right now, not in three months," we don't adjust our lives to make room. We see. We know. But we don't change so nothing happens, sort of like flying very quickly through the Grand Canyon in a helicopter with the windows closed. That was beautiful, looked just like the IMAX show, but it was sort of loud and shaky.
It's so simple it can't be true. We live spread out in the creek of life dodging this way and that, fighting the currents, hiding from predators and eating up the smaller fish,..I often feel like I'm standing in front of the fire hose of life, but if we just nose up into the living waters of God which are bubbling up all around us, just take some time and believe that life really is streams of living water gushing up, well, Jesus said, "seek and you will find," and this is what he says you'll find.
In case you are wondering why I would explore Trout Brook in the winter, it’s not because I really love winter hikes. I actually do, but what I really love more is trout fishing. Truth be told, one of the reasons I accepted the call to the Dover Church was I because I saw the squiggle called Trout Brook on my topographical map and thought I might have hit pay dirt – work with a trout stream nearby.
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