And it was about the sixth hour

March 19, 2017

The Third Sunday in Lent

Give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty

Today we are presented with a story of exhaustion; a story of exhaustion and heat—the searing heat of the powerful sun in the dry and dusty lands of the middle east; a story not just of exhaustion and heat, but of thirst. A story which speaks to us today just as much as it spoke to anybody who first encountered it some 2,000 years ago. A story which happened, so they tell us, at about the sixth hour.

It's a story set in the context of a journey—not that there's anything new about that. More than one journey, in fact, for we can see our own journey contained in this story, as well as the journey undertaken by Jesus. And so, this morning's gospel tells us, Jesus was tired out by his journey.

And who can blame him? Not me! It is presumptuous to say I know how he felt but, certainly, I feel a tad weary. Lent is a busy time in church life—for clergy and for all who seek to follow Jesus. It brings extra study projects, extra work, and not even the refreshment of a night-cap of malt whisky, which I have foresworn until we stand rejoicing on Easter Day. So, if I am honest, I do feel weary, and it may well be that you do as well.

And if we are wearied by the journey, what of Jesus? This morning we see Jesus in a particular light. We see him tired and vulnerable, very human, and very much in need. It is ironic, perhaps, that we should find this in John's gospel, out of any of the gospels. For this Jesus is the Word made flesh, so St. John tells us in the famous prologue to his gospel that we read on Christmas Day. This Jesus is the eternal Word of God through whom all things came into being. This Jesus is quite plainly God, only very thinly veiled, striding purposefully across the earth. This is the Jesus who, according to St. John, didn't pray to be delivered from the coming hour of his death, as the other evangelists tell us, but quite the reverse! This Jesus is the Jesus who said "should I say, "Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour."

But now, he's tired out by his journey. Shattered. Done in. Hot, thirsty, and exhausted. And it was about the sixth hour.

Yes, for some reason—and there is a reason, I believe—for some reason, even this great, cosmic, super-hero Son of God has his fragile moments. It is ironic, perhaps, but today's gospel is there for a reason. And it's a reason which speaks profoundly about Jesus' journey, and it's a reason which also speaks just as profoundly about our journey.

Take the woman about whom we have just heard. She's weary. She's more than a bit tired out. She's not as tired as Jesus, perhaps, for when she meets Jesus, he is en route from Jerusalem (where he's not been altogether popular, so the gospel tells us—upsetting all those money-changers and Pharisees, and other religious types) and he's heading back home to Galilee. Now today, you can make that journey in about an hour and a half in a fastish car, provided there are no checkpoints, or worse, on the way. But for Jesus, who may even have been on foot, the journey would have been considerably longer—a matter of days, if not weeks. And if you take the most direct route, as it appears he did, you end up going through Samaria, a place not exactly welcoming for Jewish people. We need to remember that, from the perspective of the Jewish people in Biblical times, Samaritans were not good, they were bad. That is why Luke's famous parable about a Samaritan was so powerful to its first audiences.

So, there is Jesus, footsore, hot, and tired out from his journey in the midday sun, for it was about the sixth hour. And he meets this woman—and have no doubt, she's also weary. For a start, she's clearly weary about having to come out of the town to the well to get her water all the time— that's one of the reasons she asks Jesus to give her living water, "so that I may never...have to keep coming here to draw water." In other words, "Life's a toil, and I can't be bothered working up any enthusiasm for it any more."

I suspect she's weary about all sorts of other things—men, perhaps: "You have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband." In other words, "I've made a mess of love, and partnerships, and sex; I can't be bothered taking my fellow human being seriously anymore."

Religion, perhaps: "Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." In other words, "Who can be bothered taking religion seriously, with all these stupid disagreements?"

Frankly, this woman is soldiering on because, well, you have to, don't you? But she's not got much enthusiasm for the journey. And just when she expects it least, she has this odd encounter, this unnerving encounter, this bizarre encounter with this thirsty man at the well. And it was about the sixth hour.

Of course, she doesn't know it's God that she's encountering. Unlike us, she hadn't read the Johannine prologue, and she didn't know that she was in the presence of the Word made flesh. After all, you probably don't expect to meet God at the local watering-hole, just as much as you don't expect to meet him walking down Michigan Avenue. And he didn't look like God, either. As one well known hymn puts it, Jesus was "lone and dreary, faint and weary," so perhaps she could be forgiven for failing to recognize that this curious man was, in fact, what St. John calls "The true light, which enlightens everyone."

And, if she knew that on this day she was going to encounter God, she might have expected God to be all glorious, and strong, and triumphant, not tired out by his journey. Not tired out, just like she was. And she certainly wouldn't have expected God to be so broken that he has to ask her for a drink. She certainly wouldn't have expected God to turn to her and say, "I am thirsty."

But then again, it was about the sixth hour.

And perhaps it's not our idea of God, either. Perhaps we need God to be the strong, the all-powerful, the omnipotent, the high and mighty. Perhaps we need God to be the person to whom we turn for sustenance rather than, incredibly, have Him turn to us, especially when we are feeling vulnerable, or weary, or fed up with life, or work, or men, or women, or any of the other things which get us down. Perhaps then, most of all, we want God to come striding along and sort things out for us. Perhaps, when we are tired out by our journey, we need God to take charge, rather than to turn to us and say, "Hold on a minute, I'm tired too." But if that is the case, then we, like the woman at the well, we are also in for a shock. Especially when we come to the sixth hour.

We are well into Lent now. This is the third Sunday of this holy season and it will not be long before Passiontide and Easter begin to come clearly into focus. And I hope that you will all find the time to take seriously the gifts and blessings which Holy Week offer us as members of God's church. And by that, I don't simply mean that you will go to church on Sunday mornings, for if you turn up here on Palm Sunday, and then turn up again on Easter Sunday, you will miss the point. You will miss the point so profoundly and completely that, to be honest, it's hardly worth your turning up at all. Easter, of course, is important, and Easter is the time when you will not be surprised to find God at his most exultantly powerful, bursting from the tomb in glorious victory. But that is only one side of the story, and it is most definitely not the story we hear at about the sixth hour.

For all that we are doing through Lent, and all that we see promised on Palm Sunday, and all that we see realized on Easter Sunday, only makes sense if we walk with Jesus the full length of his walk. It only makes sense if we break bread and keep watch with him on that Thursday night. And, even more importantly, it only makes sense if we turn up on that Friday afternoon, to see again in our hearts and minds and souls that broken body hanging on the cross.

If you are to understand fully and properly the Easter victory, you must know it for what it is. For, like St. John, I believe that God's victory is not the victory of the empty tomb—it is the victory of the cross.

For me, the power of God's victory lies in the total vulnerability of the cross. And the resurrection which we celebrate on the third day is not the denial of the cross but, rather, it is the confirmation of it. It is the confirmation that God reigns from the cross. It is the confirmation that God can use even abject vulnerability and brokenness and pain. It is the confirmation of that fact and not the denial of that fact. And that is the reason—the only reason—we dare to call that Friday "Good." Indeed, Eastern Christians regard this as understatement, for the Orthodox that Friday is not merely good, it is Great Friday.

Being a Christian, you see, is not about shutting out the pain and awfulness of human suffering and of death. It is not about magicking it away, in the belief that God deals in the supernatural or in conjuring tricks. If you think that, you will never understand what Easter is about. Quite the reverse. Being a Christian is about acknowledging and building on the weariness and the pain and suffering and death because it makes us like God. It makes us like our God who hung on the cross to give the world life in all its abundance. That is the real victory of the cross, that it incorporates the broken and the weary and the starving and the dying; it is the reverse of the success culture that dominates the west today.

That is why it is so surprising now, to us, in the middle of our wearying and tiring journey, and that is why it was so surprising to the woman we encounter in today's gospel—the woman who meets God, when it was about the sixth hour, only to find him tired out by his journey, only to find him thirsty. But this encounter comes in St. John's gospel, and John was a master of irony, and he realized that God is at his most triumphant when he is lifted high on the cross. And in his inimitable and skilful manner, St. John is telling us that this woman saw more than I think we may, at first, have realised, when she had that surprising encounter:

"Pilate brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, 'Here is your King!' They cried out, 'Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!' Pilate asked them, 'Shall I crucify your King?' The chief priests answered, 'We have no king but Caesar.' Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

"When Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said 'I am thirsty.' A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, 'It is finished.' Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."

The woman at the well was weary of it all—almost as weary as the God she discovered there, hot, tired, and thirsty. And, although she wasn't looking to encounter God, although she was only getting on with the boring practicalities of everyday life, she found God there, nevertheless, because it is in the nature of God to be found where humanity is trapped in despair and hopelessness.

But the God she found was a God the like of which she had never imagined, a God so human, so vulnerable, so caught up in the world, that she realized that, incredibly, he had something to offer her. And, despite her cynicism, her tiredness, her stream of lovers, and all the rest of it, this God, who knew what it was to be tired and thirst, and who would know even more agonizingly just how tired and thirsty the journey would ultimately make him, this God was prepared to offer her something right there, where she was. And so, she said—and she says on behalf of me and of you—"Give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty."

"Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath, especially because that Sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So, they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out."

I pray that this Lent, this coming Passiontide, and this Easter, you and I may also meet God at the sixth hour, that He may give us the taste of his living water, and that we may never again be thirsty. Amen.