On this day that honours the special women in our lives, our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, daughters and friends. I think also of the women of faith whose stories inspire me. As a little girl the first time I heard the story of Mary and Martha, I remember thinking to myself that I was always wanted to sit at Jesus' feet and learn from him. I'm in awe every time we tell the part of the Christmas story when the angel visits Mary. Every time Mary says yes to the unimaginable and improbably. I think of my namesake, Miriam, who boldly saved her brother Moses from the river and who led the people in their dancing. Time does not permit to talk about Eve, and Ruth and Esther and Rachel and Leah and Dorcas and all the unnamed women of the bible whose faith guides and inspires them in their daily living.
Our gospel reading is just one such example. When I’m tired and I feel drained, I turn to our gospel reading for the gentle reminder that Jesus not only loves us we are but offers us the kind of water the refreshes our souls.
Then she went to the well to that day to get water. She was spent. Tapped out. She was done with the whispers and the gossip. Yes, she was living with a man. No, she wasn’t married. She’d been married five times already. Life had not been kind. Five heartbreaks as she said her last goodbyes. So instead of going to the well with the rest of the women early in the day, she slipped out of her house at noon, when the sun was hot and she was guaranteed to be alone as she got her days’ supply of water.
And when she arrived at the well, there was a man there all by himself. He was not from Samaria. His people and her people do not get along. So you can understand why the woman can’t believe it when Jesus talks to her and asks her for a drink of water. She says to him, “How is it that you, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:9) And he says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10).
But he had no bucket and the well was deep. And she knew there was no way he could offer her anything. Yet she couldn’t seem to walk away. There is something about Jesus. He says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) She says, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty.” (John 14:15)
I think it’s the kind of gift I need right now. Living water to refresh my soul. This is a really challenging time. There are good days when I think to myself, “I can do this staying home thing. We’ve got this.” There are the not so good days when it seems like everything is off track and nothing goes right. And think, “when is it going to be over?” Then there are the medium kind of days. When it's not great but not terrible and it seems manageable.
Into the challenge comes a special occasion. Mother’s Day. A day when we normally gather with our families. But this year there are no gatherings. And that is hard. It can a hard day for other reasons too. Maybe your parent is in seniors’ home and you are not allowed to visit. This is my first Mother’s Day without my mom Maybe you are like me and your grief is still fresh. Maybe your relationship is strained. Maybe your dream of having children never came to be or maybe you’ve lost a child.
Not matter where you find yourself today. Whether it’s a good day or a medium day or one of the hard ones, Jesus comes to you offering living water that refreshes the soul. Joyce’ Cowley’s poem “The Quiet Pool” reflects this well:
There is within each of us
a quiet clear pool of living water
fed by one deep Source
and inseparable from it’
but so often hidden
by a tangle of activity
that we may not know
of its existence.
We can spend the proverbial forty years
wandering in strange deserts,
sinking unrewarding wells,
and moving on, driven by our own thirst,
but when we stop still long enough
to look inside ourselves, really look
beyond our ideas about water
and what and where it should be,
we discover it was with us all the time,
that quiet clear pool which is ageless,
the meaning of our existence
and the answer to all our wanderings.
And as we drink,
we know what Jesus meant when he said
we’d never be thirsty again.
So grab your bucket, Jesus is offering you living water. It is your gift. May it give you strength on the hard days and joy on the good days. May it sustain you today and every day. Amen.
