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It was March 13, 2020 when the clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska gathered on Zoom with Bishop Barker and his staff to learn that we would no longer be gathering together for worship as we were accustomed to so for so long. The deep impacts of COVID-19 were just being realized in the United States. Professional sports leagues, Broadway shows, restaurants and coffee shops, and more were suspending gatherings and rapidly changing plans. Just how much my life and our lives would be deeply and thoroughly impacted by this pandemic hit me like a ton of bricks on that Zoom call late in the afternoon. We worked into the night that night in the cathedral’s office and as we canceled or adjusted one thing, it was as if we were pulling one string on a large ball of yarn that came undone and we realized our common life was taking a major turn.
This week, we have continued that moratorium on in-person worship until at least June 28 and it felt right to return to place we started.
Two days after that Zoom call was my Sunday to preach at the cathedral and the gospel lesson from John’s gospel was the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well. You will recall that this is the story of a woman, scorned and shunned by society for her own racial & ethnic background, her marital status & history, her sex, and more. She was forced to go to the well to draw water at the worst time of the day—noon. She brings with her a clay jar to fill and in that unexpected place at the worst possible hour, she meets Jesus who asks her for a drink. Confused about all that has gone on the woman wonders how he could even ask for that and Jesus tells her of something she’s never heard of, known about, or discovered before: living water. She tells him she wants some of that but there are so many things she hasn’t done right, so many things for which she has been rejected and discarded. Jesus tells her he knows and he loves her.
I love so much about this story but until that day two months ago I had never noticed one moment in this story: after all of that, she leaves her jar and returns back to her town. She leaves the jar—presumably, the thing that was the whole reason she came! She leaves the empty jar because the dry, barren, empty places of her heart and soul have been filled to overflowing with living water.
When the woman hears Jesus talk of a new kind of water, she asks him, “Where do you get that living water?” It seems to me that we spend our lives searching for living water. It seems to me that we do everything we can to fill ourselves with water that dies, to draw from a well that is shallow. So, I wonder what you’ve been trying to fill the jar of your soul with these last couple of months. I wonder what you’ve let fill it. Perhaps fear and anxiety from reading and hearing too much news. Perhaps your soul is burdened by a sense of failure because you haven’t accomplished as much at work or your kid’s school work is on the back burner. Perhaps it is unease because of your own health or worry because nothing seems to be changing. Perhaps it is something all together. I only thought of those examples because they tell the story of my own life these last weeks.
Here’s the grace of it all, friends. The living water Jesus promises for a woman who ostensibly had done everything wrong is the exact same living water Jesus promises for you. In these next weeks and months physically apart from one another, I am seeking to fill my soul with flowing, abundant waters of love and grace and peace. In Jesus we find is a well that is deep and unending. In Jesus, we find the source of living water.
So, leave your jars and let your soul be filled.
Steven