“Jesus: The Sports Drink”
John 4:5-42
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 24 February, 2008
Third Sunday in Lent
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 I recently came across a sports drink called “Life Water.” The product is described as a “vitamin enhanced water beverage.” According to the product’s web site, “Life Water puts more into the product so you can get more out!”1
Purified bottled water apparently isn’t enough these days. Granted, several bottled water companies have recently admitted that their “spring water” is really just tap water, but even the most meticulously marketed “mountain spring water” isn’t enough. We’ve all seen the ads for sports drinks that claim they will quench your thirst more than plain old water ever could. Whether they are an “enhanced water beverage” or a lab-created concoction of “thirst quenching” chemicals, they insist that they will keep you hydrated longer and will thus allow for improved performance in athletics or whatever other activity is making you parched.
When I did an Internet search for “Life Water,” the first link that came up was for the “enhanced water beverage” product. The third link down on the search results page was for “Water of Life Community Church,” a nondenominational congregation in Fontana, California.2 I am also aware of a Lutheran church in Fargo, North Dakota called “Living Waters.”3
Jesus said, “‘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 will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”4
So, is the water that Jesus promised the Samaritan woman at the well somehow “chemically enhanced”? Life Water unveiled a rather silly commercial during the Super Bowl, complete with a fashion model and lizards. I am trying to imagine Jesus doing a similar marketing campaign for his “life water.” Of course, the Samaritan (a fallen woman anyway) would be gorgeous and scantily clad. Jesus would be (as he is sometimes portrayed even in the most classic art) as a muscle-bound hunk. At the end, the attractive Samaritan would encourage everyone to try this water. (“‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”) The TV commercial would cost hundred of thousands of dollars but would reach millions and, just like the Biblical story, many people would believe in Jesus (and want a taste of that living water) because of the woman’s testimony.
As amusing as it is to envision a well-oiled marketing machine advertising this special “sports drink” that is the Messiah, the one we call Christ, I don’t believe this story is about that. There are even some wealthy churches who engage in glossy campaigns advertising Jesus like a commodity you can buy with your offering money. Again, I don’t believe this story is about that. Rather, the Gospel is a story of how the most ordinary kind of person can make an enormous impact in sharing the Good News.
The Samaritan woman was an outcast in the worst sense. She was a woman. Jewish men were not supposed to talk to strange women. She was a Samaritan. Jews were not supposed to talk to these second class citizens. And she was a fallen woman. She had been married, as one preacher put it, “as many times as Elizabeth Taylor,” and she was living in sin with her current man.5 She had “untouchable” written all over her, and yet the conversation Jesus had with her is the longest recorded conversation he has with anyone (male or female, Samaritan or otherwise) in the Gospels. To top things off, this fallen...Samaritan...woman was recognized by the author of John’s Gospel as the first evangelist, the first person to share the Good News of the Messiah and to subsequently bring many people to this Jewish rabbi who we now worship as Lord and Savior.
The story of the Samaritan woman at the well is a powerful lesson about who can be an evangelist of the Gospel. We are all sinners. While we may or may not endure the racism levied against Samaritans in first century Palestine, many of us have felt like outcasts in one way or another. And while being a woman is a significantly more respectable position in our modern world, women are still considered “second class citizens” by some, even in our 21st century American society. Men, too, sometimes fall under that label too because of their so-called “lifestyle,” or for various other reasons. The modern equivalent of the Samaritan woman may be a gay illegal immigrant who unflinchingly engages in unsafe sex. Yet even those of us who have less to worry about than the cruel labels associated with such a position in society often find ourselves feeling, or being considered, less than holy. The funny thing is, we are the ones Jesus is calling. We --sinners and outcasts -- are the ones Jesus wants to share the Good News. Certainly, Jesus will accept evangelists who are impeccably holy straight white men, but the rest of us (i.e. most of us) are not only welcomed but are among the first to whom Jesus spoke.
In case you haven’t grasped it yet, this is a really important lesson for all of us. We sometimes feel unworthy or embarrassed to engage in evangelism. Not only are we, perhaps, uncomfortable inviting other people to church because we know we have done unholy things -- i.e., we have sinned more times than we can count. We also think of evangelism as something “evangelical” churches do. Mainline Protestant churches like St. Mark’s are supposed to be quiet about our faith. The United Church of Christ, aware of this dilemma, even recently created a set of resources for congregational vitality called “the e-word.” We don’t even like the word “evangelism,” because it conjures up images of going door to door, being pushy, insisting that people “accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior” or face eternal damnation.
The thing is, we are all called to evangelize. The other thing is, evangelism doesn’t have to be pushy and it doesn’t have to insist that those who don’t accept our offer of living water will go to hell. My husband is not a Christian and I know and love many people who belong to other faiths or have no religious tradition. I accept them for who they are and am confident that the God in whom I believe does too. I also get annoyed when people come to my door and insist that I believe as they do, although I respect their perseverance -- theirs is not any easy task. This does not mean, however, that I am not called to share the Good News, that I am not called to offer the “enhanced water beverage” that is Jesus Christ, to those who are truly open to the message. As a sinful woman who will probably never quite get over being mercilessly bullied in junior high and high school, I can bring a message that there is someone who accepts me for who I am -- a short nerd who does many things wrong -- and who will accept those who are much worse off than me. I can share with them too, that there is a congregation that will accept them for who they are -- as Mary Carrigan put it a few weeks ago, “gay, straight, green, whatever.”
As the current pastor of St. Mark’s I am called to preach the Gospel every Sunday morning to whoever shows up here, but sharing the Gospel is not just the job of the pastor. In fact, this role should perhaps fall more strongly on the members of the congregation. The message of acceptance by a God who loves us, “no matter who we are, no matter where we are on life’s journey” may be most clearly heard when it comes from people who aren’t getting paid to share it and who aren’t viewed in some official capacity as an ambassador for Christ. Regardless of the truth, members of the clergy rarely carry quite the same stigma as the Samaritan woman at the well. When the promise of living water comes from someone whose well seems to have run dry, the message often carries more weight.
After worship this morning we will gather to begin what I hope will be the beginning of a visioning process for the future of St. Mark’s. In addition to dealing with the “nuts and bolts” (how to remain financially solvent, how to keep from closing), I hope we will talk about why we want to, and are called to keep the church going. St. Mark’s has been a presence in the Morrell Park community for 91 years. What is our role here? We’re sharing our building with the community -- an important ministry -- but are we, as members of this congregation, sharing the Gospel? Again, I don’t mean to say that we should expect or require those who meet in our church building to become members of St. Mark’s or even to darken the doors of our sanctuary. I don’t mean to say that we should tell people in the neighborhood around the church that they will not have access to any sort of living water (except, perhaps, the sports drink variety) if they don’t believe as we do, or even if they aren’t as accepting of outcasts as we consider ourselves to be. But Jesus is calling us -- yes, even us -- to share his story with those who are willing to listen.
I hope you will stay after church today, and will join us in future gatherings to talk about these things. We’re going to start slow, to get a feel for where we might want to go with this, but I have spoken with our Associate Conference Minister (for those of you who don’t know, her job is to work with United Church of Christ congregations in this region) about joining us in this process in the next couple of months. These are important conversations, and I hope you -- fallen Samaritan women and all -- will join us in both drinking of, and sharing, the living water that is Jesus the Christ.
Now let us pray.
1 Life Water web site, http://www.sobelifewater.com/. Accessed 23 Feb., 2008.
2 Water of Life Community Church web site, http://www.wateroflifecc.org/. Accessed 23 Feb., 2008.
3 Living Waters Lutheran Church (ELCA) web site, http://www.lwlc.net/. Accessed 23 Feb., 2008.
4 John 4:13-14.
5 Taylor, Barbara Brown, “Reflections on the Lectionary: Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42,” The Christian Century, February 12, 2008, pg. 19.
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