Lent III: Year A, 2026

 

A number of years ago, I went hiking without enough water. It was a hot day, and the trail was strenuous; I could not replenish what I was losing through sweat. Several miles into the woods, high on the side of a mountain on a warm summer afternoon, I found myself with an empty canteen. To make matters worse, the trail ran alongside a rushing stream almost its entire length. Yet because drinking unfiltered river water is rarely safe, I found myself in the position of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner:

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

I did, of course, make it out of the woods alive that day—a little dehydrated and a little wiser for the wear.

But isn’t the world very much like that—“Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink”? We are surrounded by so much that promises nourishment, that claims it will slake our spiritual thirst, yet leaves us parched.

In today’s Gospel lesson, when Jesus speaks to the woman at the well, 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 will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Jesus—himself a living sacrament—is the only one who can impart grace to our withered souls. He is our living water. He alone, through his death, gives us true life. He alone restores us to what God created us to be; for “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” In our weakness, Jesus gives us strength. With him, we are always enough.

Yet the world offers many rushing streams—achievement, consumption, even religion severed from grace. “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.” The world promises so much but delivers so little. We seem stranded in a sea of distraction. We turn on the television or open our social media feeds and find ourselves ensnared.

We see the success of others—their handsome vacation photos, carefully curated and displayed on Instagram or Facebook—and despair that our lives are not good enough. So we chase the extra dollar just to stand in line at Disney World.

We see the sleek car advertisement and take on a larger loan than our budgets can bear, hoping to appear as successful as we wish we were. 

Some of us even strive to please God by punishing ourselves with guilt and shame, convinced that we have lived in a less-than-worthy manner.

We exert ourselves beyond our limits because, deep down, we feel something is lacking. We try, as best we can, to pull ourselves up by our proverbial bootstraps. That is the American way, after all. But the trouble with bootstraps is this: you cannot lift yourself by them. You need someone else’s hand.

We are living in exceptionally graceless times. Mercy and love are mocked as weakness. In an age of war and civil discord, we are surrounded by a veritable carnival of violence, where vengeance, wrath, and aggression are celebrated as virtues.

And we ourselves are often victims of our own savagery. Our native virtues of rugged individualism and Emersonian self-reliance have turned inward, curdling into selfishness and self-hatred. Our spiritual thirst—our deepest longings—has driven us to bad water, and we are dying. “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.”

Yet even in this parched land, Jesus comes to us. Moses struck the rock in the wilderness, and water came gushing forth. With him, we shall never thirst. Jesus is the gift of God’s own self to us; we do not earn him. No achievement or success can ever truly satisfy us. Only God answers the longings of the human heart—only his grace. Only God can slake our thirst along this life’s journey.

This morning, as on most Sundays, we will take our place at the altar rail. We will extend open hands to receive the gift of God’s grace. We will receive Jesus into our hearts anew—and in him, we shall never thirst again.

I close with a sonnet by Malcolm Guite—a prayer for thirsty pilgrims like us:

As pilgrim souls on whom your light has shone

Let us leave judgement to your tender mercy

And turn instead to you, keep pressing on

Towards the steadfast heights, the mountain country

Of your holy presence. Let us drink

From that swift river, our true ecstasy.

Refresh us Christ, and bring us to the brink

Of that deep well where life itself is light

And goodness, more than we can dream or think,

Flows from your plenteousness, from your delight

In all your works, and where your loving kindness

Shines through our day and comforts us at night,

Like soft wings safely overarching us,

That we might put our utter trust in you

And fret no more for passing wickedness.