Boast in Your Sufferings

People Grumbling for Water

A couple of days ago I went to a discount wholesaler to stock up on food and supplies. Me and the other 24 million people in Southern California.  They were limiting people to one package of toilet paper, and one package of water. They say people in Southern California just love waiting in long lines on the freeways, at amusement parks, at the airport, and at stores. But I’d be the first to line up and tell you that isn’t true! In reality plenty of people were grumbling and complaining. 

This isn’t the first time people have grumbled for water. The whole congregation of Israelites complained against Moses and God in the wilderness of Sin. They had left Egypt and were camping in the desert. They ran out of water. They accused Moses of leading them out of Egypt to kill them and all the livestock in the wilderness. 

Even Jesus knew what it was like to be thirsty and to grumble for water. One day he and the disciples arrived in a town called Sychar in Samaria. It was a place where Jacob, their ancestor had been given a well of water by God. It was noon when Jesus sat there. A Samaritan woman came walking up to the well and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” Just like that. So abrupt! 

Social Distancing from Sin

This was socially taboo. It would be like a black man asking a white woman for a drink of water in the Jim Crow segregated south. That is, it was socially bizarre and extremely awkward.The Samaritan woman calls Jesus out on this. Why would a Jew ask for a drink from a Samaritan? They go back and forth a little bit. Then Jesus calls her out. 

The woman has been married and divorced five times. She is currently living with a man who isn’t her husband. The woman is a social outcast who goes all alone to the well in the middle of the day. Most women would go in the cool of the evening to socialize in comfort.

The Samaritan Woman is socially distant from her village. Jews and Samaritans are socially distant from one another. The Israelites in the wilderness are socially distant from Moses and God. The 24 million people in Southern California are asked to be socially distant during the COVID-19 pandemic, as are the 327 million people in the United States, and possibly the entire 8 billion people on earth. 

But that’s nothing. The real number of people who have experienced social distance is closer to 100 billion. That’s the estimate of the total number of people who have ever lived in the history of the world. Each and every person who has ever lived, has lived in social distance and isolation from God. We complain and hoard water and toilet paper because we are trying to compensate for a much deeper problem. We have rebelled and sinned against the one true living God. 

Social Reconciliation through Christ

Even Jesus Christ was socially distant. There he sat all alone under the high noon sun at Jacob’s well. And soon there he will hang on a cross all alone under the noon day sun. He will be betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, and scorned by officers and criminals alike. Every time you turn your back to God in sin you reject Christ too!

Jesus, however, doesn’t reject you. He loves you. Through his death on the cross he comes to you and abides with you. It says in Romans: 

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.

Romans 5:10 

Jesus reconciles us one to another through his death on the cross so that we are no longer separated from God or from one another by sin. From the dawn of creation God has populated the universe with beings so that none is alone. On this third Sunday of Lent we remember the fourth day of creation:

God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars… God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

Genesis 1:16,19

Even the heavenly bodies can give us company when we feel alone, and be a sign of God’s abiding presence with us. 

Jesus is Living Water

So as Jesus and the Samaritan woman talk she begins to open up to him with her deeper thoughts and feelings. She asks him where God is to be properly worshiped? On a mountain in Samaria or from the mountain in Jerusalem? Jesus begins to give her living water. He says that God is to be worshiped in Spirit by all people from all places. He shares that he is the Messiah and that God’s love is for all people and tribes. The woman runs back to her village to share the news. In doing so she is reconciled. He satisfies a thirst that is deeper than physical.

Moses felt so frustrated by the people’s complaining that he cried out to God for help. He thought that the people might stone him. So God instructed him to take some elders and go to an appointed place with the same staff in which he struck the Nile river. God told him to strike a rock, he did so, and water came flowing out! There was living water. Not just physical water, but a faith and trust in God to provide during times of need.

Boast in Your Suffering

The other day when I was at that discount wholesale store with 24 million other people they processed us through the store in a line passing out toilet paper and water to each person. The person standing behind me in line wanted to talk to me. He was agitated that the World Health Organization was trying to tell us what to do. He didn’t like it and found it confusing that it seemed to contradict what other leaders were saying. I asked if it felt confusing not knowing who was in charge. He said, “yes.” I then looked at him and said that there was somebody who was in charge. He looked at me and said, “who”? I pointed up and said, “God.” He smiled. The next moment an employee of the store was directing us where to go. I made a “baa” sound and said to him, “I guess we are all just sheep.” He laughed again and said, “I’m glad I found somebody here on my team.” 

Paul wrote in the book Romans:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Romans 5:1-5

Boast in your sufferings. Drink the true living water that doesn’t run out. Be reconciled in Christ. No social distance can take it away from you. Amen.