Is the Lord among us or not? Exodus 17:7

            Have you ever noticed that some questions seem to be asked again and again?  Nor are those questions just from our lifetime;  they are the kind of things that have been asked and pondered upon since time began.  You have probably on more than one occasion asked them yourself.   Some of them, in fact, are found in our lessons today on the bulletin cover.  They all spring from a basic desire to know why things are the way they are and often from a sad conclusion that no answers really exist and life as a result is a series of days that some day will come to an end with you and me just as mystified on that day as we are today. 

            Exodus today focuses on the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt .  The excitement and the thrill of that first Passover and the first rush of the joy of freedom in their hearts is now replaced by the daily drudgery of existence out in an empty desert.  Numerous footsteps through the wilderness of Sinai have led to parched throats and the conclusion that not enough water could ever be found to quench the thirst of the children of God.  “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt , to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”  And poor frantic Moses does not know what to do as he fears that any minute an angry mob of his own people will stone him to death.  So he complains to God, “What am I supposed to do?”  The basic question of life and survival comes right out of Exodus.  We may not use the same words but the thoughts and feelings are probably the same.  How do I make ends meet?  Where will I get the basics of life to survive?  What kind of house and possessions will I have?  What kind of job will I have?  I have bills to pay and college costs are looming. Then comes retirement and I’m not really ready for that.  Medical costs are skyrocketing and getting insurance is hard.  These days are scary and so uncertain.  How do I know that tomorrow won’t be worse than today?  How in the world am I ever going to make it?  That’s one of those basic questions that human beings have been asking since the beginning.

            Another one is found in the Romans passage today.  It is the basic question that goes something like, “Why is their pain and suffering in the world?”  St. Paul puts it all in kind of a positive light but even he cannot ignore the fact that there is too much suffering in the world that really can’t be explained.  People are searching for a reason.  Why am I sick?  Why am I hurting?  If God is loving and kind why am I in pain?  Why is anyone in pain?

            Then comes a third basic question of life found in the Gospel reading.  You and I meet a woman who to put it mildly has been around the block a few times.  Her life is the shattered portrait of a woman who has suffered broken relationship upon broken relationship.  The fact that she comes to draw water at the well in the middle of the day, which is what St. John indicates by “the sixth hour” means that she probably does not come out when all the other women in town come to the well.  Why not?  She is most likely not the most popular woman in Sychar.  She has probably dated half the men in the village who now are the husbands of the other women there.  She has a past that makes her the object of scorn.  She is in an empty kind of relationship now, perhaps having given up on marriage.  She cannot even figure out why this Jewish Rabbi is even bothering to talk to her.  All she wants is to fill her jug with water and go home to her meaningless existence. And by her questions of the Lord you can tell that she pretty much focuses on the day to day questions of life with not much thought to the bigger things of the heart and the soul.  When Jesus talks to her about acquiring living water she just things it is special water like the kind she draws from the well which will keep her from being physically thirsty in some magic kind of way.  But she is more thirsty than she knows.  She is like that character Ben Hur in the movies who once yearned for a drink of water while he was being marched in chains to the Galley ship of the Romans as a convicted criminal.  But later on in life, even though he has risen way above that pitiful existence and found freedom and wealth and all the things life can offer on earth his conclusion is: I am thirsty still.  He is still thirsting for something more.  And he speaks for that woman at the well and for so many people:  “Is this all that there is?”  Is there anything more to life than what we used to call the rat race and the living out of our days where as the evolutionist writer Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “The best conclusion we can draw is that we happened to be the mud and slime that got a chance to sit up and look around for a while”?  Is this all that there is?

            The season of Lent has a way of giving us a chance to ask those questions.  It reminds us of the wilderness journeys we all take and the days of suffering that we all face and the condition of life that we all have to endure and points us to the cross and the empty tomb of Jesus and it says, “There is more in God!”  The world will ultimately leave us unsatisfied and questioning – the recent college shootings we all heard about in Northern Illinois make us realize that the next generation is asking those same questions we have asked and because they are for the most part a generation without God they are coming to violent and deadly conclusions about the hopelessness of it all.  But the Lord is an answer to it all.  Jesus Christ is the answer that cries out from our bulletin cover today!

            Is the Lord among us or not – that’s what Exodus ended up asking you and me.  And the answer is “Yes”!

            Exodus today deals with worry.  We all know what worry is about.  In fact, here is a handy way to know if you have to worry about whether you are going to have a rotten day:  You can tell it’s going to be a rotten day when:

“You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold.  You see a 60 minutes news team waiting in your office.  Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles. Your twin brother forgot your birthday. Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell’s Angels on the freeway. The bird singing outside your window is a vulture. Your income tax refund check bounces, and you wake up and call your answering service and they tell you it’s none of your business.”

             But listen to what one Christian wrote about rotten days and worry:  “I am inwardly fashioned for faith, not for fear.  Fear is not my native land; faith is.  In anxiety and worry my being is gasping for breath – these are not my native air.  But in faith and confidence I breathe freely – these are my native air.”  The Lord watches over you every day.  If he did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for you then that is a God you can trust will see you through every worry.  Just be like the author Mary Crowley who once wrote:  “Every evening I turn worries over to God.  He’s going to be up all night anyway.”  God always helps those who trust in Him.  In worry you are on your own.   A recent study once found out about worry that 40 percent of worries focus on things that will never happen. 30 percent of worries focus on things in the past that cannot be changed.  12 percent is about criticisms by others that were found for the most part to be untrue. 10 percent focuses about health which gets worse anyway with stress.  Only 8% of worries focus on real problems that will have to be faced.  As God might have said to Moses in the Exodus passage.  “I can certainly handle 8 percent of your life since I made 100 percent of you to begin with!”  And in the Exodus account do you know that in the end not one single Israelite died in the wilderness from thirst, or from hunger?  Not one.  They died from not trusting in God.

            What about pain and suffering?  Most people will tell you pain can never have a purpose.  All pain is to be avoided.  Romans today tells us that even though suffering can be hard it always has a purpose for the believing child of God.  Most of the Psalms were written out of pain and suffering.  Paul today reminds us that endurance, character, and hope have their birth in our suffering and they lead us to a hope that does not disappoint us because these things show us the love of God more clearly than any other time.  Think about it.  When life is good and everything is a success do you really feel the need for a Savior? – a Savior from what?  But I can attest that in my own deepest sorrows in life – those were moments when I saw the love of Jesus for me more clearly than at any other time.  In this next month when I will remember both the death of my mother and my father I know that I felt closer to Jesus then more than any other time.  Because I am reminded of what Jesus went through to save them and to save me and I remember what the pain of Jesus did for them and how He suffered for us so that they could be in heaven today.  Did you know that a group of Christians once got together numbering over 300 people?  Of the 318 gathered together 312 of them had lost an eye or a hand or a limb because they had suffered in some way for Jesus.  And together they wrote a document on the kind of God we have and how wonderful He is to us and how it was worth it to suffer for the name of Christ.  You and I know that document as the Nicene Creed.  Some pain can truly have a divine purpose.

            But what about that woman at the well?  She speaks for so many today.  She speaks for so many going through the motions of life wondering if this is all that there is to life with all its loneliness and broken relationships and meaningless chores that are repeated day after day after day.   A 1992 article found out the following things about how you will spend your days if you live to be 70 years old.  In that 70 years you will spend 23 years sleeping.  16 years will be spent working.  8 years will be spent watching TV.  6 years will be spent eating and another 6 years riding in a car. 4 of those years will be spent in illness.  You will spend 2 years dressing and putting on clothing.  4 and ½ years will be devoted to leisure time.  Is that all there is?  To put it another way you will spend 3 years at business meetings to make money and spend $89,281 on food.  You will eat 109,354 pounds of food.  You will make 1811 trips to McDonalds.  You will spend $6881 in vending machines.  You will eat 35,138 cookies and 1483 pounds of candy.  You will catch 304 colds, be involved in 6 motor vehicle accidents and be hospitalized 8 times if you are a man and 12 times if you are a woman.  Is that all there is?  The ages of man can be defined from pre-school years to high school years to college and the twenties to the years of raising a family to the older years of middle age to the years of retirement and ultimately to the last days by the words:  “spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.”  Is that it?  As the comedien Flip Wilson said it back in the sixties:  “If I had my whole life to live over again, I don’t think I’d have the strength.”

            Jesus said, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.”  Jesus said, “In this world you will have troubles.  But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”  Jesus said to the woman at the well, “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.  Jesus says to us all that in Him there is more to life and that it is eternal.  The One Who on the cross said, “I thirst” is that living water for all the thirsty here today.  The One Who as the risen Lord, conqueror of sin and death and Hell, once said, “I am with you always” is the answer to all those who ask the question, “Is the Lord among us or not”.  And when sin has taken its toll of us and stressed you to the point of breaking and given you pain that you think you will never be able to endure, I say to you with St. Paul , “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.  God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  And He says, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  Go to the Lord today and find out how wonderful life in Him is.  Put your worries at the foot of the cross.  See Jesus through your own crosses that you carry and know that He is right by your side.  Come to Him with all your thirsts, and let Him quench every one of them.  For why live your whole life over again even if you could – the life you have now is worth living for the Lord – and He gives you the strength you need every day.   Is the Lord among us or not?  You bet He is! Amen.