Is God Among Us?
Is God among us or not? Often when we hear the stories of the Israelites in the wilderness. It would be easy to condemn the Hebrews for their continuous complaining. How could they be so ungrateful after God delivered them from the captivity and slavery under Pharaoh? But each time they face an obstacle, they start to complain again.

I guess I complain a lot too. We complaint about the whether or if things doesn’t seem to go as we expected…It is easy to get irritated…

As I put myself in the Israelite’s shoes, some compassion came out. How might I feel if I had spent all my life as a slave, always one misspoken word or burned meal away from death, only to find myself “free” in such a foreign environment? How would I feel if my child gets hungry but there’s no food I can offer? Even if I knew that God has been gracious to me in the past, I might very well have started question again whether God among us when I discovered we were without any water.

So then, our question would be, “How can we be mindful of God’s presence and grace in the midst of difficulties? “

As I read the Exodus passage carefully, it says, “From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded.” So if they went there “ as the Lord commanded,” and that turned out to be a place there was no water, the logical response would be either to trust and wait for God, or to quarrel and blame Moses and God. The good thing was that Moses knew how to cry out to the Lord and as he did, God give them a solution. “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out of it, so that people will be drinking.”

What surprised me in the story was that God did not seem to blame or scold the Israelites. God did not engage in the quarrel of the people. God just gave them a solution... God sustains us and gives us what we need. Engaging is not necessarily the way, when people are so much is need, is it ?… God just gave…so simple. Strike the rock, and the living water will come out of it. Amen.

I would like to move on to look at the gospel reading. This story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman is one of several stories about Jesus’ encounter with others. Right before today’s reading was the story of Nicodemus seeking Jesus at night. That story not only introduces Nicodemus by his name, but also a leader of the Jews. In contrast in today’s story, the woman was called as a Samaritan woman and mention is made that Jews do not share things with Samaritans.

In Jesus’ time Jews and Samaritan’s had enmity to each other and Jews disdained the Samaritans, as ritually unclean people who had mingled with foreigners and diluted their culture.

The reader in Jesus’ time would be quite aware of Jesus’ crossing boundaries of race, gender and also morality. In those days, women and men didn’t talk in public. In synagogue, for example, women sat with women and men sat with men. The moral issue would have been related to the judgment against a woman having five husbands. Surely a woman who has had five husbands is not an appropriate conversation partner for Jesus.

Recently, some interpreters of scripture have said that she must be victim. I am not sure how. Another essay I read told of how when this story was presented to women with aids in Africa, they were very sympathetic. They all said, she must be an aids carrier, giving the disease to her husbands who died….but she is not affected….

But as we hear Jesus crossed these boundaries and talked with this woman despite their differences, Jesus didn’t seem to dwell on the differences…Those difference were stepping stones for crossing the bridge to the other side of river. In the end, Jesus said, “The hours is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth…

Starting with very different socioeconomic background—Jews and Samaritan, man and woman, morally upright and wrong, different worshipping places —eventually Jesus move the conversation into the commonness, which is God who is Spirit and Truth….God seeks the true worshipper regardness of our human background.

The image I got from the way they interact was like striking the rock…..the woman especially was not moving away shyly….She was tough and openly engaging with the stranger.

Jesus was equally assertive.

God seeks the thirst and inviting us to strike the rock, so that the water, the living water comes out.

Another point I would like to make is not just the woman whose thirst got met, but also Jesus as well….he had been tired out by his journey…feeding people, teaching people….but at the end of this interaction with the Samaritan woman, his response to the disciples who offer of food to Jesus was, “I have food to eat that you do not know about. My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work…”

One final thing…the Samaritan woman’s witness….after she told the people about her encounter with Jesus, she continues, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’

Faith seems like a journey…engaging with God, witness to people, but then doubt, uncertainty. Or despite doubt and uncertainty…. The goodnews is that God meets us in our doubt and uncertainty.. God pours out the living water. And our job is to strike the rock. Where and when? And how? Even then God will teach us patiently one by one Amen.


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