Homily Outline Combining Resources

Homily outline on life giving water and the stranger: squeezing water from a rock

• The physical need for water
  • Some creatures can survive for days, weeks, even months without water
    • A cheetah for 10 days
    • a bat for 6 months
    • a desert tortoise for 1 year
    • a kangaroo rat for 10 years
  • Human beings don’t have that kind of physical tolerance
    • Generally speaking we can last a few days without water
    • That is if we are in relatively good health
  • Water is critical for our biological survival because of many characteristics
    • Its cohesive capacity to bond with other molecules
    • Its ability to support cellular structure
    • Its buffering power against dangerous effects of acids and bases
  • The United Nations estimated that in 2019 over 2 billion people lacked access to safe drinking water
• Where did this essential life ingredient come from?
  • Water covers over 70% of the planet earth but this was not always so
  • Some scientists believe water is an alien visitor to earth
    • When 4 billion years ago
    • A heavy bombardment of countless meteors delivered oceans to earth
  • Supporting evidence is the existence of huge amounts of water in asteroids
    • Which scientists are hoping to extract
    • In order to establish infrastructures for surviving in space
  • Others belief that water was already inside our planet and came to the surface over time
    • Hydrous materials have recently been discovered inside the earth
    • Prompting some to believe that there is more water below earth’s surface than the oceans above [up to 6 quintillion gallons!]
• Jesus as a source of living water
  • Folk wisdom teaches that you can’t get blood out of a turnip
    • But scientists are now genetically modifying plants to produce human blood proteins
  • Similar wisdom teaches that you can’t squeeze water from a stone
    • Though scientists are proving that wrong as wel
    • Astrophysicists extracting water from meteorites
    • and hydrogeologists extracting it from the earth’s crust
  • Metaphorically one could say that the exodus people in the first reading
    • “squeezed” water out of the rock at Massah and Meribah
    • Where they “tested” the Lord
  • The Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel did not have to squeeze life-giving water out of Jesus – no one did
    • Rather Jesus freely gives his life-giving water
    • Which ironically squeezes the truth out of her
    • And liberates her for true worship and discipleship
      • Jesus’ life-giving water has notable and essential characteristics for sustaining Christian living
        • Jesus-water has a cohesive capacity, allowing even strangers to bond
        • His life-giving gift is essential for supporting the integrity of a faith community
        • His gracious abundance has its own buffering power against the acidic prejudice, violence and hatred that too often poisons our environment
      • Some of these effects are clearly on display in the gospel
        • Where his countercultural hospitality transforms not only one woman’s life
        • But opens his disciples’ eyes to the beauty of the stranger
        • And through the “holy hydration” of this one woman, an entire community is transformed into believers
• Our Liquid Mission
  • One powerful characteristic of water is its capacity for cohesiveness
    • Sometimes called the “universal solvent”
  • The Jesus gift is a gift of cohesion, community building, and stranger welcoming
  • Jesus does this by treating each individual, like the Samaritan woman, as an individual
    • In a word he “individuates” embracing the fact that every “them” is an individual
  • In Baptism Christians not only were graced with this life-giving water
    • but also watered, nourished, hydrated for mission
    • to be a pipeline of this infinite resource to others
  • We do so by growing as a cohesive community in justice and grace
    • Jointly deploying sometimes hidden or untapped reservoirs of respect and empathy in the face of acrimony and alienation
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his ”Rime of the Ancient Mariner” memorably wrote:
    • Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink
    • Billions of fellow human beings today have no access to clean drinking water
    • Billions more are thirsting for justice, for hope, for peace and for affirmation
  • Today we reaffirm our baptismal journey
    • In solidarity with the elect who these holy days journey toward their own initiation into Jesus’ life-giving waters at Easter
    • As we drink of this abundance in word and sacrament, in community and fellowship
    • We commit ourselves to be lifelines of justice, conduits of mercy, ambassadors of the shocking hospitality revealed in Jesus, our true source of life.