Break in the Cup

Third Sunday in Lent

Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

David Wilcox calls "Break in the Cup" the “anti-love song,” his protest against the romantic mythology that says all we have to do is find that one person who will make us forever happy, and how hard could that possibly be?



The couple in the song have the dreamy-eyed notion that the nectar of their love should slake every possible thirst. As a result, they drive each other crazy because they fail to recognize that there is “a break in the cup that holds love inside us all.”

I sometimes wonder if by overstressing “personal relationship” in the vocabulary of our faith, we fall prey to a similar kind of romantic mythology, substituting Jesus for that one person who will make us happy. Of course the blessed fellowship of the Trinity overflows instead of leaks out, but such an emphasis on the relationship that always fulfills can make us forget that there is still a break in our cup.

Jeremiah names the two evils God’s people commit: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (2:13).

This week’s passages from Exodus and Psalms keep us from forgetting that.

God makes a way through the water where there was no way. But in the wilderness, the saved ones murmur to Moses that God either can’t or won’t provide the water they demand for their momentary thirst. Moses follows the Lord’s command to strike the rock at Horeb. The water comes at a cost, however. Horeb, the holy mountain, becomes for them the place called Massah (“test”) and Meribah (“find fault”) because the people put God to the test by asking, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Psalm 95 leads the worshippers in recognizing God as “the rock of our salvation.” A series of majestic praises and commands pours out: make a joyful noise and bow down to the God who holds the depths of the earth and the sea in his hand. Suddenly the Psalm veers back to Massah and Meribah, the place where hard hearts stop the ears from hearing the voice of the Lord. The Psalm concludes in ominous warning. “Beware this does not happen to you.”

One way I heed this warning is to take every possible opportunity to slam Bachelor/Bachelorette romance and what a dear friend, blessed be his memory, called “goochy-goo religion.” Astringent reminders about broken cisterns are an important part of the whole counsel of God. As a preacher, though, I’ve discovered that negative illustrations come more easily to mind than positive ones, in the same way, I suppose, that novelists say that evil characters are more “interesting” to create than good ones. So the passage from John’s Gospel takes its prominent place in the symphony of witnesses for this Lord’s Day.

John 4 has all the makings of a romantic adventure. In the deep pattern of Israel’s communal memory, the well is the place for meeting and betrothal. Abraham’s servant meets Rebekah, Isaac’s future wife, there (Gen. 24). Moses meets Zipporah and her six sisters at the well and soon marries her. Most pointedly, at the well Jacob meets Rachel (Gen. 29). A meeting (“he kissed her and wept aloud”) and a marriage lead to the twelve tribes of Israel.

All the ingredients of a foundational story are in place. Then – a big surprise. Maybe this is John’s ‘anti-love story.’ More likely it’s a true love story, more grizzled than sappy, of God at work in the world through Jesus Christ.

We’ve described the ethnic, gender, and religious divisions between Jesus and the Samaritan woman so often that it’s easy to forget that these divisions were/are as visceral and volatile as a Crimean election. In a sermon I heard him preach on this text over 30 years ago, Dr. Fred Sampson cut to the chase. “To get a true picture of what’s going on,” he said, “you have to picture a black man like me being all alone with a white woman in a rural setting: all those years of habits and traditions, all the deep, deep prejudices we can keep covered up in groups, but which rush to the surface and flare up in a one-on-one situation.”

That’s where Jesus sets up shop, except that he isn’t selling anything. In fact, he puts himself in a position of need, something his followers would do well to remember. The conversation is about water, typically on John’s multiple levels of meaning. “The water that I will give,” Jesus promises her, “will become…a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

I never tire of Helen Keller’s description of that unforgettable day in the summer of 1887 when teacher Anne Sullivan led her down the path to the well house. She placed Helen’s hand under the spout while spelling in the other hand the word “water.” Somehow the mystery of language was revealed and awakened her soul. For the rest of the day she lived in the primordial glory of naming creation. “Everything had a name…[and] every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life,” she said. She remembered a doll that she had torn apart in an earlier temper tantrum. As she tried to put the pieces back together, her eyes filled with tears, “and for the first time [I] felt repentance and sorrow.” Every word she learned that day “made the world blossom for me, ‘like Aaron’s rod with flowers,’” and on her bed that night, she “for the first time longed for a new day to come.”

Amid the crucial warnings so desperately needed by a culture that often seems clueless not only about covenant but also about the human condition, may our words about the water Jesus gives never lose their wonder.

Changing the metaphor, Fred Craddock speaks a wise word to preachers on behalf of their congregations: “Every once in a while, just take me by the hand and let me run my fingers through the unsearchable riches of God’s grace and feel that. Just take me by the hand and let me walk off the size of my inheritance in Jesus Christ. Just let me experience the size of all that.”

(By the way, there are other songs besides “Break in the Cup” in David Wilcox’s musical repertoire of relationships. “Kindness” is one of my favorites).

There came a point in their conversation when Jesus asks the woman a question about her husband. Richard Lischer says, “Without the awkward details of the woman’s sexual history, we would have only a Gnostic dialogue of truth and enlightenment. With them, we have the reality check that saves our lives (“Strangers in the Night,” Christian Century, 2/24/99). This reality check sends her back home telling her village not about the one who made her happy but the one “who told me everything I ever did.”

Lischer reminds us that when the conversation between Jesus and the woman concluded, Jesus did not ride off on a white horse or catch a passing fiery chariot. Instead, he submits to the way of the cross, where he, the Keeper of Living Waters, will say, “I thirst.” “But once he is dead and pierced, out will flow blood and water.”

We cannot trade empty for empty
We must go to the waterfall
For there’s a break in the cup that holds love
Inside us all.

We are called into that life where water and warning are held together, a life marked not by nice Gnostic conversations but by life-saving reality checks. This is the life, in the words of the Apostle Paul, of a hope forged out of suffering, endurance and character, a “hope that does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).