Jesus answered her, ‘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.’ (John 4:10)

Living water. What does Jesus mean by “living water?” The phrase was commonly used to refer to running water, like a stream or river, as opposed to a pond or lake. That is what this woman thinks he is talking about at first. That would be in line with our Old Testament passage this morning from Exodus. The water God loosed from the rock in the wilderness was running/living water, clear and good to drink.

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I took a drama class in high school where we learned about writing, set design and eventually production. We got to pick a short play to do, just for us, no audience. There were only about 10 or 12 of us in the class so everyone had a part except Mel Coffee, who was the director.

I remember almost nothing about that little play. I can’t tell you what it was about, my character’s name or anything else except there was one scene – one line, really – where Mel really pushed me. Ironically, the line was, “What do you want from me?” I tried it. Mel said no, say it like this, “What do you WANT from me?” So I said it just like he said it. He said no, say it like, “What do you WANT from me?” I apologize because I’m probably still not saying it right, except we went back and forth like that for a long time until I eventually got exasperated with Mel and I screamed at him, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” And he said, “That’s it!”

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Have you ever looked into a clear night sky and noticed how the stars twinkle? Well, that isn’t exactly accurate. It is somewhat of an optical illusion, albeit a very nice one. Stars don’t twinkle. The twinkling we see is due to things like humidity and the shifting pockets of air in the various layers of our atmosphere. And the twinkling wasn’t much of an issue for most of the ways we’ve viewed and even used stars for navigation and whatnot for most of human history. You can make out Orion and tell a story, you can mark time by their apparent progress across the sky or you can navigate. Polaris, the North Star, is there whether or not it’s twinkling.

But when scientists – specifically astrophysicists – are peering deep into interstellar space to look at stars, galaxies and the planets in their courses to learn about the nature and history of our universe, twinkling is a problem. They need precision. So, the best observatories are built high where the air is thin and in low humidity. But that’s really not good enough.

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