Every Abbey had a well; a source of living, safe drinking water. Some of the Abbeys were in such a state of decay that the only proof of their past was the still existing, still sacred well. Wells were everywhere and they were spiritual. 

The biblical narrative is full of wells; wells in the desert that save life to wandering people, springs of living water that emerge from the parched earth. Water of life means something powerful in an arid climate. I get that but in Ireland. It’s wet. The chance of rain is probably a little bit later if not now. And still wells are so sacred. 

Often the Irish wells I saw were Abbot or Abbess and connected to the work of healing and wholeness. Water was sacred, pre-Christian peoples understood the rivers to be alive with divinities. Water, even its abundance, matters. People yet today in Kildare pray for healing at St. Bridget's well. It’s the place where 1500 years ago she gathered her community, prayed, grazed her cows, churned her butter and drank from the water. Today people still gather and they still graze animals near by and they still drink the water and they tie a piece of fabric in the branches that hang to Bridget’s spirit.  

There is something about the well that holds such spiritual power. It is pure generosity. A spring of water, a source far below. You can’t earn it, you can’t make it. And you do have some work in co-creating it as a resource to share with others. And you and I do have work in caring for it, keeping the water safe and clean and life giving. 

Jesus speaks to the woman at the well, famously she is there in the heat of the day, avoiding the heat of the community's judgy glare and Jesus echoes the story of his people, there is water and there is water that is more than water (John 4:14). Later in John 7: 37 Jesus will echo the metaphor of living water again.

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.” As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” 

This theology of living water and this water of salvation comes from all the poetry and prophets he read and learned, and now its a part of his life. He read Isaiah, linking salvation and wells to joy. “Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3) 

The Hebrew people emerge from the dry places and so stories of wells matter, the sing for them “Spring up O Well! All of you sing to it” (Numbers 21: 16), they search for them, they dig them, they rebuild them, they find their grandfather's wells.  And these are the stories of salvation, people need water, people are thirsty and there is this remarkable gift just there below the surface. The well I love most is named by Hagar, the woman enslaved to Sarah and Abraham after their debacle in Egypt. Hagar’s life is hard and growing harder by the moment in her quest for life she is in the desert, the wilderness and she at long last finds a spring of water, a well and she names it “The Well of the One who lives and sees me” (Gen 16: 13-14). That’s a saving abundance and the power of being seen. 

The wells in the bible may save people but the other sort of delightful fun-fact about biblical wells is everyone gets together at the well. It’s like ancient tinder. Okay maybe not but it is how Moses meets his wife’s family, Issac’s servant meets Rebekah, Jacob meets Rachel, his favorite wife. And they all meet up at the well because these women draw water as an act of generosity to meet the stranger, to share the abundance of the well with others. 

That’s right, the well is a pattern of receiving and giving. Receive and give. Over and over and over and that’s why Jesus, just like the prophets before him, links it to salvation. 

Salvation is tangible. The well might be the perfect place to practice it literally and metaphorically. You can’t put up a fence. You can’t lock it up. It’s not just yours. You receive it. You share it. You receive it and you use it appropriately….which means don’t trash it. 

There is one occasion when Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.” And it’s not because he read them a prayer and everyone said you are my lord and savior, like I did in seventh grade FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes). It’s because he heals and changes, right here and right now and that is salvation. 

Zacchaeus is the wee little man, perhaps you remember signing about and no one likes him because he is a tax collector and as a tax collector he is colluding with the Roman overlords. And part of the benefit of colluding with the Romans is that when you collect the taxes you go ahead and collect a little bonus for yourself. Which is why no one likes a tax collector…and why no one likes it when Jesus hangs out with one. 

Zacchaeus seeks Jesus out, they spend time together, it changes Zacchaeus in a radical way. He gives half of everything he has away and then repatriates/returns with interest everything he took wrongfully, and he is a numbers guy so he has the spreadsheets to do new math. 

This is when Jesus says today salvation has come to this house: 

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycomore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house.’ (Luke 19)

Salvation is about receiving and giving, not receiving and keeping, receiving and hoarding. Salvation is about healing. See the root of the word is the same as salve, like what your great-grandma makes (it’s probably the only time a good church lady purchased a fifth of whiskey). It’s an ointment to heal. It’s to help your wounds and it's not about getting out of eternal damnation because God is a big scary Dad. It’s about us all participating in this dream of healing for everyone and everything. 

We receive and we give. We here in Omaha live at the edge of an inland sea, the enormous Ogallala Aquifer. It is a wonder. A gift of life under the vast, wind swept great plains. We live near river basins and great lakes and this water is all connected. It flows in and through and around, water has a lesson to teach about receiving and giving. I heard Bishop Curry share a bit about the river Jordan and how he has watched it flow into the Dead Sea. I don’t know if this is more of a great metaphor than it is science but the dead sea doesn’t give water to any other body, it just receives and receives and receives but it never gives. It’s death to just receive. 

We are called to a life of this radical generosity to receive and give. We are tempted to receive and keep, to sell the water and turn a profit. We are tempted to receive and trash, to pollute and as much as we want for whatever profit it might turn, we even have a great garbage patch in oceans. There are stories of companies polluting lakes and rivers, of oil spilling and even olympic swimmers who get sick in the Seine. 

But that’s not our faith. Our faith is in giving. Giving so much it seems like silly, radical behavior. And that’s in every way. Giving our wealth, our time and our hearts. Giving our votes and our tax dollars to clean up the rivers, the oceans and the seas and start honoring life. Giving our dollars to the collective good and making every dollar count in a way that gives life.  

We are here to participate in that well that gives life, that vast gift that is springing up even now. You can’t earn it. You can’t make it, you can only participate in it and with it and be a good steward of it. That’s radical generosity. 

That’s why even in a place where it rains and pours; wells are still sacred. 

Amen