The children of our congregation have an advantage we adults do not: our children are raised in Sunday School on the Godly Play way of story-telling. They are taught to wonder as they hear Bible stories. They have learned that each story they hear is another opportunity for them to learn about themselves and God by wondering. They wonder about the characters in the story, they wonder how things look and where they go, they wonder where they are in the story, they wonder how the story might change if one of the elements or a character is changed, they wonder about what the story has to say to them, they wonder how to respond. They wonder, and as they wonder they fit these God stories into their own life stories.

Wondering isn't just for children. Wondering is a tool we hope our children will use their whole lives. And if this is a good tool for them, why not for us? Why wouldn't adults develop their wondering tools? Systematic holy wondering is what they teach us in seminary, but I hope I'm not the Official Wonder-er at Springwater. I hope each of us has a healthy sense of holy wonder, and I especially hope that holy wonder is what fills us as we gather for worship. I hope our sense of holy wonder is so finely developed that we attend to each encounter with the Divine, whether that encounter is in corporate worship or in the mundane. Ordinary bread or juice, ubiquitous essential water.

For five Sundays we have heard about a woman who encountered the divine presence in water. Five Sundays. Granted, it's a long story, but who could have imagined so many words wrung out of so small an encounter with Jesus. Granted, we have put the Samaritan woman's story next to different Old Testament stories, and have discovered that new neighbors bring new understandings. But five!

We first read our story with that of Adam and Eve's attempted short-cut to becoming like God, and as we learned of their refusal to accept responsibility for eating the forbidden fruit, we discovered that God "holds back" on the promised consequences of sin. We learned that God offers instead, Living Water through Jesus. Another chance.

Then we read the story with the call of Abram, the first to hear God's call to leave a familiar but dead-end home, in order to embrace gifts God only promised. For the Samaritan woman, after a lifetime of rejections, dead ends, and broken dreams, an outsider offers her himself (the Gift of God), offering Living Water as refreshment from her pain.

Then we read the story with that of water from a rock in the wilderness. The Israelites, lost in the wilderness and dying of thirst, cry to Moses, "Give us something to drink!" Jesus staked more than his thirst on the parched-and-nearly-dead-of-loneliness woman. As he and the woman wrangled about worship-in-spirit-and-truth, the truth began to dawn that worship is about delight-God's delight in us. That notion is as astonishing and refreshing as water gushing from a dry rock in the middle of the desert!

Then last week the anointing of David as king of Israel reminded us that even as God chose the unlikely David and the completely unsuitable woman, God chose us. God's explains to Samuel that "God looks on the heart." That's why God's choices don't fit our sense of right and orderly. God chose us, proved by the waters of our baptism.

That's a lot to hear from just one story. I have deeply enjoyed the luxury of being immersed in one story all through Lent, and I thank you all for being my companions on this journey. Every week has been a delight as God continues to surprise me with new revelations and insights. For me, there are still so many things to wonder about. I wonder why the townspeople heard her so readily (an outcast!). I wonder what the disciples said to each other about the woman. I wonder how the woman got from "you must be a prophet" to "he can't be the Messiah, can he?" I wonder how talk about husbands triggered talk about appropriate worship. But the most important "wonder" question is, I wonder where you are in the story.

Nobel Prize winner and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, says in his book, Night, that the journey of faith is dialogue with God, asking God the questions, allowing God to place the answers in our lives, praying for the strength to ask the right questions. My Namaste teacher recommended a novel about this story called, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple, told from the Samaritan woman's perspective. The novel uses three essential spiritual tools: ask the questions, let go of what you already "know" are the answers, and write your own story. Jesus' promise of Living Water means that the Samaritan woman's story is not a tragedy, that she is not stuck in a disastrous ending. Better than "happily ever after," the new ending means life, abundance, fullness, redemption.

Today's Old Testament lesson of dry bones prophesied to life reminds us that God is always in the business of bringing life to what seems to be dead. Hoping that you will continue to ask where you are in our story, here is a poem about the Woman at the Well, written by Patricia Clemens Repikoff. Ms Repikoff is a Roman Catholic Parish Associate in the Seattle area, and she has given me permission to read this poem in worship, and to post it on our website.

The Woman at the Well

I am a Samaritan woman.
I was born
with a dust storm
twisting
in my soul.

As I grew I had no child's
                 song,
only cries,
                 while thirst's ember
                                  smoldered in my scorched soul.

My roots shallow,
I roamed from hope
                 to dream,
                 and sucked short sweetness
                 from promises
                 that dried like dust
                                  on my lips.

From teachers
I begged rain
                 for my tender roots.
Their scorn
                 choked like
                 sand
                 in my throat.

I rushed to drink my fill
                 of God's truth,
but rabbis guarded gates saying
                 I was unclean,
                 I couldn't enter
                 lest I sour the rivers of God.

I bathed in the passion
                 and the favors of men.
But all was delusion
                 rising like vapor
                 in the heat of my longing.

My sole sister,
                 noonday sun,
                 walked with me.
                 My hope withered.
                 My heart grew hard.
My mouth stocked stones
                 for those whose stares
                                  were sticks,
                                  poking,
                                  tearing
                                  my thin wall of being.

One noon
when others were inside,
I stood at the well.

A Jew without a jar
                 asked me for a drink.
I sized him up.

"Give you a drink?
Leave me alone!
Don't you know
                 my thirst draws ash?
                 my jar spills spoiled water?
Stay away!"

He stood his ground.
He would not leave.
He shook his head.

He said
there was another well
                 closer, deeper
                 where water
                 lived forever
                 beneath the sands
                                  of longing.

"Give me THIS water, sir!
Show me the path!
Take me!
Take my jar!"

He smiled,
asked me to follow.
I took him in.

We descended
                 breaking
                 layers of lies,
                                  lovers,
                                          and loss-

Till his words tapped
my bedrock,
snapping and
cracking it open!

Life ripped wide open within me
                 spewing showers of dreams
                                  and hopes long forgotten!

I gulped at
                 the God gushing in me
                                  leaping like geysers
                                  rolling, splashing my soul.

I played!
                 I danced
                                  in the pools of my goodness!

Joy roared like a river
                 rolling and crashing
                 over my banks.
No jar could contain me!

I rushed into town like a flash flood!

"COME AND SEE
                 COME AND SEE
                 A PROPHET
                                  WHO ENTERED MY WASTELAND,
                                  SANG ME MY STORY
                                  AND STRUCK SPRINGS OF TRUTH
                                                   DEEP IN ME AS
                                                   FROM STONES
                                                                    IN THE SINAI!

"WANDER NO FURTHER
                 IN YOUR DESERTS
                                  OF LONGING.

THIS IS OUR CHIRST.
LET HIM LEAD US
                 TO WELLSPRINGS OF LIFE!

COME, LET US DRINK DEEPLY
                 ALL THE DAYS
                                  OF OUR LIVES!"

Reprinted by permission of the author, Patricia Clemens Repikoff, from Dashed Dreams and Diamonds: Dangerous Memories and Impatient Truths: Stories From Seven Women of the Gospel, printed by the members of St Therese Parish, Seattle, Washington, copyright 1998 by Patricia Clemens Repikoff.