Breathing Under Water: Living the Story Forward

Psalm 78:1–7; John 4:5–42

There is a difference between giving advice and bearing witness.

 

Advice usually begins with what someone else should do.

 

Witness begins with what God has done.

 

Advice can be useful. Sometimes we need a next step, a practical tool, or a wiser way to face what is in front of us. But witness stands on the ground of our own life and says, “Here is where mercy met me. Here is where I was not left alone. Here is what grace has been doing in me.”

 

That is where we land in this final week of Breathing Under Water.

 

Step Twelve says that, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

 

Before we go further, I want to say again what we have tried to say throughout this series. We are borrowing the wisdom of the Twelve Steps from recovery communities with humility and gratitude. These steps come from people and communities who have practiced honesty, surrender, accountability, repair, prayer, and service as matters of life and death. For those in recovery, these are not sermon illustrations. They are lived practices, often held with sponsors, meetings, daily disciplines, and hard-won trust. This worship series is not a replacement for that work. It is an invitation for the church to learn from it reverently, and to recognize that all of us need grace that is honest enough to heal us and strong enough to send us.

 

It is tempting to hear Step Twelve as spiritual graduation.

We worked the steps.
We learned the lessons.
We reached the end.
Now we go help other people.

 

But Step Twelve is not graduation.

It is overflow.

 

It is not the moment when we become experts in someone else’s pain. It is the moment when grace has moved deeply enough in us that it begins to move through us.

 

We have been met by God in powerlessness, hope, surrender, truth-telling, confession, willingness, repair, prayer, and daily practice. Not perfectly. Not completely. But really.

 

And now the question becomes:

What do we do with the mercy we have received?

 

Psalm 78 gives us one answer:

“We will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”

 

The psalm is not asking God’s people to brag about themselves or pretend their story is simple. It is asking them to remember truthfully and speak faithfully.

 

Tell what God has done.

Tell the story so those who come after you can set their hope in God.

 

Mercy is not meant to end with the one who receives it.

Mercy becomes memory.

Memory becomes hope.

Hope becomes blessing.

 

And John’s gospel introduces us to a person who lives this movement.

 

We just studied this story back in February – let’s see what new thing might be revealed in our revisitation today.

 

Jesus comes to a well in Samaria at noon. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water. Jesus asks her for a drink.

 

You will perhaps remember that boundaries are being crossed.

 

Jewish and Samaritan communities carried a long history of hostility. Men and women did not usually speak to one another in public like this. Religious difference, ethnic division, social suspicion, and ordinary human weariness are all gathered at that well.

 

Jesus does not begin with a sermon.

He begins with thirst.

“Give me a drink.”

There is something tender about that.

 

Jesus does not approach her as a problem to solve. He does not treat her as a project. He asks for water.

 

And then, in the conversation that follows, he offers living water.

Water that promises to become a spring.

Water that does not simply satisfy thirst for a moment, but wells up into eternal life.

 

It is likely that this woman has been spoken to as if she were only a symbol of moral failure. But the story does not set us up to shame her. Instead it reveals a woman whose life is complicated, whose relationships have been painful, unstable, or judged by others, and who is seen by Jesus with truth and mercy at the same time.

 

Jesus tells the truth about her life, and he does not humiliate her.

 

He knows her story, and he does not reduce her to her story alone.

He sees what is real, and he also sees what is possible.

 

That has been one of the deepest hopes of this whole series: that God meets us truthfully and mercifully. That we do not have to hide. That truth does not destroy us. That grace would not leave us unchanged.

 

At the well, this woman receives something more than information about God.

She receives an encounter.

She receives living water.

And then she leaves her water jar behind.

 

She came carrying a jar because she needed water. But after meeting Jesus, the thing she came to carry is no longer the only thing she carries.

 

She goes back to the city and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”

 

Come and see.

That is her witness.

Not, “I have everything figured out.”

Not, “Let me explain the whole mystery of God.”

Not, “I am now qualified to manage your spiritual life.”

 

Come and see.

Come see the one who saw me.

Come see the one who told the truth without turning away.

Come see the one who met me at the well.

 

That is how we invite others to breathe underwater.

 

We do not have to pretend we are not or have never been afraid of the water. We do not have to fix, control, manage, or rescue another. We invite others by becoming people whose lives say, “You are not alone here. God can meet you here too.”

 

We bless others by remembering where God has moved in us.

We bless others by telling the truth gently.

We bless others by practicing the same mercy with others that God has practiced with us.

 

The Samaritan woman does not carry living water back to her community as a possession she controls.

 

She carries an invitation.

 

And because of her testimony, others come to Jesus. They encounter him for themselves. Eventually they can say to the Samaritan woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves.”

 

That is faithful witness.

It does not make us the center.

It points beyond us.

It says, “Come and see,” and then makes room for others to encounter Christ for themselves.

 

There is a version of helping that keeps us at the center. There is a version of witness that becomes performance. There is a version of service that is really a need to be needed. There is a version of blessing others that quietly asks them to make us feel useful or wise or healed.

 

But Step Twelve says we carry the message and practice the principles.

 

We carry the message: God meets us where we are.

We practice the principles: honesty, humility, surrender, confession, willingness, repair, prayer, and service.

 

We do not just speak about grace; we become more gracious.

We do not just tell people God can be trusted; we become more trustworthy.

We do not just invite people to breathe underwater; we sit with them in the water without panicking, taking over, or demanding that they be less afraid than they are.

 

That is blessing.

Not fixing.

Not rescuing.

Blessing.

 

To bless someone is to help them recognize the presence of God already reaching for them. It is to speak hope without denying truth. It is to offer companionship without control. It is to say, with our words and our lives, “There is grace here too.”

 

And maybe that is the final gift of this series.

We have not learned how to escape being human.

We have not learned how to avoid pain, grief, sin, failure, limitation, or need.

 

We have been practicing how to breathe.

How to tell the truth and stay open to grace.

How to receive mercy and let it move through us.

How to be healed in ways that make us more loving, not more impressive.

 

After communion today, we will pray with our breath.

Inhale: God is with me.

Exhale: I am not alone.

And then we will light a sending candle from the Christ candle.

Not because this work is finished.

Not because we have arrived.

 

But because the light does not stay only here.

The breath does not stay only here.

The mercy does not stay only here.

 

We are sent to bless, to witness, to say, “Come and see,” to help someone else remember that even in deep water, they are not alone.

 

So as this series ends, the invitation is simple.

Pay attention to where God has met you.

 

Do not turn it into a performance.

Do not turn it into advice too quickly.

Do not turn someone else’s pain into your project.

Carry the mercy honestly.

Tell what God has done.

Practice what grace has taught you.

Bless others from the place where you have been blessed.

And when you find someone else standing at the edge of the water, afraid they cannot breathe, do not shame them. Do not rush them. Do not rescue them in order to feel strong.

Bear witness.

Stay near.

Point to Christ.

 

Say, “Come and see.”

There is living water here.

There is breath here.

There is mercy here.

 

God is with us.

We are not alone.

God, meet us where we are,

and lead us toward wholeness.

Amen.