Sermon Notes — August 9, 2026
“The River of Dreams”
August 9, 2026
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
John 4:5-15 (CEB)
I want to offer a special thanks to Dann for allowing so many of us to participate this morning. It was so much fun to sing with Scott and the band, especially a song that is so familiar to so many of us. So thank you, Dann, for that opportunity.
“River of Dreams” is so upbeat and so catchy, that it’s easy to miss the gravity – the depth – of the lyrics. According to Billy Joel the song actually came to him in a dream, but he initially had no interest in pursuing it. To him, it felt too religious – he called it a “gospel song” – and he didn’t think he had any business writing it because he identifies as an atheist – someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of God.
And yet, he said, the song wouldn’t let go of him. He had to write it just to get it out. Regardless of whether or not Billy Joel believes in the existence of God, what he has accomplished in “River of Dreams” is to name a deep longing that exists within each of us. At various points in the song he says that he is searching for something sacred, something that was part of his soul. He puts words to the exhaustion of his search and the fear that it will take him forever.
Billy Joel is not writing theology, so we don’t need to try to make the lyrics say something they’re not meant to say. What he has managed to do, however, is to name the human condition.
Will you pray with me and for me?
The text that Jim read for us is a small part of a much larger story that we often call “The Woman at the Well.” At its heart, it is a story of longing.
Jesus is leaving Judea to go north to Galilee and his path takes him through the region of Samaria. Now, we’re not going to get into the history and politics and theology of the hatred that existed between Samaritans and the Jews. We will simply take John at his word when tells at the end of verse 9 when he says that Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other. I’ve always thought it was interesting that John tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria. Most Jews traveling from Judea to Galilee would have gone around Samaria. Jesus went through.
Much has been made of the woman that he meets at the well. Some of us have heard that she comes to the well in the middle of the day because she’s an unmarried woman with a male roommate, and because of that she’s too ashamed to come in the morning when everyone else comes. In fact, her choice to come to the well at high noon stands in stark opposition to Nicodemus in John 3 who comes to Jesus under the cover of night. She is at the well in the middle of the day because she has no reason to hide in the shadows.
We assume that she’s had five husbands because she’s immoral. But that can’t be true, because as a woman in the Ancient Near East she couldn’t initiate a divorce. Either they’ve all left her or they’ve all died.
When she runs back to the village of Sychar and invites everyone to come meet the man who has told her everything she’s ever done, she’s not implying that he’s revealed all of her deep, shameful secrets. She is celebrating Jesus’s desire to know who she is.
The woman at the well, in fact, is one of a number of women in the gospels who are willing to engage Jesus in deep theological conversation. We’ll talk about another one next week.
Jesus is exhausted as he sits down next to this unnamed woman and he asks her for a drink of water. She has a bucket, of course, and he has nothing. She quickly points out the impropriety of Jesus’s request.
Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?
And this is just the entry point Jesus needs to engage her in deep conversation.
He replies,
If you knew who was asking for water, you would ask me to give you water, and I would give you living water.
Water shows up throughout scripture in a lot of ways – the water of baptism is a sign of new life; a storm on the Sea of Galilee incites terror in the disciples. Water is also a symbol of human longing.
The prophet Isaiah brought words of hope to the people of Judah.
All of you who are thirsty, come to the water! Why spend your money for what isn’t food and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy? Listen and come to me! Listen and you will live! (Isaiah 55:1-3).
The Psalm writer in Psalm 42 sings
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God. (Psalm 42: 1-2)
Later in John’s gospel Jesus will say,
All who are thirsty should come to me!
All who believe in me should drink!
As the scriptures said concerning me: Rivers of life will flow out from within him.
Water is a symbol of human longing, of our desire for things that will satisfy us.
The woman at the well, like all of us, is searching for what will satisfy her. Her courage in letting Jesus lead her in conversation about what she wants is a word to all of us who may be afraid to name our deepest longings, who may be afraid to acknowledge that those longings even exist.
Let’s go back to the well.
When Jesus tells her that he can give her living water, she thinks of water that lives. Water that moves. She thinks of running water from a stream or a river.
But Jesus wants to give her life-giving water.
It’s a classic case of talking past each other, just like when Jesus and Nicodemus talk about being born again in chapter 3. Jesus is talking about being born from above, and Nicodemus wants to know how a grown man can be physically born again. The woman isn’t quite sure yet what Jesus is trying to give her, but she’s going to move the conversation along until she can figure it out.
Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.
And although she still thinks they’re talking about water – two hydrogens and one oxygen – she replies in the only appropriate way.
Sir, give me this water so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water.
What she wants, and who could blame her, is never to have to haul water from the well to her home again. But under that desire is the desire for living water, the Holy Spirit gushing up inside of us to give us true life – real life.
She came to the well to address her physical thirst, but Jesus sees her deeper spiritual need, the deeper spiritual need that we all have.
Some of you know that I was invited to preach at a camp meeting in Somerville TN a few weeks ago. A camp meeting, as I learned, is part family reunion, part revival, part Vacation Bible School, and this particular camp meeting is best described as rustic. It was very outside. And it was hot. And it took some intentionality to stay hydrated. I had two Owalas that I kept full at all times, but I didn’t have a water source in my room, so every night before I went to bed I filled up my Brita pitcher with water from the makeshift kitchen around the corner so I could have enough to drink during the night. It was very Little House on the Prairie if the Ingalls family had a window AC unit. I was very cognizant of my physical thirst, but when I got in bed the first night I acutely felt my spiritual thirst. I felt isolated in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was physically disconnected and I was disoriented by the newness and strangeness of it all. My go-to coping mechanism would normally have been my phone – I would have blown up Jay’s phone with texts – but there was no cell service. And so I laid there with my spiritual thirst – feeling disconnected and alone, longing for connection – and offered it to God in a whiny list of complaints followed by requests that God would just show up and bless my time there. And I felt connected.
I think it’s interesting that in “River of Dreams” the artist never names what he is looking for. It’s undefined, he says. It’s sacred, he says. But he doesn’t know what it is. And I wonder how often we experience the same inability to name what it is that we are longing for. We think we know what it is. We think – we hope – that longing will go away when we get the job, the money, the promotion, the house, the right relationship, the reputation, the title. But what we find is that every time we get what we thought we were longing for, another longing appears.
Of course that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pursue things that fulfill us. Our longings are often part of God’s call on our lives. The late Frederick Buechener reminds us that
"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." (Frederick Buechener)
Pursue the longings when they are part of God’s call, but remember that the longings aren’t ends in themselves. They point us to a greater, deeper longing that is at the foundation of our very being–the desire for connection with God.
As St. Augustine wrote in the 5th century
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Over these past five weeks the theme of dreams has guided us as we’ve explored our life with God. We end in the same place we began, remembering that all of our dreams, all of our longings, all of our yearnings – all of them point us back to our desire for God. A desire that exists in each of us.
And the good news of it all is that even before we are aware that this deep longing exists in us – long before we can identify it or acknowledge it, Jesus has already come looking for us. Jesus meets us where we are and invites us to recognize that he is there. That he has been there all along. Thanks be to God. Amen.