I don't watch Oprah very often, but on one of the occasions I did, quite a few years ago now, she had as a guest a financially successful artist who was telling people that he had learned that money was really not very important. At first, I thought it was a good message, not that different than one I have said on a number of occasions. But then, to demonstrate how unimportant money was, he took out a wad of bills and tore it into pieces. The audience gasped and Oprah asked the guest how much money he had just torn into pieces. Five hundred dollars, he said. Many of the audience members were black women, and they were clearly angry that he had done this. Oprah asked him if he understood the hostile reaction his action had provoked. He said he did, but he thought it was because they needed to let go of their attachment to money. And the more he talked the angrier those women got. I remember that, because it was a kind of epiphany for me. I had never before seen so clearly how differently people of different social circumstances can perceive a situation. For many of those women, putting food on the table, and shoes on their children, paying the rent and other necessities was a daily struggle. They knew that money was important because they knew from bitter experience what it was like to go without it. A man who could say that money was unimportant obviously had so much of it that he could afford not to care. They had to care about money because not caring would mean that their children would not eat, the power would get shut off and they would be evicted and living on the street. This wealthy artist obviously had no idea what their lives were like. He didn't get it.

I thought of that story as I read the story from Exodus about how the people of Israel were desperate for water. Water, after all, is a vital necessity, especially in a hot dry desert, and when we don't have any, we get in serious trouble very quickly. But for some reason, Moses doesn't seem to get it. Up to this point in the story, Moses has been portrayed as a hero. Here, he just sounds callous. "Why do you quarrel with me?" he asks, and then accuses them of lacking faith: "Why do you test the Lord?" But they aren't testing the Lord. They are thirsty. Can you blame them for demanding help? Can you blame them for criticizing a leader who fails to provide something so basic? Moses does, and comes across as defensive and completely out-of-touch.

He sounds a lot like Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, who famously asked why the poor were making such noise outside her palace window and was told that they had no bread. "Let them eat cake," was her infamous reply. From her privileged position, she just did not understand why the people were unhappy. Bread was one choice among many for her, so if she did not have any bread, then she could eat something else, cake or croissants, pheasant or venison. She was blind to the reality of life for the poor, for whom bread was the only thing they could afford, the mainstay of their diet. When there was no bread, they were desperate and frustrated and angry - so angry that they eventually initiated the bloody French Revolution, and Marie Antoinette lost her head, literally.

Understandably, when the people have a serious grievance and their leaders dismiss their concerns, the people become angry. In the story of Exodus, they protest that Moses had promised them freedom, but had led them out into the wilderness only for them to die of thirst. They are unruly, and Moses fears for his life, thinking he may well be stoned. This is the same thing that has been happening across North Africa and the Middle East over the past few months, as rising food prices have destabilized country after country after country. And their leaders, many of whom are fabulously wealthy, just do not get it. They don't understand why the people are so desperate, so unhappy, and their lack of comprehension inflames the situation even more.

I have to admit that I often don't get it either. A woman came to visit me this week, needing some help to buy food. Her income is so limited that she barely scrapes by month to month, and if she has any unexpected expenses - she needs medicine, or her vehicle breaks down - she has to choose between paying the rent or buying food. It is the reality for one in five people in Canada. One in five. But I don't get it. It is not my reality. It is easy for me to overlook that daily reality because my wife and I both have decently paying jobs. You know what they call us now, don't you? Dual Income, No Kids (D.I.N.K.s) And maybe we are, maybe our affluence makes it so easy to overlook the reality of poverty that we become insensitive, uncaring. To the poor, we may well seem like dinks in a quite different sense of the word.

It is a quite common problem really. Privileged people often don't understand the reality of the impoverished. Powerful people don't understand what life is like for the vulnerable. Men don't get what life is like for women. White people don't understand what life is like for natives and other minorities. Straight people don't understand what life is like for gay and lesbian people. The reverse is also true, but not to the same extent. The poor, vulnerable, less powerful members of society are often invisible to the powerful. But the powerful are not invisible to the powerless, and they often have a much better understanding of our lives than we do of theirs. That is why, as someone wise once said, the first duty of love is to listen, the second duty of love is to listen, and the third duty of love is to listen. If we do not listen to what life is like for those whose lives are different, we will never get it.

Moses doesn't get it, but God does, according to the story. When Moses brings the problem to God's attention, God doesn't criticize the people, but addresses their need, and provides water, fresh, living water, running water. Moses is insensitive, but God knows what we need, and takes action to provide it. And even then, Moses doesn't get it. He names the place not for God's miraculous deliverance but for the people's complaint. Moses, frankly, at least in this story, is an idiot.

Jesus does quite a bit better. In his encounter with the Samaritan woman, Jesus recognizes a deeper level of thirst, less immediate, but no less important. He meets a Samaritan woman, who is doubly discriminated against - first because she is a Samaritan and second because she is a woman. But there is more: She comes to the well in the heat of the day, when most women came in the morning or the evening. Why doesn't she come at the same time as everyone else? She is a social outcast, because she has been married so many times and is living with someone without getting married. Today much of the social stigma associated with women who get involved in intimate relations outside of marriage has diminished, but you can imagine the names they would have called her back then. She is triply discriminated against: she is a Samaritan, a woman, and a loose woman at that. She must have been desperately lonely, and in her loneliness who can blame her for accepting whatever intimacy her current lover offered. Jesus, in this conversation, recognizes her lonliness, her thirst for acceptance as a deep emotional need, less immediate than the thirst of the Israelites, but just as important. And just as God addresses the needs of the Israelites, so Jesus meets her need, breaking the taboos that prevented Jews from talking with Samaritans, that prevented men from talking with women, that prevented the respectable from fraternizing with sinners. Jesus looks beyond the labels, beyond the stereotypes and treats her as a person worthy of respect and dignity. He not only treats her as worthy of his own respect, but he empowers her. In a small miracle, this outcast becomes his first apostle, one of the first to bear witness to him and to bring others to faith. She becomes the first to recognize Jesus and the one who leads others to faith in him. Jesus accepts her just as she is, unconditionally, and she becomes a leader in the movement he is starting.

Each of us brings our own thirst to this place this morning. For some, our needs are for practical, immediate needs, like the Israelite need for drinking water. For some, we need less tangible, but no less important things: love, acceptance, hope, respect, dignity. Whatever our need, we believe in a God who knows our needs and does not condemn us for them. We believe in a God who offers drink to the thirsty and love to the lonely and calls us to do the same. Amen.