SERMON OF MARCH 7, 2010
M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim-St. Luke’s United Church of Christ
“Mission: Possible – Quenching our Thirst for God”
Psalm 63:1-8, Isaiah 55:1-9, Luke 13:1-9
We are approaching the half way point on our Lenten journey of making space for God in our lives. The nest in front of the pulpit suggests our commitment to create this space.
As the Psalmist reminds us, we do this in the wilderness - in “a dry and weary land, where there is no water.” (Ps. 63:1b)
It’s in the wilderness where we become most acutely aware of what we thirst for most and most committed to quench our thirst.
“O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you…” says the Psalmist. (Ps. 63:1a)
Our souls thirst for the living water of God’s love in our lives – the living water of God’s presence, peace and purpose to sustain us and strengthen us on our wilderness journey.
We spent the first Sunday of Lent in the wilderness of Judea where the Holy Spirit led Jesus following his baptism in the Jordan. It was in this dry desert of rock and sand that Jesus’ thirst for God was quenched by the conviction of what it meant for him to live his own life and not the life the devil tempted him to live. (Luke 4:1-13)
If we’re honest with ourselves, we all know something of what it’s like thirsting for God in the wilderness of forces urging us to live someone’s life other than our own.
Last Sunday we found Jesus in a different sort of wilderness.
As he journeyed to Jerusalem some Pharisees came and warned that Herod wanted to kill him. (Luke 13:31) And Jesus knew he was in the wilderness of a world full of forces working to destroy him and deny the power of his love and his justice.
Who isn’t familiar with the forces at work in our world diminishing or denying the power of God’s love and justice revealed in the One journeying to Jerusalem?
This week Jesus is still on the journey to Jerusalem when some people describe another type of wilderness – one that all of us enter, at one time or another in our lives – the wilderness of wondering why such bad things happen to some people and not others – the wilderness of living in a world where there are no easy answers to life’s most difficult questions.
They came to Jesus with two recent events troubling them. The first involved Galileans whom Pilate killed in the temple, before the very altar of God. The second involved 18 people from Jerusalem who were killed when a tower fell on them.
In both cases, Jesus hears the unasked, but unavoidable question: "Were these people worse sinners than others who were spared their fate?"
The person we normally picture as exceedingly sensitive to human need says in response to both situations, "No, I tell you; but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did."
The two situations presented to Jesus cover a broad spectrum of human tragedy. The Galileans were outsiders, the Jerusalemites were insiders. The Galileans were killed by the government, joining the millions of victims, before and since, of cruel and oppressive regimes – the victims of violence, hatred, and genocide.
The Jerusalemites were killed either by human error in the construction of the tower, or by a natural disaster, joining the millions who’ve perished, before and since, as a result of human error, or because of earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters.
That just about covers the waterfront of tragedy - intentional and unintentional human acts, along with natural disasters. All of which put their victims and survivors in the wilderness of wondering why:
“Why did this happen to me?”
“Why did this happen to them and not to me?”
“Why do some people suffer such cruel fates and others seem to slide by with much less suffering?”
Jesus, in effect says, “Don’t begin to think that those who suffer more are greater sinners than those who don’t. Don’t begin to think that life is always fair, rewarding good and punishing evil. Begin by looking at your own life – at what you need to change – at how you need to grow – if you’re going to live the life you were created to live. If you don’t do that you’re as good as dead.”
“Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” (Luke 13:5)
As we make space for God in our lives during Lent we do so in the wilderness of the forces at work tempting us to live someone else’s life – the wilderness of the forces at work in the world around us that would diminish or deny the love and justice of Jesus – and the wilderness of the forces at work within us that would keep us from being ruthlessly honest with ourselves about the way we diminish or deny the love and justice of Jesus in our own lives.
Over 500 years before the birth of in Bethlehem the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon - cut off from all that had given their lives meaning, purpose and hope.
Instead of being in the wilderness for the 6 weeks of Lent they were in the wilderness of Babylonian exile for 50 years – thirsting for God’s presence in their lives – waiting for a word from the Lord.
That word finally came through the prophet Isaiah: “Everyone who thirsts come to the waters.” (Isaiah 55:1) – “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. (Isaiah 55:6) – “And you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace.” (Isaiah 55:12)
“Everyone who thirsts come to the waters.”
It’s in the wilderness of dry land and parched places that physical thirst becomes most acute.
And it’s in the wilderness of isolation, loneliness, and fear that our thirst for community, companionship and courage is most intense.
As we’ve worked to make space for God in our lives in this Lenten Season and focused on our theme of “Mission: Possible!” we’ve looked at what it means to share in God’s mission in the wilderness of the world around us.
This morning Jesus invites us to take a different journey to a different world – the world within us. It was Dag H., the former Secretary General of the United Nations, who said that “the longest journey is the journey inward.”
We can’t create space for God in our lives – we can’t quench our thirst for God without intentionally making this journey into the wilderness within us – where we listen to our Still Speaking God and respond to the Word of the Lord spoken through the prophet Isaiah – “Listen carefully to me…Incline your ear and come to me; listen, so that you may live” (Isaiah 55:2b-3a).
Of all our Lenten disciplines there is none more important than listening. “The word listening in Latin is audire. And if you listen with great attention the words are ob audire. That’s the word for “obedience.” The word obedience means listening. If you are not listening, you are deaf. The Latin word for deaf is surdis, and if you’re actually deaf, you’re ab surdis. The “absurd“ life is a life in which you’re not listening.” (“From Fear to Love” (Lenten Reflections) by Henri J.M. Nouwen, Tuesday, Second Week of Lent)
We can’t live the life God created and calls us to live without listening and we can’t listen without making the journey into the center of our own souls.
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, prophet and poet, says that people who live their lives without making this inward journey are like those who sleep on the sidewalk outside their house – without ever going inside.
It’s only on this inward journey that we can discover what it means to be created in the very image of God. (Genesis 1:27)
It’s only on this inward journey that we can learn what Jesus meant when he said that the Kingdom of God is within us. (Luke 17:21)
It’s only on this inward journey where, in the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, we can learn what it means to “drink from our own wells.” (Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells, p.5)
Now there may be some among us who are saying at some level, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
This isn’t a journey I want to make. It’s too weird. It’s a waste of time. It doesn’t get me where I want to go. I’ve got more important things to do. Besides, I’m not even thirsty – so why should I need to drink from my own well?
Well, I’ll admit that in our materialistic, results driven culture it can seem weird and a waste of time to commit ourselves to an inward journey – even during Lent.
I’ll admit that it may not get you where you want to go – but it’s the only way to get where God wants you to go and there’s nothing more important than that.
And if you say that you’re not thirsty I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself or with anyone else for that matter, including God.
“O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1)
Is there anyone here who can honestly say that they have no idea what the psalmist is talking about?
If so, as my grandmother liked to say, just keep on livin’.
There is a thirst within us all that only God can quench. It’s a thirst for healing, wholeness and hope. It’s a thirst for community with others and communion with God.
If you are not thirsty at the moment you are wonderfully blessed by the living water of God’s love for you and for all creation.
If you are thirsty, if you are no stranger now to this holy thirst for God, then the only way to quench your thirst is to “drink from your own well” - the well within you – the well of God’s compassion for you and for all creation.
If we go deep enough into the waters of this well we’ll discover that there is an aquifer that supplies the wells within each of us and within every human being – this aquifer connects us all with one another for it contains the living water of God’s Holy Spirit in which we all “live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
We drink from our own wells through prayer.
As Mary Oliver suggests prayer doesn’t have to be complicated and you don’t have to know what to say. What you need to know is how to listen. As she writes:
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
Praying by Mary Oliver (From Thirst p. 37)
When the Lord asks through the prophet, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” guess who God is talking to.
It’s not just those in Babylonian exile 2600 years ago. It’s you and me today.
For we are all addicted to looking for nourishment where it can’t be found. We are all caught in the clutches of our culture - addicted to drinking from the wells of material comfort, social conformity, financial security and military might.
We are all addicted to spending our money for that which is not bread and laboring for that which does not satisfy.
That’s what makes drinking from our own wells so essential. For in doing so we will discover, as the psalmist says, that God’s “steadfast love is better than life.” (Psalm 63:3).
We will discover that only God can quench our common thirst for freedom from all that keeps us from living as God intends for us to live in community with one another and in communion with God.
This morning, I’d like to close by creating the opportunity for us to drink from our own wells.
(Come down out of the pulpit.)
I invite you to get comfortable, close your eyes if you’d like, and settle into the silence in which another voice may speak.
“Listen so that you may live”…(Isaiah 55:3a)
Ever Present God, only you know the longing in our hearts and the thirsting in our souls…
Quiet our restless minds…
Create in us listening hearts…
Your steadfast love is better than life…
Your steadfast love is stronger than death…
Your steadfast love will sustain us and see us through…
“As a deer longs for flowing streams, so our souls long for you, O God. Our souls thirst for you, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2a)
Amen.
I’d like to close with another poem by Mary Oliver, called “I Thirst”
“I Thirst” by Mary Oliver
(From Thirst – Poems by Mary Oliver, p.69)
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh, Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expect-
ing to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning. May this be so – for us all! Thanks be to God! Amen!
“Come to the Water”
(Sung by the Choir as the Offertory Anthem)
O let all who thirst, let them come to the water,
And let all who have nothing, let them come to the Lord;
Without money, without price, why should you pay the price
Except for the Lord?
Come to the Water…
And let all who seek, let them come to the water,
And let all who have nothing, let them come to the Lord;
Without money, without strife, why should you spend your life,
Except for the Lord?
Come to the Water…
And let all who toil, let them come to the water,
And let all who are weary, let them come to the Lord;
All who labor, without rest, how can your soul find rest,
Except for the Lord?
Come to the Water…
And let all the poor, let them come to the water.
Bring the ones who are laden, bring them all to the Lord;
Bring the children without might, easy the load and light,
Come to the Lord!
