A Life Giving Drink for Those That are Thirsty!

Well, we have been given a good reminder this spring, with all this rain, of just how fragile the environment around us can be. Certainly, some of the natural disasters that have happened around our country, and around the world in the last year or so, remind us of how dependent we are on the natural environment and on basic natural elements just to live!

Many of you have spent hours in hospitals or in nursing homes, either yourself or with loved ones. You know all too well just how important getting water can be sometimes.  Maybe it is just after a surgery, or you’re recovering from something, and your mouth and tongue and throat all feel stuck together, you can feel your breath just squeaking by, and you’re wondering if everything is drying up on your insides as well.  When you’re able to just get a little bit of some fluids into your body to quench that thirst it is so, so awesome!  You feel alive again!   At times like that we are reminded of how precious water is.

People in Israel, (which remember is in the Middle East and gets pretty hot and dry sometimes), were very familiar with the dangers of getting not enough water in their lives.  They knew that their crop production depended on water just coming their way.  Their wells needed to collect water.  Water coming their way meant life!  They had this feast in their calendar just full of “thanks” to God for providing them with water and food.

Picture the Feast of Tabernacles that Jesus and His friends have come down to Jerusalem for in our Gospel reading. It is a Harvest Feast that interestingly enough comes right in the midst of the very busy harvest season. We see how God has ordered the people, in the Book of Numbers, to take time out for this eight day festival.

God knows our tendencies to busy ourselves with responsibilities and tasks that make up our day.  He knows these get in the way of our basic relationship with Him.  Our thoughts can be, “After all, if we don’t work hard, if we don’t support ourselves, how can we live?”  God will have none of that.  I want you to set aside this time and remember just where everything that you have comes from.

So, every year they celebrate this feast that commemorates the time of wandering in the desert and being provided for by God.  Water was provided for by God, and food was provided for by God every day.  This is a whole week long feast.  There is to be no working, no merchants selling things, everyone is to be involved.  At this Feast of Tabernacles some of the people would build temporary shelters, tents, huts, or “tabernacles” to live in during the week.  Pious Jews are focusing on the time of wandering and on being provided for on their journey and now for their green pastures and fruitful vineyards.

Picture this one day at the end of the feast.  People have gathered round the pool of Siloam (the water reservoir at the foot of the big Hill in Jerusalem that the Temple is on).  This spring had given water to God’s people for a thousand years.  From that spring a priest takes a golden pitcher and fills it with water (this has been done on every morning of the whole feast).  Each day of the feast, in a very dramatic and solemn ceremony, this life giving water was brought up in a procession to the altar area in the Temple.  All along the way choirs are lined up that lead the people in singing from Isaiah 12,  “with joy we will draw water from the wells of salvation”. There, rather dramatically, the water is poured into a special funnel returning it to the ground.

This has been repeated each day of the feast. The rabbi's have been reading out loud to the people each day from God’s Law. They have read prophecies from the prophets Ezekiel and Joel about life giving water. And they read again about God sending Moses to save them and providing life giving water out of a rock… providing life, where it was not possible to live!

On the last day of the feast the priest would pour out the water into a basin. The image of God’s people’s thirst being quenched and provided for is with all the people.  And we don’t know the exact moment, but on this last day, a man stands up and clearly drawing attention to himself shouted in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”   Who is He?  Could He be someone important?  Could He be a prophet?  Could He be the Messiah?  The Christ?

Who do you say that He is?  The answer to that depends on whether you are thirsty or not!  Jesus stood up that day and talked about coming to quench a thirst inside people.  A spiritual thirst; a thirst for a connectedness to God; a thirst for more than what this world can offer; a thirst for being forgiven, and clean, and perfect in God’s sight!  What a beautiful and dramatic moment and an intimate picture that Jesus uses here to bring “thirst” and “water” and “quenching”, all things that we know and feel, into our understanding of our relationship with Him… our God.

He uses that “water” and “thirst” analogy another time with the Samaritan woman at the well.  He points out to her, and to all of us, that you have to realize that you are thirsty… spiritually thirsty!  And there is no other way to really quench that kind of thirst except through the water that He can provide (Himself).  He will quench your spiritual thirst forever!

One of the great tragedies in this world is people not realizing that they are thirsty for God.  Not everybody senses their thirst.  There are a lot of people walking around that don’t know they are dying from a spiritual thirst.  “I don’t really need God”, or “I think religion and all that church stuff is a kind of story people made up. I’m smarter than that”.  Or  “I have my own personal religion.”  Not understanding that, with sin inside all of us, we cannot survive and make it into the perfectness of God’s presence.

It is Jesus who fills our spiritual thirst and only Him. At times, all of us forget to drink deeply, refresh, and let God fill us up.  Jesus gives an invitation… come closer.  “If anyone… anyone… is thirsty… let him come to me”!!

Those of you that have little kids sick, or elderly sick at home, or have been in the hospital yourself, you know how important it is for someone to realize their need for water and drinking in their effort to get better. Sometimes you have to implore them to drink… here take a sip…  That is what Jesus is imploring… only He has the water of eternal life… of spiritual wholeness!  Come to HIM and drink! He satisfies a real and true thirst that unless quenched will surely end in death!

But sadly the connection isn’t always made. We know that so, so, many in the world around us don’t connect their spiritual thirst inside… to being quenched by Jesus!  This is where today, right here in Connecticut, you, and the Holy Spirit, and Pentecost, and “church” all come together.  God the Holy Spirit uses His people of faith here on earth to share and spread the Word… the Word of life and salvation… to a thirsty, thirsty world all around us.