March 11, 2007 Third Sunday in Lent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 63; Isaiah 55:6-9; Luke 13:1-9
Today I want to speak in praise of thirsting, in praise of longing and
seeking. The Psalm says, “ O God, you are my God. I seek you, my soul thirsts
for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Let us now praise all
women and men who make these words their own.
The heroes of our faith are not those who are eternally cheerful or
comfortable, though they may be blessed to experience peace or joy and they may
be a blessing to others. But the heroes of our faith are those who long for peace in
a world where they find too little, either in their own hearts or in the outer world.
They are those who long for healing, who long for vision or wisdom, who long to
live the life Christ calls them to live, who long so much that they keep seeking
what they are longing for, no matter how little of it they seem to find.
Most of us have times when we descend into a dark underworld of
discouragement, or get lost in a wilderness of spiritual dryness. We may succumb
to temptation and be tortured with guilt, or outsides forces may inflict suffering on
us, or we may fall ill or have an accident where no one is to blame, but the result is
the same. We are cut off from the light or the spiritual water that we crave. We
thirst, we hunger, we long for the things the Psalm talks about finding at last. We
long for a steadfast love that is better than life. We long for the filling of our soul
as with a rich feast. We long for God’s help in our sleepless nights. We long for
God to spread sheltering wings over us and give us comfort and joy. We long for
a hand to uphold us.
The heroes are the ones who thirst and do not give up seeking, even when
rationally they see no hope, no evidence that God exists or can help.
Last week someone approached me who has left his church. He said his
faith has been shaken. He is now reading and finding comfort in the works of
various well-known atheists. It is clear that he is thirsting for eternal truth and
meaning and guidance for his life. I suggested as gently as I could that church is
exactly where he should be, because at its best, at its most heroic, the church is a
home to people who struggle with doubt and disbelief and yet keep seeking, driven
by the longing for what they need.
Another person I know has come to the conclusion that, and I quote, “ God
is a wacko.” He looks at thousands who die in a tsunami or he looks at a virtuous
young woman who dies in a snow machine accident, and he asks what kind of God
would let that happen. He doesn’t want to hear any rationalization about God
allowing freedom. Any God that would set things up so that Pilate could come in
and kill people as they were worshipping, or so that a tower could fall killing
innocent victims is a God that must be crazy. And yet that man who calls God a
wacko not only prays to God, but tries to hand control of his entire life and will
over to God every minute of the day.
He is like the Jews in the Nazi death camp who convened a court of law to
try God for the death of millions of innocent people, including Jewish babies and
little children. Former trial lawyers argued the case back in a corner of their death
camp barracks, and a rabbi served as judge. At the end, they found God guilty—
and who can blame them. But no sooner had the rabbi announced the verdict than
he turned and said, “The sun is setting, the Sabbath is beginning. It is time to pray
to God.” And they began praying “Baruch atta adonai, elehenu melech haolam—
Blessed are you, Holy God, Ruler of the Universe.” They prayed as the ash fell
around them from the burning bodies of beloved people God had let the Nazis kill.
Our minds can doubt or disbelieve, they can spurn or accuse God, and that
is fine and appropriate at times. What happens in our minds does not matter so
much, though, as what happens in our bellies and our throats and our bones. If we
hunger and thirst and ache for truth, for a higher and good guiding power, for
mercy, for comfort, then no matter what our mind says, we still believe.
To thirst is to believe on a level far deeper that any creed, far deeper than
evidence for or against God by any name or concept. To thirst is to know in our
body’s deepest core that we need something, and to insist that somewhere
something must exist that can satisfy our need. As long as we still thirst, there is
hope. As long as we thirst, we may keep seeking, we may still make the heroic
effort to find what we need.
Of course, we may seek in the wrong places for a while. As Isaiah says,
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”
For reasons we may not understand, we may not find what we seek for a long
time, but as long as we keep thirsting, there is hope. It is when thirst ends that we
are in real trouble.
When a person or animal no longer can feel its hunger or thirst, it is a sign
that death is near. When we lose touch with our deep longing for spiritual comfort
or healing or whatever gift of God we most need, then our spiritual death is near.
How about you? Is your spiritual longing strong and alive or have you let it get
faint and dull?
One of the signs of hypothermia is “unnoticed loss of clothing.” It is a
funny phrase. Images come to mind like Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction”
at the Super Bowl, or the archetypal childhood dream of appearing at school in
your underwear. But if you are up on a mountain and the weather turns on you
and you become lost in a blizzard, unnoticed loss of clothing means that your body
is no longer registering that it longs to be warm, and that can quickly lead to death.
Unnoticed loss of spiritual longing works the same way.
This is why we must forgive Jesus his strident, uncomfortable, threatening
message in today’s passage from Luke. “Unless you repent, you will all perish,”
he said, and “If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it
down.” He is talking to people who are in danger of forgetting their longing for
God and their longing for the fruits of faith in their life. He is saying, with
urgency born out of compassion and mercy, “Drink, drink you poor fools, or you
will die of a thirst you are no longer feeling!”
Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks of
this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give
them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring
of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:13f) In today’s passage from Luke
Jesus is urging people to drink of that water so they will not die.
His urgency came from a knowledge of what it is to be thirsting on the
verge of death. At the beginning of his ministry he went forty days without food
or drink, and at the end of his ministry he hung on a cross and said, “I thirst.”
Even though the water of life flowed through Jesus as through no one else, there
were times when he was tempted to give up and turn aside from the way. What
saved him in the wilderness and in Gethsemane and on the cross was that he did
not stop seeking. He let his thirst drive him back to God. He said, “We do not
live by bread alone, but by the word of God.” And he said, “Not my will, but thy
will be done.” And he said, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
The word repent captures that movement. It means to turn our mind back
to God, to change our mind or spirit so that it is back in the sacred way.
The religion of Taoism says, “Why did the Ancients treasure the Way?
Was it not because seekers find what they seek by it, and by it the guilty are
forgiven? That is why everyone longs for it.” (Tao Te Ching Chapter 62)
To thirst is to suffer. To thirst is to be without something we need and long
for—some understanding or shelter or help. Thirsting will save our life if we let it
drive us to keep seeking until we find. Sooner or later we will find, if we keep
believing what our spiritual thirst tells us, that there must be something that will
quench our longing. Jesus thirsted in the wilderness and kept seeking, and in the
end he received so much spiritual wisdom and power that it gushed up and
overflowed from within him. He thirsted on the cross and kept seeking, and he
rose from the dead full of light that no darkness can overcome. Out of hopeless
situations he emerged with hope to share, and the urgency to save lives with the
fruits of the spirit he had received.
One of the reasons why those among us are heroes who have known thirst
and kept seeking is that they, too, emerge from their wilderness with water of life
to share. They are the ones among us who can teach what we need to know in our
dry times. They tell us to be patient, to persist, to keep seeking even when all
seems hopeless. They help carry us toward the spring when our strength fails,
because they know the way. They know from their own experience on their own
cross that God’s love is real and steadfast, that God’s wings spread over us and
God’s hand upholds us, that the spiritual water we long to drink is within us even
now, even in this wilderness or on this cross.
Those of us who are thirsting and seeking today will become the ones
among us who can lead us to this water tomorrow, but it is also true that those of
us who are satisfied today may later be thirsting and lost. Like geese shifting
formation, we trade places. Those we led will lead us. This is the way the church
works. It is why we need it—why it is not safe to go without a spiritual
community. We take turns helping and needing to be helped.
But the church itself exists in the world as a constant source of living water,
as a constant guide to the sacred way. Collectively, we always have gifts to share,
even if half of us are in need of help ourselves. That is why we as a church have a
role to play in a world where poverty and war and global climate change have
converted all the earth to a wilderness and a cross. The whole creation groans,
crying out for help. We need to hear the urgency in Christ’s voice, not only to
follow our longing and repent and seek the sacred way, but to go out and use the
fruits we gain to help save an earth that is dying of thirst. We need to bear our
fruit to the world now, before the world gives up its longing for life in the shadow
of death, before it loses hope.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 03/11/2007