CHRIST UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SERMON: “WATER, WATER EVERY WHERE, NOR ANY DROP TO DRINK”; JUNE 29, 2014

 "Water Water Every Where, Nor Any Drop To Drink"

Romans 6:12-23 and Matthew 10:26-33;38-42

“Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” is a classic among children’s books and films.  In the movie – although not in Roald Dahl’s book – Wonka has several lines that are purposeful misquotes of great lines in literature.  Among them is the following:  “Bubbles, bubbles everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”  That’s a misquote from Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s longest poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”  Don’t worry, I’m not going to recite the whole poem. 

The poem is the sad story of a seaman who kills an albatross that is following his ship.  After he did the evil deed, the ship fell upon very hard luck.  In the language of sailors, it fell into irons.  The wind disappeared, the sun grew hotter and hotter in the sky, and eventually the ship ran out of fresh drinking water.  At this point in the story Taylor tells us:

“All in a hot and copper sky,     

The bloody Sun, at noon,     

Right up above the mast did stand,     

No bigger than the Moon.      

Day after day, day after day,     

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;     

As idle as a painted ship     

Upon a painted ocean.       

Water, water, every where,     

And all the boards did shrink;     

Water, water, every where,     

Nor any drop to drink.”

They were surrounded by an abundance of ocean water, but it would be poison to drink.

Sometimes what we see as abundant is really a reflection of ironic scarcity.  Sometimes what we see as scarce resources are really gifts of God’s abundant grace to us.

On that infamous Tuesday, the 11^th of September, 2001, the United States was disabused of the notion that we live in a land that is abundantly secure because we were the most powerful nation on earth. Thousands of people walked quickly or ran the 4 miles from “Ground Zero” to 73^rd Street and Madison Avenue in an effort to escape the aftermath of the explosions and whatever else might be on its way. 

Between 73^rd and 74^th on Madison sits Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.  The members of the church didn’t know what they could do to help, so they did one of the simplest and yet grace-filled things that they could think of:  they set up tables and handed out cups and bottles of water to the people streaming by in fear and panic.  They tried to restore a sense of hospitality.  They couldn’t possibly  restore that sense of safety and security that so many believed was there before the moments of the attack. But they could offer a cup of cold water to these frightened people.

In Romans 6 Paul stated a simple and direct fact:  Jesus died, and in his death he overcame death for us all.  There is much more to our lives than those things defined by mortal ambitions, illusions, anxieties or even mortal death. 

Paul made those statements based on his bedrock faith in what Jesus himself is telling us in this morning’s Gospel lesson:  “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”  In my own faith journey I have all too often ignored those words in favor of the pursuit of a radical social Gospel with little spiritual underpinnings.

A few years ago I confronted myself – or perhaps more correctly God confronted me – with the truth that God indeed has called for a revolutionary sense of social justice within human society, but the pursuit of that justice could only be built upon a deeply personal spiritual relationship with God rooted in prayer and reflection.

This past week I read something that again reminded me that what we call abundant may be folly and in scarcity we may find the abundance of God’s grace.  One of my favorite web sites is a site maintained by Martin Marty, a well known and widely respected pastor and religious historian.  Sometimes the postings are Dr. Marty’s and sometimes they are guest postings.  There was an essay this week by Paul Chang, a young historian who works with Dr. Marty. 

Chang’s concern was that when western journalists report on what we might call the scarcity of religious freedom in China, they overlook the abundance of God’s grace.  On a recent trip to China, Chang interviewed a great many Chinese Christians, many of whom had been singled out by various government forces because of their expressions of their faith.  Chang says: “They explained that they harbored no grudges and frequently prayed for the Communist government as well as for the neighbors, officials, and others who had accused, persecuted, and tormented them.”

I found particularly interesting how one Chinese Christian leader described the root cause of “persecution”:  “secularism, materialism, and greed.”  He goes on to say that the main barrier to the spread of Christianity in China is not government oppression.  The main barrier is the growing sense of hopeless confusion as millions of Chinese scramble to find the illusive rewards of a globalized, capitalist society.  Chang says: “Millions of Chinese work in urban factories, doing uninspiring work for low wages.  At the same time they face increasing evidence that material success does not bring joy.  Even among China’s economic elite, there is a growing sense of spiritual emptiness.”

“Eschatology” is a fancy theological word that refers to the last things, the last days.  The New Testament was written with a keen sense of the last days.  Many early Christians were convinced that Christ’s promised return would occur in their lifetimes.  That is the true source of all the hope expressed in the New Testament. 

In modern America, we seem to have lost sight of that hope.  I have no doubt that our abundant materialism has helped to dull that sense that God’s plan is unfolding and will someday reach is climax in the promised return of Jesus.  I worry that our abundant materialism has even dulled our desire for that promised day.  Speaking of the Chinese Christians Chang says, “…many believe themselves to be part of the final chapter in a long Christian story, the closing act that will usher in Jesus Christ’s return.  This belief bestows profound meaning to their lives.  Living in a society in which they observe that pleasure and money do not fill the soul, their theology is decisively self-sacrificial and purposive….  For most Chinese Christians, the story of their faith is not one of imprisonment, but of liberation.” 

Paul tells us that we have been blessed with God’s grace in abundance.  American society tells us that we have been blessed with the abundance of materialism.  Has materialism quenched your thirst.  Or is the vast illusion of material opportunities merely the human equivalent of Taylor’s ocean filled with water that will poison us if we drink deeply from it?

The initiation of God’s kingdom among us will not be accomplished by the quest for material success or by a radical social movement:  it required the death and resurrection of Jesus.  And that redemption wasn’t about saving individual souls FROM the world, but rather it was about saving us so that we might take part in God’s continuing project to save the world; save it in a way that would return us to the creatures whom God had created. The death and resurrection of Jesus wasn’t about life after death:  it was about a life that is lived free of death’s confines motivated by the abundance of God’s grace so that we might have an active role in proclaiming to the world that God is here among us leading us back to the kingdom for which we had been created. 

We have been called by God. On a daily basis we also hear the siren call of materialism.  Some of us respond to one call, and some of us respond to the other.  We are all of us cherished by God, and some of us respond to that love and some of us take it for granted. Some of us have had our spiritual senses so dulled by the false abundance of materialism that we are deaf to God’s call.  God’s call will always force us to redefine abundance and scarcity.  God’s call will always force us to choose between the abundant but poisonous waters of the world and the life giving water of Jesus.  

Too often we have believed that the abundant wealth and might and security that fills our society is a mark of God’s reward to us for being such good people.  As such we seem to believe that we should go to whatever extremes are necessary to protect what we have, for after all we are obviously the chosen ones.  Well, it is certainly the product of some mysterious grace that God has given to us, but it wasn’t given to be an excuse for excluding ourselves from the suffering of the world:  it was given to give us the opportunity to serve God’s creatures in a way that no other society in history has been called to serve.

We can’t respond to God’s call with the leftovers of our life, the money that is unneeded, the change left over from our shopping, the time that’s otherwise wasted, the actions that require no risk.

The Gospel tells us:  “^38…and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. ⁴⁰ ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. ⁴¹Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; ⁴²and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’ 

“A cup of cold water….”  Doesn’t seem like much, does it?  Yet in that simple act of open hospitality is all the abundance of God’s grace. 

The world offers us “Water, water every where, nor any drop to drink.”  Abundant water that can poison us.  Jesus said: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but 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.” 

The choice is ours.  We can continue to drink of the poisonous wells of the world with water that will never slake our thirst and will destroy us, or like the woman at the well we can turn to Jesus and say: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty….”

AMEN.