Sermon: “Flash
Flood Warnings”
John 7:37-39
Pentecost Sunday is often the
occasion for church services filled with raucous commotions, and sometimes a
cacophony of languages – which is not actually an image consistent with the
words of Acts 2! All of that is designed
to get us into the essence of the story of the day on which the Holy Spirit
filled the disciples hearts to bursting and their mouths with eloquent and
convincing words. Noise and chaos are
two words that come to mind when I think back on some of those church
services.
We read about the tongues of
fire and we talk about the fire of the Spirit both consuming us and sending us
out to bring Christ’s consuming message of love to the world. We use the story of Pentecost as a backdrop
for our efforts to energize the church.
I’m all in favor of anything
that will put blazing energy into a group of Presbyterians, but today – on this
Pentecost Day – I want to look at a different image for the action of the
Spirit in our hearts. Jesus talks about
the presence of the Spirit in us as causing “rivers of living water” to spring
forth from our hearts. I also want to talk about the reality of how
we respond to all these emotional fireworks.
The image that Jesus uses,
“rivers of living water” would have been a familiar one to the people of his
community. The prophet Jeremiah spoke of
the Lord himself as being “the fountain living water.” Jeremiah says that the
people have refused the refreshing nourishment that God offered to them. Instead they have sought to drink from wells
of their own making, wells that leeched the water into the ground and became
contaminated. [Jeremiah 2:13]
Jesus referred to himself as
the source of “living water,” most
famously when he spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well. [John 4:7-14] This morning in the lesson we read from John
7, Jesus talks about the coming presence of the Spirit turning us – believers –
into the on-going source of life for the world:
from your “heart shall flow rivers of living water.” When the Spirit has entered into you then you
become the source of the world’s salvation.
Think about that for a while!
Water was a pretty powerful
reality in the lives of people who lived in an arid part of the world. When Moses and the Israelites were wandering
in the wilderness, the people became angry with Moses because he had brought
them out to a place that had no water.
In the book of Numbers we
read about the people being stalled in the wilderness of Zin, at a place called
Kadesh. It says: “Now there was no water for the congregation;
so they gathered together against Moses and against Aaron.[Num. 20:2]” So Moses and Aaron went to have a talk with
the Lord. The Lord told Moses to call
all the people together and hit a rock with a staff: “Thus you shall bring water out of the rock.
[Num. 20:8]” This place was called
Meribah.
Later, the Lord instructed
Moses as to the festivals that the people should celebrate to praise and
glorify the Lord after they entered into the promised land. The first and most important is the
Sabbath. The second festival is Passover. The third is Pentecost - yes, it is a Jewish festival! Then comes the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).
And finally, the Festival of the Booths or Tabernacles. This last is a 7-day festival of solemn
remembrance and joyful celebration of the 40 years during which the Lord had
led the people through the wilderness.
During those 40 years they lived in tents or booths.
It’s on the final day of this
Festival of the Booths that Jesus calls out to the crowd: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and
let the one who believes in me drink. [John 7:37-38]” As part of the Festival, the event that
occurred at Meribah was recalled. The
Festival was intended to keep alive in people’s minds the things that the Lord
had done for them in the wilderness that helped them to survive. One of those things was the miracle of water
springing forth from a rock.
For each of the seven days during
the Festival water was carried in a golden pitcher from the Pool of Siloam into
the Temple. It was the commemoration of
the Lord’s gift of water from the rock.
The water also became a symbol for the hope of the return of the
Messiah.
In the midst of this, Jesus
usurps the hollow ritual with his declaration:
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in
me drink. [John 7:37-38]” He’s not only
making a metaphorical declaration about the ritual: he’s saying that he is the water of
life. He is the true water who fulfills
the promise of the ritual symbolism and transforms the promise remembered into
reality.
If he had stopped at the
declaration that he was the true water, this would have been another nice
anecdote about who Jesus was. Any time
that we think that what we’re reading in scripture is “another nice anecdote,” we
probably missed the point. In this
instance, the story is also about us and who we are, and what we are expected
to do once we have received the Spirit.
First of all, Jesus calls us
to a response. If you’re thirsty, then
drink of him. If you believe in him,
then drink. Be filled with the living
water that is Jesus Christ. Nothing that
we ever receive from Christ is for us alone.
We are given gifts to share. We
are given blessings so that we might become blessings to the world.
John tells us that Jesus
meant that we should wait for the gift of the Spirit, which was yet to
come. We should seek the presence of the
Spirit. And if we do that, if we drink
deeply of Christ and invite the Spirit to fill us up, THEN we shall have
inherited a great responsibility: we
shall become the source of the world’s salvation. We shall be the vessels of Christ’s living
water and we shall be responsible for bringing that living water to the
world. That’s what will happen when we
receive the Spirit.
That’s not quite the loud
drama that we usually associate with Pentecost.
When the Spirit enters our hearts we shall be blessed with a
burden. It will become our
responsibility to bring the living waters to the world.
The late poet Denise Levertov
is one of my favorite people. Although
she taught at Stanford University, she was entirely homeschooled and never
attended college. Her work reflects a
life spent in trying to attain a lasting and stable awareness of Christ and the
Spirit in her heart. Yet with the
spiritual honesty that marked her life she concluded that in reality it was an
awareness that was erratic and transient at best. Please listen to the words of her poem “Flickering Mind”:
Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places;
a quick glance, and away – and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river’s purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere
it can turn. Not you,
it
is I am absent.
You
are the stream, the fish, the light,
the
pulsing shadow,
you
the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves
and changes.
How
can I focus my flickering, perceive
at
the fountain’s heart
the
sapphire I know is there?1
The Spirit is there. Christ sent him to us on that day that we
think of as our Day of Pentecost. He has
filled us with the living water and asks us to share that water with the
world. Yet we remain human, fallen,
weak. We want to focus on the glory at
the heart of the fountain of life, but our focus flits and flickers like a
minnow swimming randomly in a stream.
If we are honest with
ourselves we admit that it isn’t easy.
Spiritually we all seem to suffer from ADD/HD. Yet we have been given this blessing; this
responsibility; this frightening burden.
Our attention may flicker,
but God doesn’t let go. The Spirit is in
you. The living water fills your heart
and wants to overflow bringing its new life to the world from the depths of
your heart. That’s what Pentecost
means. Christ claims us in baptism and
the Spirit fills us up with his blessings.
If you believe, then drink, and know that you will be filled with a joy
that cries out to be expressed aloud; a joy that the world itself cannot
destroy.
Our attention may flicker,
but through the grace of God and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, God can use us to spread his living waters to
flood the world. Individually we may
cause only brief “flash floods,” but if we come back to it again and again, our
flash floods meld with the floods pouring from others and the world can yet be
filled by the Spirit of Christ.
Amen.
1. Levertov, Denise: “Flickering
Mind,” found on page 122 in Upholding
Mystery, Edited by David Impastato, Oxford University Press; New York:
1997.
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