Never Be Thirsty

Sunday, September 25, 2011

If you want it, you can go to the nearest faucet. Truth be known, you can probably go to a couple faucets in your house, or the ones you have outside. Faucets are in every store, restaurant, gas station, rest area – they are even in RV’s and on airplanes. And every one of them brings us water – fresh clear clean, sparkling drinkable water. Because we are fortunate enough to have water whenever we want it, we may not give much thought – at least not very often – to the millions who do not have faucets – in Latin America, Asia, Africa – and the millions whose faucets bring them water that make them sick – like right here in WV.
The people in the Bible lived in a dry parched land. They understood more than we could ever understand what it meant to be thirsty – to search for and not find water – to worry when cisterns ran dry - to rejoice when the springs of water were sweet. And to grumble and complain when the wilderness provided absolutely nothing – no shelter, no food, and no water.
In his poem, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Sailors on a becalmed ship under a hot and copper sky…surrounded by water = water they could not drink – salt water that could not sustain life.
Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. That’s how it is today. We are a people who wander in an American wilderness - dying of thirst and we don’t even know it.
We drink our fill of television shows that display the worst of humanity – housewives who scream and fight; bachelors and bachelorettes pretending to find a spouse; people supposedly stranded on islands playing games to survive; people who sing or dance – willing to be laughed at and humiliated by a panel of people who are supposed to be famous, and drunk young people from one state or another doing everything no parent ever wants their children to do.
We drink deep from the well of other people’s pain – shows on alcohol treatment centers and interventions, tours through the homes of people who are hoarders, cameras that follow real live cops in real live chases and take downs, and crews who go into prisons and interview men on death row and women who shot their boyfriends.
Wilderness people, thirsting to be important or memorable or valued – and we – by watching them and tweeting them and interviewing them – and we by making them famous for no moral or civil reason, holding them up as some kind of examples – must be as lost and thirsty as they are.
We frequent the nearest oasis – places like Disneyworld, and shopping malls, or perhaps the Mall of America which combines the best and the worst of Disneyworld and a shopping mall. We drink too much of the waters of our addictions – perhaps not drugs and a cocktail or two after 5 – perhaps not gambling or eating – but sitting in front of computers – or spending hours on Facebook or buying things we don’t need on EBay and Home shopping networks.
Yes, there is water water everywhere. We drink and drink from the worldly fountains, hoping that all these other things will refresh, hoping that all these other things will give us what we need to continue another mile or two in the journey - but none of these waters are suitable to drink – not one drop will slake our thirst.
Water water everywhere – especially in our society. We are surrounded by every kind of distraction, every kind of material thing, every kind of anything you can think of – that promises to fulfill us. But in spite of all that the world offers us, the thirst grows worse and our spirits are still parched.
Those in the Bible knew more than we could ever know that there is an intimate connection between water and life. But the Israelites’ journey and the Samaritan woman’s visit to the well are about much more than physical water. And so are our journeys about much more than chasing after, and gratifying our need for attention, applause, recognition, and attaching some kind of false worldly value to our lives.
If we do not know yet, then we need to know now that each of us is valuable. If that were not true, why did God create us in God’s image…why does God continue to pursue us – why does Scripture tell us that God waits for us…and that God cannot let us go? Why would God send a Son to save us or a Holy Spirit to guide us? And why would we settle for less? Why do we, created in God’s image…spiritual creatures breathing with God’s breath…choose to live in a spiritual wilderness? Why do we allow ourselves to be bought off by the things of the world when we know that the water Christ offers us is life
The Samaritan woman came to the well for water. Instead she found Jesus – who offered her water of a different kind. Living water – eternal life water – water to quench a deep human thirst.
As we leave another week behind and begin to step into a new day of our journey, let us take with us the good news given 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.