Bible Reference: John 7:37-39; Psalms 104:24-34
My friend Carol Gathagan who was here visiting a couple of weeks ago has a radio
ministry called "Faith Break" back in Altoona. Her short spots are interjections of real life
told from a faith perspective and they air on the Classic Rock station there. I remember that
one of the stories that hit me while I was listening in my car was about a woman who moved
into a new suburban neighborhood with her family. In order to impress others and try to get
to know her neighbors, she spent hours tending the flowerbeds and the small details of
keeping her yard neat and tidy. She threw lavish parties where she made all the hors
d'ouvres herself. She baked cookies for every school function and even volunteered to drive
the kids to soccer practice. But even with all this work and energy, she seemed not to be
making any new friends. She barely got more than a casual "hello" from any of her
neighbors, which led her, in her loneliness, to pick fights with her kids and cry when her
husband got home from work. One morning after a particularly frustrating day, she was in a hurry to get some
shopping done and backed right into her neighbor's car as she was coming out of the
driveway. When she got out of her car, much to her amazement, here was her neighbor and
a few other onlookers giving her a great big round of applause. The next-door neighbor's
response to her was, "It's good to know that you're not perfect!" After much laughter and a
few tears, the women became fast friends. She had to give up her idea of being the "perfect" neighbor, and settle for being
imperfect - just like the rest of us. Only Jesus was perfect. The best any of the rest of us can
be is to let that perfection of Jesus come through us as often as we possibly can. The woman in the story had listened to so many "shoulds" and so many "ought-tos"
that she had her life tied up in knots. She couldn't even see that the very things she was
doing to get closer to others was exactly what was keeping her at a distance from everyone
else in the community. Those shoulds, those ought-tos - If you have a bunch of them rattling
around in your head - Give them up! Give them up right now! They never got anyone any
closer to heaven. They never got anyone any closer to perfection. Maybe you can say it with me, "GIVE IT UP!" Think about what is it that you need to give up to let the Holy Spirit flow freely through
your life. I hope it isn't so drastic that you need to wreck your car or be proverbially "hit by
a bus" to see what it is that is keeping you from knowing the spiritual joy that comes into
your life when those barriers are removed. Jesus uses plenty of symbolic language to make his points in John's gospel, and the
scripture lesson for this morning is no exception. In all of chapter 7, he's speaking to a
crowd who has no patience for what he's trying to say. In the scene we have gathered the
impatient disciples who want him to reveal himself with a sideshow, and the religious
leaders who want to catch him in the act of blasphemy or treason. No one seems to be
"getting the point." So finally, on the last day of the festival, he raises his voice to say, "Let
anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture
says, 'Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water.'" Rivers of living water! What a great image! Jesus says that the Spirit flows through
believers like a river of water that is truly alive. But how do we get there? How do we get to
the place where the Spirit is so free to move within our spirits? Jesus gives us a bit of instruction. First, he says, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me." Do
you know how thirsty you are? Can you feel the dryness of your tongue? That parched
feeling at the back of your throat? Do you know what it truly means to be so "poor in the
spirit" that you actually sense your own need for spiritual healing? Many of us don't. The
woman in the story didn't. She was so busy filling her self, filling her life with giving parties
and gardening and chauffeuring that she couldn't even recognize how all that had mopped
up her spiritual reservoirs. It took an intervening act of God to waken her to her own thirst.
It was the laughter at her own misfortune that set her free. The first step in any spiritual
renewal is to give up what's preventing us from knowing our own thirst. It's easy at times to
recognize the material things and the "lesser gods" that we frequently use to satisfy the dry
and barren parts of our lives - but it's not so easy to confront the "gods" that Jesus was
confronting with this powerful Pentecost moment. Jesus, in this early speech, was speaking at the religious festival that would later give birth
to the Christian church, and John makes the editorial comment that "there was no Spirit" yet
in their community. That's harsh. We too can block our own spiritual renewal with too
much "religiosity" or with our own churchy politicking. A lot of those "shoulds" out there
disguise themselves as religious teaching. So I say, "Give it up!" Give up the "things" that
only temporarily satisfy, and give up the idea that serving the bureaucratic structure of the
church and participating in "religious things" is the long cool glass of water. It isn't. At it's
best, church should point to that water, but it isn't that water. So again say it with me, "GIVE IT UP!" The long cool glass of water that truly quenches our thirst can only come from one place -
our belief in Jesus to satisfy our every need. Jesus says, let the thirsty come, but he also says,
let the one who believes drink. Once we recognize our own thirst, the next step is to drink,
and to drink deeply, to drink often, to drink until we are actually relieved of the thirst that
bids us to come. Again, how do we drink? This is symbolic language, and the language of
symbol can be quite complex. We may find our ways of drinking to be different from one
another. For some, the drink may come in times of prayer, for others, in study, for others, in
the quiet times, for others, by experiencing the life of the community, for others, by helping
someone in need, and on and on it goes. We drink whenever we can let go enough to let God
work through us. This idea of spiritual surrender is one of the most ancient and most true
bits of wisdom revealed to humankind. However, our society teaches us to be obsessed with maintaining control, while our deeper,
more spiritual wisdom tells us that the clearest way to knowing God is relinquishing control.
Not my will, God, but Thine. It appears over and over again in scripture. People get into
trouble when they abandon God's voice and replace it with their own. It isn't easy. It may
sound easy, but to really believe in the power of Jesus working through takes a lot of
courage. It sounds too good to be true. But I would challenge you also to give up control and
drink of the living water in Jesus Christ. "Give it up!" Give up your own thirst by letting the
love of Christ be poured into you. Say it with me, "GIVE IT UP!" Once we name our thirst and drink of the fountain of life, then, Jesus says, then the "rivers
of living water" will flow from our hearts. Only when we are filled can we begin to fill
others, only then can we begin to fill this world of pain with the joy of God's love. The Holy
Spirit becomes alive in communities that freely allow this water to flow in any and all
directions. We need to unstop the dams of our own making. We need to unstop the dammed
church (Pardon the pun) so that the river will flow and no one will dare breathe about us,
"There was no Spirit there because they don't believe in Jesus glorified." In the movie, "Tortilla Soup," a girlfriend and boyfriend are talking like young adults talk
about how life is supposed to be, and the girl asks her friend, "Why aren't you applying to
colleges?" The young Brazilian boy, an exchange student, says, "I think if you tell life what
it has to be you limit it; but if you let it show you what it wants to be it will open doors you
never knew existed." GIVE IT UP! If you tell life what it has to be you limit it, but if you let it show you what it wants to be, it
will open doors you never knew existed. Wow! That's a statement of faith, the kind of faith
that comes with being open to the Holy Spirit working through us. In the psalm reading, we are reminded that when our hands are opened - we are filled with
good things, when God's spirit is sent forth we are created, renewed, and the whole earth
rejoices along with us. God's love is good. God's provisions are good. Being the good
Presbyterian that I am, I think John Calvin was on to something with all his "predestination"
stuff. Many people falsely believe that he was a fatalist - that we were either doomed or
blessed according to God's whims. It goes deeper than that. It's closely linked to scripture
and far wiser than that. Calvin believed that our lives had purpose and meaning BECAUSE
of the good things placed in our hands, because if we just know our own thirst, Jesus will be
right there inviting us to quench it. Calvin even said that the "bad" things that happen to us
are all ways of God showing us another turn, another way, like backing up into our
neighbor's car to have our eyes opened. GIVE IT UP! Open your hands. Open your hearts. Be melted, molded, filled, used by the river of flowing
water that is welling up in your heart. Let it overflow today. GIVE IT UP! You may call it your life, but you don't own it, you can't run it, and you won't
save it by yourself! Get thirsty! Drink deeply! Let the love of Christ flow through you like
rivers of living water. So be it! Amen.