Come to the Waters

This Week's Lectionary Passage:  Isaiah 55: 1-9
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.²Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.³Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.⁴See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.⁵See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.  ⁶Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;⁷let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.⁸For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Most of us do not really know what it means to thirst.  I mean, really, really thirst.  After all, the shortage of clean water in many parts of the world is lost on us.  We just go to the faucet (or the automatic water spout in our refrigerator door or the waiting bottle of water in the bottom fridge door).  Thirst, real thirst, eludes us.  But Timothy Shapiro claims that "hope is preceded by longing".  You see, God is not requiring us to be right or moral or steadfast.  I don’t think that God is even requiring us to lay prostrate at the feet of God in good, old-fashioned repentance.  God’s only requirement is that we thirst for God, that we desire to be with God so much that we can do nothing else but change our course and follow God.  It is our thirst that draws us closer to God and closer to each other.  We just have to desire something different enough to be part of making it happen.

So, what happens with those of us for whom thirst can be so easily quenched?  How do we learn to hope at the deepest part of our being if we never truly long for anything?  How do we discover what true need is when we often live our lives over-filled and over-served? How do we hunger for something better in a life where we are so satisfied?  Perhaps that is why people like us need this season of Lent, plunging us into the depths of human need and profound grief.  Maybe the point of it all is to teach us how to thirst and, therefore, to show us that for which we long.

God's abundance, God's quenching of thirst, God's feeding of hunger is greater than anything that we can offer ourselves.  But those of us whose lives are already filled to the brim, already stuffed beyond what we need and beyond what we can really manage, often convince ourselves that we need nothing more.  There is nothing more that we can cram into our time or our budget or our houses or our bellies or our lives.  And, yet, we are never satisfied.  Maybe what we're missing is not something else to fill us; maybe what we're missing is the longing for something that we cannot quite grasp.  But that longing, that deep, deep, profound longing will only come when we realize that we cannot fill it.  In other words, we do not need something more; we need to learn to thirst, to long. 

So, in this Lenten season, let us clear away the things with which we have filled ourselves and learn to thirst--really thirst.  And there we will find our true hope.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli 

Drought

It may seem a little strange to talk about drought after all the torrential rains we've had this week, but the effects of last summer's drought are just now starting to come to be.  Estimates are now at $7.6 billion in losses to forestry and livestock.  So, needless to say, last year's drought is deep and everlasting.

I have to confess that I thought of the notion of "drought" because last night, I could not for the life of me, decide what to write about for today.  I felt like I was in a "drought".  So, why not go with it?  Lent is often characterized with drought.  We practice giving up and letting go.  Our worship is more reserved, void of celebratory "Alleluia's" (although if we were REAL Lenten practicioners, we would live in drought during the week and then Sundays would still be celebratory!).  To a certain degree, we who have much have to force ourselves into a 40-day season of drought.  Why?  Because it makes us realize who we are and what we need.  It makes us vulnerable, open, receptive.  It gets us out of ourselves.  (It gets us away from what we WANT to do, what we think we SHOULD do, and listen...)  It shows us what we need.  Besides, maybe a little drought now and then does us good.  After all we are drowning--drowning in work, drowning in our home lives, drowning in our relationships.  We are drowning with too much to do and too much to pay.  We are drowning in an image of someone whom we are not.  And so, God gave us thirst; God gave us drought.  Because when we thirst, we will look for what quenches our thirst.  When our need is the highest, we will reach for something else.

I just had my crepe myrtles in the backyard trimmed.  And once everything was cleared away, I realized that they had done what so many trees had done around us last summer.  Thirsting and unable to quench their need in the deepest part of their being, they took their roots, their very foundation, and began to reach up and out, spreading themselves along the flowerbed.  (And interestingly enough, even joining themselves with other trees, as if they are holding hands through the turmoil.)  Even trees realize when they cannot fend for themselves.  It's a shame we have such difficulty doing the same.

So, on this twenty-sixth day of Lenten observance, think about what makes you feel like you're drowning.  And then think about what it is for which you thirst.  And then thirst...

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

LENT 3A: Thirst-Quenching

Lectionary Text:  Exodus 17: 1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

The wilderness journey has begun.  It all sounded so simple:  Just lead them across the wilderness to the Promised Land.  But things are not going well.  There are rumblings of discontent.  The people are questioning the vision and direction of their leader.  And, to top everything off, they are thirsty.  Aaaaggghhh!  QUIT COMPLAINING!  (You know that's what Moses wanted to say!)  But he didn't.  He listened.  And then, the text says, he cried out to the Lord.  The truth was, they were thirsty.  People get downright beligerant when they are hungry or thirsty.  And the waters came--thirst-quenching waters.

You know, sometimes we hear responses that we don't want to hear.  And all of us know that it would have been a whole lot easier for Moses to just go on by himself (and a whole lot quieter!).  Today, I've sat through several interviews by our conference's Board of Ministry.  They are interviews for ordination candidates at which the board ascertains whether or not the candidate is doing effective ministry.  What exactly is effectiveness?  Like I said, sometimes it would be a whole lot easier to just go off by yourself, to just pray that the problems or the problem people go away.  But that's not the way this faith journey works.  Sometimes the faith journey includes quarreling and testing.  Sometimes it includes a whole lot of complaining.  But always, always it includes more grace than any of us can handle.  And the waters came--thirst-quenching waters.

In one of the interview rooms, I saw a hand-printed sign (as in off of someone's computer--no one knows what "handwritten" is anymore, I suppose!).  It was actually for a children's choir, but I think it works beyond that.  The sign said "Listen louder than you sing."  That's what Moses did.  That's what this journey is.  It's about realizing that you're part of a bigger picture, that you cannot just go off by yourself and leave everyone behind.  It's about letting God lead you.  It's about listening louder than you sing (or complain or quarrel or anything else).  It's about knowing that the waters will come--thirst-quenching waters.

So on this Lenten journey, listen louder than you sing!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

A Journey of Thirsting

Today's Lectionary Old Testament Text:  Isaiah 55: 1-3, 6

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David...Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near...(NRSV)

None of us like to thirst.  In fact, much of our life is about chasing something that will quench our thirsts--our thirst for knowledge, our thirst for acceptance, our thirst for recognition, our thirst for security, our thirst for gratification.  Thirst is an interesting thing.  It is a powerful and undeniable signal to us of what we need, a reminder of those things that sustain us.  And yet, the point seems to be to rid ourselves of it, to live perfectly-quenched lives so to speak.

And yet God is not really calling us to "perfectly-quenched" lives.  God has never said to us, "Get yourselves together, people, so that you can come to me."; never, "Hurry, people, I don't have time to wait for you anymore."  That's not what it's about.  That's not who God is.  Instead, God is inviting everyone who thirsts to come.  Timothy Shapiro claims that "hope is preceded by longing".  God's desire is not that we perfect our lives but that we desire so deeply to be with God, long for that relationship as the very source of our being, that we can do nothing other than to come to God.  God is inviting all who thirst to come. It is our thirst that draws us closer to God.  It is that thirsting for God at the very core of who we are that is the journey to God itself. As we long for God, our thirst is quenched by the very thirst for God itself.  

Alexander Stuart Baillie says that this age needs to become more realistic. It needs to listen again to the words of Jesus, who said, ‘I thirst.” He who is the Son of Man, the Son of God, is our example. He is the great pioneer in every realm of life. Surely if he thirsted, how much more do we? Humanity needs to get away from the world of “things as they are” into the world of “things as they ought to be.” This means that men and women must learn to live for others. It is only when we can live a life of self-forgetfulness that we get our truest joy out of life. One needs to keep on thirsting because life grows and enlarges. It has no end; it goes on and on; it becomes more beautiful. When one has done his best there is, he finds, still more to learn and so much more to do. [One] cannot be satisfied until [one]attains unto the stature of Jesus, unto a perfect [human], and ever thirsts for God. (Alexander Stuart Baillie, “Thirsting”, in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 242-243.)

It is only through our thirsting for God that we will find God.  It is only when we thirst that we will truly drink from the cup.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Picture:  The Dead Sea, Israel, 2010