Thirsty

Thirsty

A Sermon on Exodus 17:1-7 and Matthew 26:17-30

by Griff Martin

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

On World Communion Sunday

October 1 2017

Incarnate God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing Resurrected reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Risen Christ and the Comforter.  Amen.

Maybe it was poor planning or maybe it was divine timing… you see I start studying a text weeks out from preaching the text, I need to live with them, I need to let them live inside me, I need to court them and I need them to court me, I need to find my questions of the text and more importantly I need to find the questions the text has of me, I need to let the text have it’s way with me… and that takes time.

So a few weeks ago I had a slow Thursday morning and I began to sit with this text from Exodus. Now it just happened to be a slow morning with nothing on the schedule because later that day I was having a little oral surgery- “nothing major” my doctor promised, “just going to shave back your gums, touch up the bone and lengthen your crown.” Which obviously sounds less major if you are the one doing it and not the one receiving it.

To prepare for this little procedure, I could not eat or drink for 6 hours before. The surgery was scheduled for 11:30 that day, so doing the math and knowing I am not a morning person, this meant that I was fasting from bedtime until the procedure.

So I got up that morning, already thirsty and knowing that there was not going to be my typical morning cups of coffee (that is very plural) and I sat down to this text about a group of thirsty Israelites….. divine irony.

And maybe it was the best thing because I was reminded temporarily of what it means to be thirsty, you see I am not a person who really gets thirsty… none of us are if we are honest. Most of us have ample avenues to quench any and every thirst we have ever had.

Thirst is rarely our verb. Fulfill, appease, assuage, realize, satisfy… those are our verbs. Thirst not so much.

I can only think of one time in my life I was thirsty.

My friend Cole and I were on what was supposed to be a simple morning hike to the top of the volcano in Nicaragua (Telica) and then we were going to eat lunch where we had parked the trucks. If only it had gone that way, however I guess as should be expected when climbing an active volcano in a third world country, things don’t always go to plan.

For example instead of hiking one volcano that day, we hiked three volcanoes that day.

Or for another example instead of a simple three to four hour hike that our guide assured us “anyone could do”, instead we had a 12 hour track that included one moment where our guide yelled words that I feel certain if I could translate I could not say from the pulpit, when we almost walked right off a 50 foot drop and he made us all lay down to “gather our composure” and while he went to find us a way out.

Or for example how the hike which was supposed to be from point a to point b and then back to point a, instead turned into point a to point b to point c to point d to point e (which was then a 12 mile walk back to point a).

However all that was really an adventure, what made me a bit nervous was the fact that for the last 8 hours of the hike, the 5 of us only had half a liter of water and one of my friends had just finished his 8^th or 9^th major surgery after having cancer as a child.

Needless to say when we finally made it back to the trucks after the long day, with very tired and dirty feet, sore legs and parched throats, to find the extra bottles of water in the bed of the truck was pure life and I understood the old phrase “like a long tall cool drink of water” was used to refer to anything attractive and had gained a new understanding of the salvific and truly then sacramental nature of water.

You can’t understand thirst until you are truly thirsty.

Until you are wandering in the middle of the dessert and you have been wandering for some time and it looks like that is all you are going to do in the near future is wander… when you are out in the middle of nowhere and you don’t know where you are or where you are going… when your world suddenly feels entirely undone…. when that one thing you want with everything inside you is so far from reach and all you can think about is that which you crave… when desire is the only verb you know…. when things have actually gotten so bad that you are thinking about going back to your former state of being where you were enslaved, it might have been bad but at least you had water… where you have no idea who is in control… where you wake up most days not knowing what is going on… when you mind can’t stop thinking about that one thing…. when you have lost all hope.

That’s thirst. And so maybe it’s unfair to say we don’t thirst, maybe it’s more fair to say we don’t talk about our thirst, we have that privilege.

The Israelites don’t, the Israelites are thirsty. They have been wandering for some time and freedom is suddenly not all as good as they thought it would be. They are camped at Rephidim, which is a nice camp except for that little problem, there is no water, which is a real plus to a camping site.

And so the Israelites say to Moses, the only thing that could be said, “Give us water to drink.”

You see thirst does something to your body. Your body needs water, our bodies are made up of 70% water and staying hydrated is essential to living.  Water plays an important role in our biology:  it helps maintain our body temperature, it transports vitamins and minerals and hormones, it lubricates joints, and it keeps us alive. And we can only go so long without water, merely a matter of days. You can make it almost three weeks without food, but the average human can only make it three days without water.

Without water you become faint, your muscles began to cramp, you lose the ability to think clearly, and once dehydration sets in you no longer have enough fluid in your body to get blood to the proper organs so your body begins to shut down. Water is essential to life. That is why the thirst mechanism in our body is so strong.

So while the Israelites do their fair share of complaining, this one is pretty valid. When they are out there in the wilderness and they have no water, now is the right time to cause a ruckus. This is valid.

And so they cry out, they cry out to Moses who in turn cries out to God… and God then does what God does, God provides.

“Go on out ahead of the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel. Take the staff you used to strike the Nile. And go. I’m going to be present before you there on the rock at Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will gush out of it and the people will drink.”

And it was exactly as God said…. Water gushed out and the people drank, their thirst was quenched because God provided for their longings, God provided when they called out in thirst.

So what happens when we don’t know what it means to be thirsty?

What happens when we have everything we need right around us and if it’s not there it can be Amazon primed to us overnight for no additional charge? What happens when our lives are so full that we don’t even notice that for which we are truly thirsty? What happens when we are so out of touch with our selves that we can’t name our true thirst? What happens when we can’t be vulnerable and admit what we desire? What happens when we create thirsts and ignore the true thirst in our souls (oh I need a new pair of jeans or shoes or car but forgot the spiritual thirst that exists in our hearts)? What happens when we don’t talk about what we thirst for, what is truly our desire? What happens when we don’t long for God?

And I have to tell you, I think that is where most of us are…. It’s one of the reasons this morning we worked to make this entire sanctuary smell like bread because our hope is that the smell of bread will cause you to hunger, that the smell of fresh baked bread will create a need for you, that it might even go so far as to make your stomach growl… so you can understand, what desire feels like and what if feels like to name that.

Because I hope this is how you feel every time you see the Table prepared.

You see I have a real problem every time we have the elements of communion in this sanctuary and we don’t all have a Pavilion response to it. We should see the bread and wine and nothing else should matter to us until we can receive the sacrament.

And if we don’t have that response, then we are not being honest about our thirst.

Sara Miles helped me rediscover communion. Sara Miles was a leftist, liberal atheist journalist who lived with her partner in San Francisco when she was home from reporting in and on war torn countries. She loved the adrenaline and the high of that type of reporting. A few years ago she was home for a brief stint and she found herself one Sunday morning walking by a church. She realized that in her thirty something years of being alive she had never actually attended church, it was not for her- religion was outdated, there was no need for God, but still she was curious as to why folks did this church thing so she wandered in and took a seat.

Worship was exactly what one would think until everyone stood to receive communion, until the priest stood and said the simple words, “Jesus invites everyone to his table.” And Sara found herself in line to receive communion. And she took the wafer and she took the cup, and in partaking of the elements, in her words: “something outrageous and terrifying happened. Jesus happened to me.”

In her words: “I still can’t explain my first communion. It made no sense. I was in tears and physically unbalanced; I felt as if I had just stepped off a curb or been knocked over…. I couldn’t reconcile the experience with anything I knew or had been told. But neither could I go away: for some inexplicable reason, I wanted the bread again. I wanted it all the next day after my first communion, and the next week and the next. It was a sensation as urgent as physical hunger, pulling me back to the table at St. Gregory’s through my fear and confusion.”

And that first communion led to many more for her, until she decided that she needed to be part of communion, so she started a food pantry at St. Gregory’s and then she became a priest. Communion became her very life.

She knew her thirst.

The sacred thirst.

The thirst of a woman by a well hearing these words: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

Gushing up to eternal life.

What a perfect picture of communion… a table gushing up to eternal life. A table that not only fills us but calls us. A table that is exactly what we need and gives us the exact picture for exactly who we need to be as a result. A table that is the same every time and yet different every time. A table where our thirst is quenched by the gushing water.

And it is so much more than just a ritual or symbol for us, in the words of the great Flannery O’Conner: “If it’s a symbol, then to hell with it.” And my thought is that maybe we turn it into a symbol to avoid our own thirst.

So what is your soul longing for today? For what do you thirst? Is it meaningful work? Is it the Kingdom of God to fully come to our earth? Is it for a relationship? Is it to draw closer to God? Is it to be content? Is it justice or mercy? Is it friendship or community? Is it truth in a world where truth feels out of fashion? What in your soul do you desire so bad you can almost taste it, but have not yet named.

Because my invitation this morning is to name your thirst and then to look at that table and to see that every good and precious gift from God starts there….. that table holds everything, it’s the place where everything and everyone belongs and the gushing water of Life that will quench your thirst is there for the taking.

Amen and Amen.

*artwork: Communion of Three, Acrylic on Wood, by Kerri Blackman, kerriblackman.com