Grace Congregational UCC

“Sacred Thirst”
Isaiah 55:1-9
Luke 13:1-9

March 11, 2007 - Kim M. Henning

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopalian Pastor down in Georgia. For 20 years, she prayed with the hospitalized, officiated at funerals, taught confirmation class, attended board meetings, and counseled families. Every Sunday, Taylor climbed into the pulpit to do what she does so eloquently: she preached. But one day as she climbed into her car about to go home, she started crying and couldn’t stop. She recognized signs of depression and the heaviness of her work load. She abruptly resigned and rested three months. Then she published a memoir.

In her book, “Leaving Church,” Taylor tells her story of ministry and stories from her personal life. Taylor’s husband, Ed, is an engineer. As a Christian, Ed discerned that he needed more than Sunday, singing in the choir, and adult education. He discovered along the way, the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and their practice of spirituality.

Ed committed to go on a spiritual retreat. He went to South Dakota where the chief took away from Ed everything—his clothing, his possessions, his jewelry. Then the chief gave Ed a woolen blanket and set him out on a hill to pray for two days without food and water. After the retreat, Barbara met Ed at the airport in Atlanta. She writes that she had a hard time recognizing him. He shaved his beard. He had spent two days naked before God. His face was sunburned, he lost weight, his eyes glowed.

On the way home in the car, Ed told Barbara about the experience. One sentence stayed with her. Ed said to Barbara, “You make church too easy.”

I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s book more than a year ago (and maybe twice since) and those words have stayed with me...... This is the season of Lent when the church prepares itself for the Via Dolorosa, the pathway of suffering. Obedient to God, Jesus carried his cross through the streets of Jerusalem, and then took up his cross even onto death. Obedient to God, Jesus bore a crown of thorns. Obedient to God, Jesus suffered the lashing, and then abandonment. But what of us?

I’m thinking of Ed’s words, “You make church too easy.” Will someone tell me of my soul, and my hunger----my necessary need for God? Will someone challenge me to sort through the wasteland of my life—wasted money, wasted time, wasted relationships?

Will someone push me to build a bridge with my enemies? Will someone invite me to bare my soul and the poverty of my life before God? Will someone preach to me that the world is full of false advertising, that I am nothing less than a child of God, and in Augustine’s words, “my soul is restless until it finds its rest in God?”

I love the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Ho” Isaiah says----(as if to say,----hey you----or listen up), “HO, every who thirst, come to the waters; and you that have not 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.”

The prophet Isaiah tells us that the life of the Spirit is priceless. This life is about Spirit, Holy Spirit. Using a bit of irony, Isaiah says, “Come and buy milk and wine without money, without price.” Come and buy those things that ultimately matter, but they don’t have a price tag on them. This life is not about money—the abundance, or the lack thereof. This life is about Spirit, Holy Spirit.

The well-known psychiatrist, Gerald May said, “After 20 years of listening to the yearnings of people’s hearts, I am convinced that human beings have an inborn desire for God. Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire (for God) is our deepest longing and most precious treasure.”

The challenge of being Christian, I believe, is to recognize the false spiritualities around us and to discipline a life that prepares us for eternity. Ed’s words are haunting, “You make church too easy.” Diedrich Bonhoeffer repeatedly talked about ‘cheap grace’. Cheap grace is to take the cross of Jesus Christ for granted. Cheap grace is to do our bit on Sunday morning and think we’re religious enough. Cheap grace is to put one of those Christian bumper stickers on the car, and think nothing of the spirit within us.

What do we hunger for? What do we thirst for? What do we yearn for? I think of children who have this basic need to love and to be loved. That is a child’s deepest need: ‘to love and to be loved.’ So how do we respond to that need? We buy them computers and cell phones and televisions and we take them on fancy vacations. We want our children to know we love them.

We work overtime so we have more money to buy them things....so they know how much we love them. But what they really want—even if they don’t know they want it, ‘is to be loved and to give love.” What does a child need? A mom to hold them and tell them stories. What does a child need? A dad to pray with them and walk through the woods. What does a child need? A mom who will listen to their fears and wipe away their tears? What does a child need? We know how many artificial ways there are to be parents— Do we have the courage to talk about the artificial ways there are to be Christian?

‘HO’ says the prophet Isaiah to a people who are in exile, ‘come to the waters. Don’t waste your money on things that do not satisfy. Listen carefully,’ the prophet says, ‘incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live..... And then the prophet says ‘of God’—‘for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’

What do you thirst for? What do you hunger for? In the Gospel of Luke a story is told of some people who come to Jesus. It seems that Pilate committed an ugly massacre of sorts. The crises that came to Jesus one day is that Pilate had massacred some local Galileans. And then, to show those Galileans who was really in charge—he ordered that their human blood be mingled with the animal blood of sacrifices. And some folk, who come to Jesus say, ‘What about this?!” And Jesus responds, ‘you have got to repent, or something just as horrible is going to happen to you before God.’

That was not the response, I think, that they were looking for. I think they were looking for Jesus to retaliate. I think they were looking for Jesus to tell them how horrible of a beast that Pilate was. But Jesus, speaking to their lives.....Jesus speaking to their souls said, ‘repent.’ We must always repent.

Then there were some others who came to Jesus with another story. It seems that a tower was being built and the tower collapsed, and the tragedy was----the fact that 18 were killed. Some folk, who were with Jesus, brought him that story and they said, no less, ‘what about this?!’

What about this? Why do bad things happening to good people? Why do the innocent suffer? They were inviting Jesus to disclose a hidden theology. A mystery. Do you know what the response of Jesus was? Jesus said, in response to that tower falling, ‘unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’

With Jesus, the way to grow closer to God....is by repenting. With Jesus, the way to grow closer to God....is by acknowledging the poverty within us. Pascal wrote a short poem: “If man is not made for God, why is he only happy in God? If man is made for God, why is he so opposed to God?”

According to the stories that we have Jesus while he was on the cross, he spoke seven times. In the Gospel of John, one of the things that Jesus said was, ‘I thirst.’ What did Jesus mean, when he said, ‘I thirst’? What did Jesus thirst for? What did Jesus desire when he said, ‘I thirst.’

Now the people who were below him thought that he thirsted for something to drink and they gave him some sour wine—that was like vinegar. That is what the onlooker thought Jesus thirsted for----or at least it was the best they had to offer. Give him something for his parched mouth. Give him something for his pain. Give him ‘sour wine.’

But consider this—Jesus never complains of physical want in everything else recorded of him. Not want for stuff. Not want for affluence. Not want for physical things. Could it be, when Jesus said, “I thirst” that he was thirsting ‘to be with God.’ I believe that when Jesus said, “I thirst” he was telling us that his deepest and perhaps only need was to be with God in heaven because ultimately that is all that matters.

Jesus, the one we worship, is the poor one to whom we give.