Let everyone who is thirsty come.
August 31, 1997

During the last couple of weeks Stony Brook members have been putting up posters around town and on the Mount Holyoke Campus. Perhaps some of you have seen them. At the top they say "thirsty?" Folks putting them up have gotten some puzzled reactions -- "thirsty? And this is a church? I don't get it."

What does being thirsty have to do with church? It doesn't take much to imagine where the conversation might go. Free Gatorade at church? Well, in fact, we do usually provide juice after the service. And the coffee at Stony Brook really IS outstanding. But, no, that's not exactly what we had in mind.

So what do we mean by these posters? What DOES thirst have to do with church?

I want to think together this morning about spiritual thirst and about the Church's responsibility to those who are thirsty.

But let's start by asking what it means to be physically thirsty. Think about the last time you were really thirsty. What made you that way? Why were you thirsty? Easy enough to answer. You get thirsty because your body need fluids. Sitting out in the sun as you are today, you'll start to get warm and it won't take long for your body to need fluids and you will experience that NEED as thirst. Our bodies need a regular supply of water to stay alive. If we don't get the water we need, we will suffer from dehydration.

Here's the interesting thing: We can be dehydrated without feeling very thirsty. Those of you who are involved in Sports know that to stay healthy you need to drink more than you might feel like drinking. Your body might desperately need fluids and yet you don't feel particularly thirsty. Your body may be crying out for water -- and you may have no idea what the real problem is.

The first step to curing physical dehydration is to recognize the true problem. If you get a headache and start to feel dizzy, it will do little good take pain reliever and lie down. Your body doesn't need tylenol, it needs water.

People all around us -- perhaps some of you here -- are suffering from spiritual dehydration and have no idea what is going on. Not many people recognize their spiritual need. Even fewer admit it. Just as with physical dehydration, the first step to dealing with spiritual thirst is to recognize what the real problem is. Whether we're trying to satisfy our own spiritual thirst, or help our friends or neighbors, the place to start is by understanding the root of the problem.

I. Recognizing the signs of spiritual dehydration

In his conversation with the Samaritan woman Jesus cut right to the heart of her spiritual need. And in the case of this woman, the key symptom of her spiritual need was in the emptiness and failure of her relationships. She had gone from relationship to relationship, finding meaning in none of them and failing at them all.

But the failure of her relationships was not her real need -- it was just a symptom. If that was her real need, Jesus could well have replied, "Oh you poor woman. What you really need is a reliable man that you can commit to and settle down with."

Spiritual dehydration very often shows itself in a thirst for other things -- the frantic pursuit of money or success, for instance. How many of us have gone down this path! Can the thirst for money or success ever be satisfied? Of course not -- because our real thirst is for something else. Sometimes spiritual dehydration shows itself in a restless search for relationships to fill the loneliness within us. Such was the Samaritan woman's problem. Sometimes the symptom is religious experimentation. Sometimes the response is escape to drugs or acohol. But all of this restlessness -- this frantic searching -- is just a symptom of a deeper spiritual need. You know you're missing something. You know something is wrong -- that life shouldn't be this way. But you haven't figured out what the problem is.

So what is the problem? What is the missing piece in our lives. Where does the emptiness come from that so many people spend their whole lives trying to fill with money or work or sex or relationships? What is it that we really want. What is it that people really thirst for?

I'll tell you what all of us really want -- we want LIFE. Life. Oh, we have a kind of life now, but its a pale shadow of what know in the depths of our being that we were meant to experience. The recognition that the life we have now is not real life echoes over our television screens and in the music we listen to. It's written all over our bill boards. "That would be the life," we say when we see someone who lives in wealth and liesure. But if we were to experience the kind of life that we envy we would find ourselves just as empty as before.

The problem is this: We have been cut off from the source of life. We were meant for immortality -- we were made to live forever. We were made to have a permanent connection with God. But that connection has been broken. We are separated from God -- separated from the very source of our life. Like water fountains that are cut off from the supply of water, we are dry. Like a plant without water, we face certain spiritual death. It is only a matter of time.

Bleak diagnosis, isn't it?

But into this spiritual desert of death comes a man who doesn't fit. A man who exudes life. A man who cuts right to the heart of our spiritual emptiness. He sees an outcast woman drawing water in the middle of the day and immediately sees through her rough exterior to her spiritual thirst. And he offers her what all of us are really looking for: real life -- life that is so full, so exuberant that it will be like a spring of water gushing up within us. "The water I give" Jesus told the woman, "will become like a spring of water welling up to eternal life."


II. Stimulating spiritual thirst

Need is the reason for thirst, but not always the stimulus.

You're lounging beside a swimming pool, enjoying a beautiful summer day, feeling quite happy with life -- and someone comes by carrying a big cold glass of lemonade. Don't you get thirsty just imagining it? I certainly do. (And after this service is over one of the first things I'm going to want to do is to find a nice big cold drink.)

Or, you are sitting reading quite contentedly, and a friend hands you a bag of potatoe chips -- very salty potatoe chips. Won't be long before your thirsty.

We have all been taught, of course, that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Try putting some salt in the oats.

You see there ARE ways to stimulate physical thirst. And the same is true of spiritual thirst. Jesus was a master at it -- starting with what seemed like a simple, straightforward request, he awoke the Samaritan woman's curiousity and eventually faced her with her spiritual need.

Those who are thirsty will not always appear so. It is the responsibility of those who have tasted of the water of life for themselves to find every way possible to make people aware of their spiritual thirst.

Sometimes that might mean being salty in ways that are uncomfortable. Did you notice how direct Jesus was about the Samaritan woman's adulterous relationships? She had to be confronted with the sin and failure of her life before she could properly recognize her need.

III. Letting the water flow freely

So far so good. Seeking out ways to stimulate people's thirst -- to get their curiousity aroused could be kind of fun. So let's design some nifty posters, run some clever ads, maybe even make some odd sounding remark to a neighbor in the hope that it will make them curious.

I'm afraid that Jesus example is more painful than than. Jesus went out of his way -- uncomfortably out of his way -- to be with those who were spiritually thirsty and to break down the barriers that might have kept them away from quenching their thirst.

The woman Jesus talked with was an outcaste in every conceivable way -- religious, ethnic, moral. Jesus had to cross boundaries of gender, race and moral bigotry even to talk to the woman.

I love fountains. And in dry places, people seem to love fountains all the more. The followers of Jesus Christ should be fountains -- out of which the water of life bubbles so profusely that it cannot be hidden.

But what a disappointment to come upon a fountain that is dry.