"Water, Water Everywhere--Why Am I So Thirsty?"
                                  March 11, 2007
   Dan Wilkie, TEI Graduate, Assistant Minister      

Scripture Readings Psalms 63:1-8,  1 Corinthians 10:1-13

 I am going to do something today that I rarely do when I preach.  I encourage each of you to open your pew Bibles and turn to Psalm 63 and take a few moments to look at this Psalm.  In the beauty of the poetry lies the heart of faith.  Knowing that God is always there.

For centuries the faithful have made comparisons between God, and the things of the earth that nurture us like water and food, because these were things they could connect with on a concrete basis, not some remote and abstract concept.  They could touch them and feel them and be physically satisfied by them.  People referred to God as the living water, or the Holy Bread, many of the same things we do today.  In their deepest moments of struggle and pain, at the times they needed to be nurtured the most, and in their, often unsure moments of searching and seeking, they have sought God’s nurturing and healing grace, and because they could relate in this way they found ways that quenched their spiritual thirst, and spiritual hunger. 

It was this faith that nurtured and satisfied, and guided our Jewish ancestors as they struggled in the wilderness for forty years, building their relationship and their promised land, the land promised in their covenant with God.  

It was this same spiritual food and drink of faith that guided our own Congregational ancestors as they fled the religious persecution in England as they journeyed to the Netherlands and later to the new world across the treacherous Atlantic Ocean in search of religious freedom. 

It is this same spiritual nourishment that gives many Mexican immigrant families the courage they need to leave homes and villages, and family support systems to cross an inhospitable land, to a new place where they know they are often unwanted and treated with contempt to find a new and hopefully better life. 

It is this same faith that gives a young mother with four children the courage to leave a violently abusive home, and seek to build a new life for herself and her family in the midst of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. 

It is the same faith that sustains and nurtures the many military, law enforcement, and fire personnel who protect us, putting their own lives in harms way for the sake of ours.

It is the same faith that guides a missionary family to leave the relative comfort of their home in the United States and move to a dangerous location in South America, where religion is discouraged and those who practice it are persecuted,  to minister to the local people and communities and help those who choose to begin a life long faith journey. 

It is the same faith that sustains the falsely imprisoned or those imprisoned for seeking religious freedoms and justice for their people, or any number of sundry reasons dreamed up to confine them.

It is the same faith that sustains the critically injured and the critically ill, and their families as they under go very invasive and dangerous surgeries and often long and painful recoveries. 

It is also this faith that provides for the gifts of healing of their care-givers, and the compassion and love they show to their patients, during the difficult healing process and in the times of loss and grief. 

These are some of the examples of the living waters that quench out spiritual thirsts, and there are so many others.  I’ll probably bet most of us can think of our own.

 Yet as we celebrate these gifts of faith, there are many out there who are hurting, who long for something to nourish them and slake their spiritual thirst, they are like sailors in a life boat, bemoaning their fate “water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink”. These are the ones who have been unable to find fulfillment, they are the unhappy ones, the sad ones, the depressed ones, the questioning ones. 

Some of them may have once felt fulfilled, but now feel empty, having given up faith in search of more earthly pursuits, the chasing of the elusive dream of wealth, for instance; or the addictive power of drugs and alcohol, only to find these are temporary solutions.  To understand just how temporary these things are, ask any employee of Enron, or look in the face of the addict seeking recovery who has lost everything in pursuit of drugs and alcohol. 

And it is all too easy to become complacent, to be lured away, perhaps it is easier to stay in bed on Sunday morning than get ready for church, perhaps we have a job that requires our time on Sunday morning, maybe we put aside our daily practices of prayer or Bible Study. Doing so occasionally is not a bad thing, but if they become habits and take place of our spiritual pursuits, then we have lost our spiritual momentum, and excitement of faith.  Some might say faith has been lost, but I prefer to consider it displaced, moved to the back of the line, hidden away for a while.   

I know in my own life, and in my struggles to find myself, to be successful in business, to be a father and husband, and to fit into society, I have made decisions, probably not the best ones, and I had to live with the consequences of those decisions.  Yet I also found that in my darkest moments, when I was hurting the most, it was this faith that nurtured me, sustained and nourished me.

  The psalmist in our lesson today teaches that when one is thirsty and seeking, to trust in God, to open up one’s heart and mind to God for God is always with us. 

Paul in his letter to the Corinthians urges them to live right lives to not become complacent, not to give in to earthly ways but stay focused on Christ. 

This is exactly what we must do during this time of Lent, refocus our spiritual energy, and our hearts on God, seeking God’s grace through Christ, and trusting in the awesomeness of God’s love.  

To do this we need to remain true to worship, pray more, study more open our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds to the still small voice that calls to us in whatever wilderness we find ourselves in and in doing so our own spiritual thirst will be quenched.

When our thirst has been satisfied, we can, with courage and conviction and passion, take this message to the others around us that hunger and thirst as well. 

So as you leave here today, I leave you with this paraphrased version of our lesson from the Psalms, may it touch you as it has touched me.  Jim Taylor in his book Everyday Psalms: 

“Why do we need downtown churches?  Because a few people come there to seek sanctuary.  Crowds of people crush me.  They bump and bounce my mind; they break my concentration.  I feel like nothing more than a means to an end, merely a cog in the machinery.  I long for the gentle touch of loving fingers, the intimate whisper of acceptance.  So I have come looking for you, Lord, in your holy places.   In this dimmed light, in this hushed silence, I sense your presence.  I wish I could feel you as near me in the rabid frenzy of life in the city core.  I want to reach out and touch you in the marketplace as well as the chancel.  Then I will not feel alone; you will be part of every thought and every breath.  I will know you at my desk and in my den, in my bed and in my bathtub.  Nothing will come between us.  And I will hold you close in the forest of my fears.

Go now into, all the world, living life fully without fear, filled with compassion and love, seeking mercy and justice for you are not alone, God is always with you, and will always be with you. 

Amen.