A sermon on John 7:37 prepared by David Sceats for the Day of Pentecost 2020
Jesus stood and declared, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink …’
You could be forgiven for thinking that the people who wrote the Bible had a bit of a ‘thing’ about water! After all, the Bible begins and ends with it; it starts with the Spirit of God ‘hovering over the surface of the waters’ in Genesis 1:2, and it ends with river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God’ in Revelation 22:1. And in between, water keeps cropping up over and over again – sometimes in a literal sense (as when the outlaw David’s three heroes infiltrate the Philistine lines around Bethlehem to bring him a cup of water from the well at the town gate) but more often as a metaphor with a wide spectrum of meanings.
In one of those metaphors, water – especially the sea – stands for chaos. The sea is unstable, unpredictable, unreliable, rising and falling, subject to storms, full of uncontrollable energy. To the Israelites it was a symbol of everything that God was not, and therefore something on which God revealed his power by imposing his authority, as in the act of creation itself, or in the parting of the Red Sea as the Israelites fled from Egypt, or Jesus’ stilling of the storm on Lake Galilee.
On the other hand, water – especially in the form of rain – often represents God’s blessing on his creation. Water speaks of refreshment: the Psalmist speaks of God the Shepherd leading his sheep beside still waters – places of peace, tranquillity and restoration; in the wilderness the people of Israel are provided with water from a rock to quench their thirst; Jesus commends anyone who gives ‘one of these little ones a cup of cold water in my name’. Water speaks of replenishment and on-going creativity: the Psalmist’s picture of peace and prosperity includes the river of God being full of water; the ‘showers that water the earth’ and the ‘early and latter rains’ are repeated signs of God’s providential care in the fruitfulness of the land and the richness of harvest. And water speaks of salvation: it is the difference between life and death; in First Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom that is to come we are told ‘with joy shall you draw water from the wells of salvation, and you will say in that day “Give thanks to the Lord; call upon him by name …”
Wells of water were focal points of communal life in biblical times. It was to the well at Aramnaharaim that Abraham’s servant went to find a wife for Isaac from the family of Nahor; David longed for water from the Bethlehem well because Bethlehem was his home town; Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman took place at the well of Sychar; wells were places where women met to exchange news, to blether, to narrate their lives and so create a sense of shared identity.
This obsession with water is hardly surprising. After all, Israel was a people of the Fertile Crescent. The agriculture that sustained their lives, then, as now, was dependent on irrigation. Their lands were surrounded by desert where water was both blessing and curse: oases made travel possible, but flash floods in desert wadis could wipe out whole caravans without warning. Israel’s national narrative – it’s archetypal story – was the tale of slavery in Egypt, exodus and wilderness wanderings, shaped by the rhythm of the River Nile, the crossings of the Red Sea and Jordan and the water from the rock. But Israel was never a seagoing people, which was why they were so ill at ease with the restlessness of the ocean.
None of this is quite what water means to us. In our temperate maritime climate water is usually plentiful but seldom problematic – though things have begun to change with the increase in global warming. Only a few months ago much of our land was inundated with floods – but that was before coronavirus and lockdown, and it’s hard to remember now. The past two months, while we’ve been confined to our homes, has been a time of almost continuous sunshine with very little rain, and many of us feel this itself has been a blessing: think how much worse the lockdown would have felt if spring had been a continuation of winter’s repeated storms and floods. For us, sunshine and warmth are still the symbols of blessing and well-being. But for Israel the sun was the enemy. Thirst was always likely to strike. The sun would scorch. People sought the shade for relief. Water was the blessing of God, especially ‘living’ water – that is running water – because pooled water quickly became stagnant and undrinkable. So it was living (running) water that was the water of life.
All this varied experience of water lies behind the imagery that Jesus uses in our Gospel passage to convey the meaning of God’s Spirit. Like water, the Spirit is uncontrollable, unpredictable, unexpected, sweeping all before it like a flash flood. But the Spirit is also ‘living water’, fresh and sweet, moving and full of energy, drenching, quenching, but also refreshing and renewing like the Psalmist’s ‘still waters’. Above all, the Spirit is the water of life – the source and sustenance of life with God – of life lived in and for God.
And all this, Jesus says, is available to ‘anyone’ who wants it – to anyone who is thirsty, anyone who is aware that they have a need, that something is lacking, that there’s a gap that needs filled, a thirst that needs quenched. All they have to do is simply ‘come’ to him and ‘drink’. Take note that you have to do both: both ‘come’ and ‘drink’. You can’t ‘drink’ without first coming to the source of the water, but you can ‘come’ – perhaps in a spirit of interest, enquiry and investigation – without actually ‘drinking’. The language Jesus uses suggests a willingness to act on the invitation – to actively receive the water of life. Drinking involves participation: you have to put the cup to your lips, take a draught and swallow it; the water of life has to be allowed to enter in, if our thirst is to be quenched. But ‘coming’ and ‘drinking’ is all that’s needed – and it’s an inclusive offer, an invitation for everyone: ‘Let anyone who is thirsty …’
What does it mean to ‘come’ to Jesus? At the time his hearers could have walked up to him. They could have shaken him by the hand. They could have sat with him and listened. They could have asked him questions, challenged him about his meaning – as so many of the people in John’s Gospel who met Jesus actually did. None of that is possible now, but underlying all those physical encounters with the Jesus of history was the willingness to place themselves in his hands, to be shaped and guided and directed by him, to trust themselves to him and to his way of seeing and doing things. And that’s still possible: it’s really what ‘drinking’ means. That’s how the Jesus of history becomes for each of us the Christ of our faith, as his goals and values and way of being become ours as we are re-created in his image.
But here’s the surprise. The consequence of drinking – as Jesus sets it our here – is more than those who come to him might expect. They get their thirst quenched; they get refreshed and restored, for sure. They get re-created. But that – it turns out – isn’t finally the point. The water of life (by which, John tells us, Jesus means the Holy Spirit) is not given, in the end, just for those who receive it. The effect of slaking their own thirst is that they become a source of living water in their turn. And not just a trickle: ‘Whoever believes in me, as scripture says, “Streams of living water will flow from within him”,’ – a whole river of the water of life.
This is how the Spirit of God works. The gifts of God are never given solely for the benefit of their recipients. Those who come to Jesus for refreshment, for nourishment, for life in all its fullness, become the means by which others can drink – because the water of the Spirit always overflows, so that those who drink become, in their turn, the source of refreshment, of nourishment, of life, for others. Streams of living water flow out of them.
This is the great mystery of the Spirit’s working. It is God’s Spirit – but it makes itself known through God’s people. And this is the summons of the Day of Pentecost to us who have received the Spirit. We are to be the source of God’s blessing to those around us. We are to be the streams of living water through which our friends and neighbours experience the renewing, cleansing, creative and life-giving activity of the Spirit of God.
That sounds like a tough call – something beyond our capacity, too demanding for our resources. And we’re rightly afraid that if we try to lay it on it will simply come across as hypocrisy. But look more closely at what Jesus says. The Greek of verse 38 actually means ‘… out of his inner life shall flow rivers of living water’. The overflow of the Spirit isn’t something we have to work up; it’s not something we have to generate from our own resources. All that’s required isa that we come to Jesus and drink. If we trust him, if we follow him, if we open ourselves to the Spirit of God, then we’re going to be the means of blessing to those around us.
David D Sceats
26.5.20