To the farmer standing in the barn and staring out at waterlogged fields, more rain right about now feels more like curse than blessing. A couple of you privately have already asked that I prayerfully ask God to cork the clouds and close the spigot.
Yet these cold, wet days that fill the barns with hay do come with moments of assurance and hope: Like the other day when I rescued a bumble bee. She was barely moving, clinging to life on a window ledge of our back porch. What little movement she made seemed to take every ounce of strength she had left, her delicate legs appearing to move as if in slow-motion.
Now, I hold absolutely no love for aggressive, stinging insects like wasps or hornets. Crossing our threshold never ends well for the yellow-jacket that sneaks its way inside. But bumble bees are another story. They’re the good guys who mostly mind their own business of pollinating flowers, fruits, and vegetables. So it felt, to me anyway, like this bumble bee deserved a reprieve.
My rescue plan was simple: Grab an empty drinking glass, gently nudge the bee off the ledge and into the glass, then head outside to tip the lethargic bumble bee gently onto one of Julie’s lovely potted flowers just outside our backdoor. So that’s what I did, figuring the bumble bee still had a morsel or two of strength to inch her way into a deep-purple bloom for a sip of sweet, refreshing nectar.
But no. Instead, she labored over to a droplet of water that clung to a leaf, and slowly but surely the droplet disappeared. Her tiny body heaved rapidly as she sucked up the droplet. Then she paused, maybe a second or two, and quickly took vertical flight across our back yard – apparently rejuvenated, obviously strengthened, seemingly no worse for the wear – by a mere droplet of refreshing rain.
No wonder, then, that in the biblical world water was such a precious commodity.
The lack of rain in certain areas made the catching and saving of rainwater a vital chore of the utmost importance. (It’s a ritual next door at the manse, too!) And in Scripture, water symbolizes of the Spirit of God. On the last day – the great day! – of the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles, the setting described in our first lesson this morning, a priest uses a golden pitcher to draw water from the free-flowing Well of Siloam.
He’d then take the life-giving water and pour it upon the foot of the altar, while worshipers sang the psalms and songs of praise and thanksgiving. The ritual anxiously anticipated the arrival of truly living water in the coming of God’s Messiah. And on this particular occasion, over the din of the crowd’s holy celebrations, Jesus announces the outpouring of the Holy Spirit!
Hear, now, that spoken Word of the Lord from the Voice who began Creation. Listen even if you don’t understand.
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.
“As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37-39)
Those three verses pack a lot of theological punch, so let me quickly parse out a few things.
First, Jesus extends an invitation not so much to those who merely need to wet their whistles physically but more to those suffering with spiritual thirst, wrestling with a deep, intense longing for righteousness, yearning for living life in right relationship with God, others, and all Creation. “Let anyone who is spiritually thirsty come and drink deeply.”
Second, as the Spirit irrigates our parched souls, that same loving grace also must flow out of a believer’s heart to quench others similarly dehydrated – yet another way of describing what it means to love and serve God, friend, neighbor, and stranger. “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water to quench a deep, spiritual thirst for living rightly with God, with friend, with neighbor, with stranger.”
And finally, when John writes that the Spirit has not yet been given, that doesn’t mean the Spirit hasn’t been active and at work all along. Rather, it appears to dovetail well with the story of Jesus’s Ascension that we heard a couple weeks ago. Not until Jesus ascends to heaven is he finally fully glorified, granted a higher status, as he takes his seat at the righthand of God.
After that happens, Jesus commands, wait patiently for the Spirit to arrive like gangbusters, which well describes the rushing wind and dancing flames that make the Pentecost story so very exceptional.
In the meantime, while you’re waiting on God to be God, here’s some good advice: Drink more water.
A person can live for 60 days without food but can’t survive three days without water. We must have water to live. We all know how a plant can droop and die without water. How much more our physical bodies!
We all, from time to time, enter into the place where we find ourselves spiritually tired and drained. The demands of living, paired with a waning prayer life, can produce a dryness of heart and dehydration of soul.
Sometimes we wander into dry, arid places, because we tend to neglect spiritual matters. You may find yourself in places that are dry, like a spiritual desert, where you become tired, frustrated, weak, and apathetic. Responsibilities and needs, like the intense heat from the beaming sun, drain you of vitality.
So please hear and take to heart this invitation to abundant life from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah:
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no 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? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.
Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
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 than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the [jagged] thorn shall come up the [lush] cypress; instead of the [desert] brier shall come up the [evergreen shrub]; and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 55:1-3, 6-13)
By all means, for your physical health, drink more water. But for eternal health, drink more of the Spirit. Life can sometimes feel like a desert wilderness, but the Holy Spirit flows forever as a river.
It’s called living wet! The Word of the Lord!! Thanks be to God!!!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this sermon on Sunday, June 2, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. It is the first in series on biblical symbols of the Holy Spirit: water, fire, a dove, and wind. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by David Diga Hernandez and Kurt Selles inform the message.