Holy Wisdom Church
On the last and greatest day of
the feast, Jesus stood up and cried, “Let anyone who thirsts, come to me, let
anyone who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the
believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living waters”…
Thirst is an
experience that each of us knows deeply. Much like hunger, when we thirst there’s
an inner imperative to relieve it. Think of yourself on a hot summer day, when
your mouth is parched and your body cries out for something cool, like a
refreshing glass of water. How does that feel? Most of us can identify with the
word, “Ahhh…”
Yet we know
that the relief of the thirst is transitory. Soon, thirst arises again, and
before you know it, we’re at the water faucet again. In order to survive, we
have to stay hydrated, and that means responding to our bodies when thirst
tells us that we need water. This is thirst on a physical level, and ultimately
it can never be fully satisfied. Tomorrow we will thirst again.
But in this
morning’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of a spiritual thirst, a thirst that he boldly
believes he can satisfy… definitively. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,
let the one who believes in me drink…” He is not talking of a spiritual soda
that quenches thirst only for a short while. Rather, he’s speaking about an
existential draft that resolves the deepest questions of the human heart,
regardless of the external circumstances we may have to go through. Much as he
said to the Samaritan woman in the 4th chapter of John, “If only you knew the
gift of God and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would
have asked him and he would have given you living waters… Everyone who drinks
of this water will be thirsty, but those who drink of the waters that I will
give, will never thirst again…” In effect, what Jesus is saying to both to the
woman and to us is that once you have discovered that none of the empty
promises of the surrounding culture — money, status, personal comfort — really
satisfy the thirst of your heart, that deep longing for true meaning and
fulfillment, then come to me and drink of the true and living water, and you’ll
find that not only is your thirst slaked, but out of you will flow rivers of
living water as well, the true fruits of the Spirit.
Today is
Pentecost. There’s a way in which we can think of this feast as the aftermath
of Pascha, sort of a footnote to the end of the Paschal season. Everything else
that follows this the rest of the year is called “ordinary time”. Perhaps a
better way to think of this feast is that it is organically connected to Pascha
and which fulfills the promise that occurred at Pascha. What Pentecost
universalizes is Jesus’ presence to all believers. During his earthly life
Jesus was localized. He was here, not there… But now, through the indwelling of
the Spirit, he is intimately present to each of us… not as a ghost, but as an
unceasing, living presence. And through the Spirit we are not only linked
together with each other, but we are also called to allow the living waters of
the Spirit to flow out from us, to be channels of grace from which the world
may realize Jesus’ presence as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment