MESSAGE………7 Last Words: Thirst for God ………………..Pastor Susan
As I’ve been working through this sermon series on the last seven things Jesus said from the cross, I am struck with the reality that Jesus Christ was fully fully human. Sometimes we forget that by focusing only on his divinity, but let us remember today that he was an ordinary human being like the rest of us who had an extraordinary way of tapping into the Source of All Being.So he was fully human and fully divine. I have found nowhere else in Scripture where this paradox is so relevant. God in flesh is incarnation. In Jesus Christ we have all that God is and all that we are, together in one man. That’s what we are called to strive for. United Methodists call that a fancy word – sanctification.
It is from the cross, dying a brutal death, a physical one, not a spiritual one, that Jesus gives us his dyeing words. He speaks of forgiveness, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” He defines a new more intimate family when he speaks to John and Mary, “here is your mother; here is you son.” Jesus speaks to the thief “you will be with me in paradise.” He recites Scripture, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” And now, he finally speaks from his own physical need: “I thirst.”
These are words that not only remind us that Jesus was a human being like you and I, but these words also speak of Jesus’ yearning, his longing for, his desperation of and his desire to. And since we too are human and maybe a tiny bit divine, we also thirst for these things. Psalm 42: “My Soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” In the Gospel of John 4:14 Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me will never thirst.”Again in John, “If you are thirsty, come to me.” Jesus is the ultimate thirst quencher. Divine Gatorade.
From this point, I had to re-write my sermon after attending the Bishop’s symposium these past few days. Brian McLaren, an American guru when it comes to Christianity, spoke to us about how our worship, how our sermons, must ignite a passion within the congregation if we are to not only reform the church, but be relevant in the world. The only way to keep the church vital and alive is to be relevant. Is Battle Ground Community UMC relevant to this town? I’m told that my job is not only pastor you and care for you and love you and let you know that God loves you 100% but I’m also charged with the task of awakening your innermost desires. McLaren warns us, and the Bishop agrees, that pacifying people in the pews DOES NOT stir up desires.
So, as many of you know, I like to be liked. As many of us experience, we can hear 99 wonderful things about the work we do and 1 negative thing and all we obsess about is that 1 negative thing. That’s me anyway. But my quest to please, my quest to keep everyone happy, I fear does not do the job God has called me to do.
The greatest compliment I can receive from any of you after a Sunday is when someone says, “that really challenges me.” Or “I don’t agree with you, but you make me think.” I’m afraid I seek the “good sermon Pastor Susan” more often than “what you said, disturbs me.”
Jesus cries out “I thirst.” And not only is he thirsting from his human physical need, I imagine he also thirsts for more. In his ministry for three years he shows us how he thirsts for justice, he thirsts for people to awaken and see clearly, he thirsts for the Kingdom to come THROUGH you and me.
We thirst too. But most of us thirst for earthly things like a nice home, a great job, exotic travel, you know the list. But how many of us thirst, I mean truly thirst or another word ‘desire’, the things that God desires? How thirsty are we to bring peace into the world? How thirsty are we to right the wrongs of oppression that are surrounding us every single day? How many of us thirst so much for the end of gun violence, or any kind of violence for that matter, that our thirst inspires us to do something rather than sit back and complain about what others are not doing.
Not doing for the poor, the marginalized, the one’s in prison, the one’s suffering from hatred and discrimination. How many of us thirst for God to live in our lives and take over. To be the pilot of our lives every single day.
I don’t. I thirst, but most of the time I’m seeking those earthly things that will
bring me happiness and comfort. But sometimes, like today, after I’m inspired by one of the best preacher’s in the nation, I awake! I awake to what is happening all around me, in this community that we find ourselves in right now. I’m awake to the reality that teachers and students fear going to school. I’m awake to my black and brown brothers and sisters who have eyes on them whenever they walk into a store, where white people’s suspicions are raised that they may be robbed. I’m awake to my American Muslim friends who are threatened by Christians every single day. Good preaching sends us into the world to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God,
as we read in Micah. Good preaching, good worship, leads to action.
So, for you on the worship team, let’s get busy working on worship that challenges. And for SPRC, I hope you get some unhappy folks who complain about my preaching because if I’m not stepping on toes, I may not be doing my job. Complacency is not my friend or yours.
Next week I’m teaching a class on worship to Certified Lay Ministers and the primary question I want them to hear, is something I heard just two days ago – “Is your worship a weapon of mass distraction?” “Is your worship a weapon of mass distraction?” Are we comforted to feel good about ourselves, putting our heads in the sand like ostriches, ignoring the cries of the world all around us. Or does worship call us into awareness and action? Does our worship inspire us to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world today? That’s what resurrection means. That Jesus lives through our actions. Jesus is raised through our openness to do God’s will today and every day, whatever that may be – even if it scares the living daylights out of us.
Jesus thirsts. He thirsts like a man thirsts and he thirsts like God thirsts. You and I are called to be “little Christ’s” as Paul calls us. So, we too must open ourselves to God’s spirit and experience the thirst of God.
Now I know about “compassion fatigue.” That’s when we’re tired of being empathetic, so tired that we have become numb, perhaps immune from the tragedies of others. We realize that if we’re going to experience that spiritual contentment then we must not turn on the news and avoid the world outside ourselves as much as possible. That was brought up in the symposium. A question to Brian McLaren, and his response was that when we DO SOMETHING in response to a wrong, we let out the pressure a little bit and we end up feeling joy as we respond to the world in a Christ like way. If we just absorb one bad news story after another, day after day, hour after hour, we certainly will become overwhelmed and too full of bad crap that we don’t have room in our small little minds for another horrible story. But if we have the courage to respond, if we get off our butts and do something, anything, then we release God’s justice into a world in great need; and for what it’s worth, it’s a drop of justice among many quadrillion drops of justice that just might transform a community, a country, maybe even the world.
So, you may think, OK Susan, I hear you, but what can I do? Wouldn’t you like me to tell you? Wouldn’t that be easy if I just told you to march in that protest or write this letter. Well, I can’t do that. The only thing I can tell you, first and foremost, is to pray! You can pray for the world and the ills that are rampant, but thoughts and prayers without action fall silent. What’s important, is that we pray for guidance, we pray that we remain open to the Spirit moving us toward action, we can pray for the strength to bypass our fears and do what is right whatever the consequences.
I can’t tell you what to do in response to the earthly world around us, that’s between you and God. But if we don’t wake up in the morning, every morning and say – “HERE I AM GOD! USE ME ANY WAY YOU SEE FIT” then we may miss an opportunity to spread God’s love to those who need it the most.
“I thirst” he said. Jesus thirsts for water because he is a man dying a slow and painful death. Jesus also thirsts, yearns, deeply desires God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. This God of Israel, the Body of Christ known as the Church, must refuse to make God an abstraction. If the church is going to mean anything at all, it must be relevant to the present world.
There was a cartoon that I saw a while ago and posted on my FaceBook page. I wish I could find it, but basically, Jesus and a guy were sitting on a park bench and the guy says to Jesus, “I can’t believe in you. I mean if you were the real deal, why don’t you save the world from hunger, violence, atrocities, and injustice?” Then Jesus turned to him and said, “Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.”
In our prayers, we will often pray prayers like this: God help me with my surgery. Great Spirit bring peace to the world. Father, help me mend my relationship with my husband. Lord save my son from his self-destruction. Jesus, help me not be so alone.
All good and powerful prayers and I encourage you to lift up these prayers of petition (that’s what they’re called) each and every day because obviously, we have many needs. We are thirsty for many things.
But Jesus also has needs. Jesus also thirsts. We must remember in our plea for God to help us, that Jesus Christ is making a plea for us to help him. Just as we yearn for God, God yearns to use us and live through us. God is not content with a passive worship service that doesn’t challenge our own status quo. God greatly desires for us to be “God Intoxicated,” not passive, content, mystic, toga wearing wise ones sitting on a mountain top. We are called to get into the messiness of the world and respond. The ultimate thirst quencher is thirsty. What are we going to do about that?