The Spirit

Jesus’ Great Invitation To The Thirsty

5.24.26 [John 7:37-39] River of Life (The Festival of Pentecost)

I’m always amazed at how refreshing a cold soda seems when you’re really thirsty. It just hits the spot on a road trip, doesn’t it?   

That’s what sodas are designed to do. The fizz. The slushy, icy temperature. The sweet taste and the caffeine buzz. The combination of cold and fizz, sugar and caffeine triggers a dopamine dump in our brains and we confuse pleasure with being hydrated and refreshed.  

Remove one or more of those elements, and you have a pretty revolting beverage. Maybe you’ve tried this accidentally. The ice in the cooler melted, so that Coke was room temperature or worse, warm. Or maybe that bottle sat a little longer than you thought and now it’s not so fizzy. I’m not sure which is worse, a warm soda or a flat soda. 

Maybe you’re not much of a soda drinker. A lot of people have cut back. So what is your go-to beverage? It’s probably not, water, is it? 

We live in a world where we drink everything but water. Coffee or tea or diet Coke or energy drinks to get the motor revving. An afternoon lemonade or sparkling water. A sports drink to restore our electrolytes if we’ve been out in the heat. Then a glass of wine or a bottle of beer to end the night. 

We have our get-ready-for-the-day drinks. We have our afternoon treats. We have our wind-down drinks. We have so many options. 

But that doesn’t mean we make good choices. Even though we are thirsty people, too often we mistake what tingles with what really refreshes. We chase fake flavors over real hydration. We look for momentary relief rather than real satisfaction. 

And there are consequences to those choices. Too much caffeine can give you headaches, anxiety, and heart palpitations. Too much sugar can make you gain weight or get cavities. Too many adult beverages are bad for your brain, your heart, and your liver. We know this already, but it’s still hard for us to break our unhealthy habits. Water is better for us, but it doesn’t always make us feel better right away. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t just a physiological struggle. We have a similar spiritual struggle, too. We prefer to hear that we can achieve all our dreams and conquer the world, rather than God telling us that, by nature, we are dead in our transgressions. We prefer words that make us feel good, rather than what is actually good and true. We prefer to drink in words that minimize our flaws or blame others for our decisions, rather than have our shame rightly dealt with. 

In our Gospel reading, Jesus addresses the struggle that all sinful people deal with on a daily basis. And he does so in a memorable way. He stands before the Temple crowd and declares in a loud voice Jn. 7:37 Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  

It seems like a strange thing to stand up and say in a loud voice. But the timing is key. John tells us that Jesus said this on Jn. 7:37 the last and greatest day of the festival. Which festival is he speaking about? 

There are three great Jewish pilgrimage festivals to Jerusalem. 

The first one is Passover, which commemorates the children of Israel being set free from slavery in Egypt. By his death and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Passover Lamb and we celebrate that with Good Friday and Easter Sunday. 

The second is the Feast of Weeks. This was a festival when they commemorated how God gave them his Law on Mount Sinai. It was celebrated in early summer as they brought the first fruits of the wheat harvest to the Lord. 

The third festival was the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. In this festival, they commemorated how God led and sustained his people for 40 years in the wilderness. They celebrated at the end of the fruit and olive harvests by sharing the spoils of the season. The fruit harvest would only have been bountiful when the rains had been plentiful. So this was sort of a thank-you celebration to the Lord. 

So rain and water were on the minds of the people as they were celebrating. And that is the context in which Jesus makes this declaration about himself. Jn. 7:37 Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. It was his no-so-subtle way of saying the same God who provided rain for your crops has provided me as your Redeemer for your sins. 

It is a generous and gracious offer. There are no strings attached. There are no conditions. There’s an unlimited supply. It’s an invitation to the thirsty. And we’re all thirsty! So why don’t we jump at the opportunity? Isn’t it because we have a taste for other beverages? 

Instead of the living water that Jesus offers to refresh sinners, we prefer spiritually caffeinated pep talks. We want someone to tell us that the power to conquer our struggles is within us. That our sin problem is, at its core, a self-discipline problem, and that if we just follow a few steps, buckle down, and focus, we can rise above it all. We can unlock a better version of ourselves. Instead of the living water our Lord freely offers, we choose the spiritual drinks that get us charged up and ready to fix ourselves. 

And there are consequences to this choice. When you have to fix yourself, you will be anxious and stressed out. Your heart will never be able to rest because everything depends on you. Your head will always be searching and worrying that you left something undone. Your effort, your striving, will never make you feel secure or be forgiven.  

After a while, that drink leaves us feeling worn out. So we long for something a little sweeter. We look for sentimental spiritual sodas and sweet teas. Things that sound good, that make us feel good, even if they’re not truthful or found anywhere in the Bible. Slogans like follow your heart. Give yourself some grace. Just let go and let God. Everything happens for a reason. He won’t give you any more than you can handle. When God closes a door, he always opens a window. These are all living water with additives. They say nothing about the need for repentance or carrying your cross. They say nothing about how our hearts can be deceitful or how sometimes God leads us through the valley of the shadow of death. They are sugary sweet and cause our faith to decay because we’re not really listening to God’s Word. We’re only hearing what we want to hear. These kinds of spiritual drinks ignore sin, sidestep suffering, and reject the need for repentance and the cross in our daily lives.

When the self-reliant cup of joe can’t cut it and the syrupy-sweet pseudo-Gospel doesn’t work, we look for something to take the edge off life. We know we can’t do it on our own. We know that life isn’t always pleasant or great. So we just want to feel a little less bad. 

So we turn to the stiffer stuff. We want to hear that it’s not our fault.  That we just grew up in tough circumstances. That everyone else in this world is just as broken. That we’re all just trying to get by and survive. That our sins aren’t really hurting anybody. We desperately want to numb the ache of our guilty consciences & shameful pasts. 

That choice comes with consequences, too. It damages our brains. It hurts our hearts. It sears our consciences. We become numb to God & sin and unsympathetic to our neighbor. It wrecks us drop by drop. 

This is the same sin struggle that God exposed to his people through his prophet Jeremiah. Jer. 2:13 My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

We need Jesus. Not another spiritually-caffeinated shot in the arm. Not a syrupy-sweet shallow encouragement. Not a drink that dulls our senses or pain. 

We need the Jesus who knows our thirst and knows how best to help and satisfy us. We need Jesus,  who is the Water of Life. And here’s the best news: Jesus’ invitation is clear and gracious. Jn. 7:37 Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  

How do we do that? We are refreshed by these living waters in Word and Sacrament. In Baptism, Jesus washes away our sins and connects us to his death and resurrection. Salvation isn’t secured by working on ourselves or drawing from our self-discipline.  We don’t have to earn our way into God’s good graces or to secure a spot in heaven. It is given to us, just as a friend gives you a glass of water. 

We are refreshed by these living waters as we read his Word. Again and again, Jesus makes it clear that we are not loved because of who we were, who we are, or who we are going to be. We are loved because God is love. We are forgiven because God is faithful and merciful. We are saved because God is powerful and kind. He sacrificed himself for us. He died so that we might live. 

Because God did this for us, our lives are changed. What we drink has a way of effecting just about every system of the body. It changes the way we look, the way we feel, and the way we live. And it’s just water. The same is true of our spiritual drink. Look at how the lives of the disciples were changed on Pentecost by drinking deeply of the Water of Life. They became streams of living water for others. 

They proclaimed the good news to people from all over the Roman world. God poured out his Holy Spirit upon these men and they proclaimed how Jesus of Nazareth was God’s Messiah. They told the people how he died for their sins according to Acts 2:23 God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge and how Acts 2:23-24 God raised him from the agony of death. On that day, thousands were cut to the heart, moved to repentance, and refreshed through the saving waters of Baptism. 

You don’t have to speak in tongues to have streams of living water flow from within you. You only have to drink deeply of the Water of Life and speak freely about what he has done for you. Amen.