Eastern Oregon is, most of the year, a dry place of grassy hills and prairies.  In the northeastern part of the state is the town of Milton-Freewater, known for orchards and wheat fields.  I always wondered about that freewater part.  Isn’t water free already, like air?  Well, no.  We pay for our water, even if it’s just the electricity for the pump.  Out in Nolan County, just west of Abilene, you’ll pass through the town of Sweetwater; many states claim a town by that name.  When settlers found such water, that was the place to settle, which tells me they found quite enough water that wasn’t sweet.  Except for Death Valley, California, I don’t know of any place named Badwater, or Bitterwater, also in California.

On a hot, dry day, a long drink of cool, clear water is so good.  It can’t be just any water: not warm, not dirty—though a few of us, too thirsty to care, have probably gulped down such water, once or twice.  No—clear and cool: that’s what we want.  On a day of strong sun toward the end of the dry season, Jesus calls out to the crowd: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink” (7:37).  Jesus has water to give.  It isn’t warm water, tasting of pipes and particulate.  It isn’t murky water that leaves you wondering what’s swimming around in there.  It’s the clear, cool water for those who are thirsty.

We have known thirst.  Not everyone wants to slake their thirst with water.  Soda, for some, juice for others, the juice of the vine for others, and sour mash for still others.  For what are we thirsting?  What are we reaching for?  To take the water Jesus offers, you’ve got to be really thirsty.  Not the anything will do thirsty but the only one thing will do thirsty: real water for real thirst, deep down thirst.  Sometimes, we don’t realize we are thirsty like that, until that water is offered to us and we taste, feel it.  We can live our lives quite sure that we aren’t thirsty like that.  Need God?  Nah; I’m good.

How long?  How long can a man or woman live that way?  A lifetime.

To be thirsty for Jesus, a person will have already tried many of the other things that are supposed to satisfy: but the thirst didn’t go away.  What all did you try before you finally realized—and accepted!—that only one thing would do?  I guess we’re not too proud now of what we had tried.  We probably weren’t, even then.  If we’re going to be really candid with ourselves, and before God, I suppose we’ll have to confess that we every now and again still go back to what we know won’t do, won’t help.  Is it just old, stubborn habit—some gnawing doubt or fear?  Is it just that reminder that we’re always somehow strangers even to ourselves?  But we’re never unknown to God.

With greatest reverence and humility, Paul wrote that God told him God’s grace was sufficient (2 Cor 12:9), so that there would be no boasting in oneself—my resources, my resolve, my strength, my wisdom, my choice.  All our reliance, our only real hope, is the grace of God: the very thirst-quenching drink Jesus is offering.  Are you thirsty for grace?  Not everyone is.  I suspect you know that.  I wish it weren’t like that.  I wish everyone was keenly, achingly aware of their thirst for grace.  We’d never hear of revivals, then, because we’d all be living it already!

Grace.  How fresh, how cool, how quenching!  Jesus has it, abundantly.  God is the source, Jesus the spring.  The water that satisfies so deeply and sweetly has been flowing for us, all along.  We hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard it, hadn’t gone, hadn’t tasted, hadn’t wanted that water.  Maybe we were told it was fool’s water.  Some people just don’t like water: has no taste!  Let us never be so very surprised when we encounter that blindness, deafness, and lack of desire in people around us.  And let us pray for them.  Who prayed you to Jesus?

Jesus tells us something quite amazing about the water he’s offering.  It is a water that never ceases to amaze.  “Whoever believes in me,” Jesus says, “as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them’” (7:38).  Rivers.  That’s a lot of water.  We’ve seen the Brazos big with drainage from upstream: the volume is stunning.  Rivers of living water, Jesus tells us, not dead water.  What is dead water?  Water that can’t make alive nor sustain life.  There was a comic book that showed a story of something that might have happened in North Africa in World War Two: Germans and Americans were approaching an oasis from different directions.  You’d like to hope it would turn out that the two sides, though at war, might see their way clear, there at the water, to set aside differences, even if just for that blessed moment—no enemies, there at the water.  That would have been a nice story.

In the comic I read, they fight to the death to have that water all to themselves.  Well, the fighting ends.  One side has won; the vanquished all lie there, dead.  The few survivors, much thirstier, drag themselves to the water and drink, only to die.  The water, as it turns out, was poisonous—bad water, bitter water.

There are waters that will kill.  Thirst for the water that makes alive.  But how?  Or what if I think it’s all a joke and nothing really matters, after all?  What if I can’t take all this talk seriously?  If you’re sitting here, today, listening, trying to understand, you can’t say it’s all a joke.  No, you’re finding you can’t help but take this seriously, because you know, even if intuitively, you feel, if only barely, the seriousness of it.  I’d like for church to be a happy place of balloons, hearts, and flowers all the time!  Well, no, actually I wouldn’t.  The point I’m trying to make is that church, while it ought to be one of the happiest places on earth, ought to be so because this is where we meet Jesus, understand our need for Jesus, all of Jesus, and what he’s really offering.  When we understand what he’s really offering, we aren’t happy, not with ourselves, anyway.  Church won’t have much draw, much pull, for people who are happy with themselves.  Jesus won’t seem too important, then, just sort of a nice afterthought, for others, maybe.  It’s not about his character, winsome as that certainly is.  It’s about the accomplishment of Jesus, what Jesus alone could do for you and me: he makes the way open for us, the pioneer and perfecter of the faith.  Jesus makes the way where there was no way, salvation where there had been condemnation, hope for despair, light for darkness.

When we understand what Jesus is truly offering, we see ourselves in a new light: lost and hopeless but for Jesus standing before us, arms open, heart open.  And then a very curious thing happens.  Those “rivers of living water,” Jesus says, “will flow from within” us.  Christ’s heart, open for us who have come to know our need for him, open for those who know that they have no life worthy the name apart from him—Christ’s open heart opens our heart, and the waters then flow for us, within us.  When Christ Jesus opens our heart for the waters, his own heart takes residence there.  The old life is gone, and new life begins.  The conflict continues, oh yes!, and the old self is vanquished: Christ lives.  Christ is water from the rock—that hard heart breaks open: there he is, living water, in us!  Filling our thirst, watering our garden, flowing through us for one another and for the blessing of neighbors near and not so near.

John, writing decades of prayerful reflection and faithful meditation later, explains that these rivers of living water that will flow from within the believer—this is how Jesus refers to “the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.  Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified” (7:39).  The Spirit of God is for those who believe.  Belief is from the Spirit.  The Spirit of God is at work for those who believe.  For those who believe, the Spirit is Comforter, Guide, Companion, Friend.  To those who have, more will be given.  The Spirit amplifies the Spirit.  Faith grows faith.

The outpouring of the Spirit, outpouring from God into and through our Christ-opened hearts—this outpouring comes after Christ’s glorification.  Today is Pentecost, as Peter reminds us (Acts 2).  It’s also our own personal Pentecost.  When he speaks of this glorification, John probably means the journey through which Jesus accomplishes all he came to accomplish.  John is including Jesus’ testimony, trial, condemnation, cross, suffering, death, the tomb, the long, hallowed stillness until his rising.  John certainly also means the glory of Christ’s resurrection, appearances, and time of teaching afterward until his Ascension.  The Ascension is yet another sign of Christ glorified.  Christ glorified is the sign and the time for the Spirit’s outpouring.   That isn’t just a matter of some old then long ago.  The sign and time of the Spirit’s outpouring is whenever and wherever Christ is glorified in our own hearts and in yet another heart newly opened by God for His glory, newly opened for salvation.

Do you believe people can still come to salvation?  Do you believe God is saving people even now, even today?  Do you want to praise God for His saving power at work in this world even in this very hour?  Pentecost is another powerful reminder that the message is the message of salvation—new life, changed life, restored life, Christ life—rivers of living water, through you, through me, from God, for you, for me, and for who else?  Rejoice in the water!  Bring the water to them, and pour!  There is always more, for those who pour.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.