Pastor Dan Mangler's Sunday Sermon

You Are What You Drink

Isaah 43: 18-25

February 19, 2006

You Are What You Drink

Nutritionists are fond of saying, “You are what you eat.” Let’s test that. I like pizza. Does that make me Italian? I like a rib eye steak. Does that make me a cow? I like turkey and Swedish meats balls… but let’s not go there.

If you are what you eat, can it also be said you are what you drink? Certainly no one can dispute that what we drink is important. People who live in places on this earth where water is in short supply understand the value of water. It is precious. It is priceless. Water is even more valuable than oil.

Water is basic to life. We’re told that the body needs about 3 quarts of water a day to operate efficiently. Water helps break up and soften food. The blood, which is 90 percent water, carries nutrients to the cells. As a cooling agent, water regulates our temperature through perspiration. And without its lubricating properties, our joints and muscles would grind and creak like unused parts of some old rusty machinery. Here in Estes Park we advise guests coming from lower elevations to drink lots of water to help prevent altitude sickness.

When water is in short supply, or absent, life cannot long be sustained. This is a common image in the Old Testament of the plight of the Israelites. The Israelites often found themselves suffering in the dry desert. One comedian commented that it is hard to believe that God really loved the Israelites. After all, he made them wait 40 years in the wilderness before leading them into the only part of the Middle East without oil.

But not only was there no oil, there was a scarcity of water. God’s chosen did not have to look far to see what happens when there is no rain. Just a few miles east of Jerusalem was the wilderness surrounding the Dead Sea. To call it a "wilderness" is not strong enough, not descriptive enough. The land surrounding the Dead Sea is a wild part of earth, burned by the sun of day and frozen by the winds of night. The rocks of this terrible terrain between the depths of Jericho and the heights of Jerusalem are jagged and upended. It is eternally dry.

It is not surprising, then, that the lifelessness of the wilderness soon became an image for Israel’s spiritual dryness when Israel sought to satisfy its spiritual thirst by worshiping other gods or when it simply chooses a path contrary to God’s leading. The dry wilderness became a picture of God’s judgment. Psalm 107:33 says, “He turns rivers into a desert and springs of water into thirsty ground.”

Water, on the other hand, in its variety of forms, is an image of God’s salvation in the Bible. There are pools of water; streams of water; waters from the well of salvation; and rivers of water springing forth in the desert.

When Isaiah wrote the words that we read from his book this morning Israel was in captivity in Babylon. We sense the intensity of their anguish in words from Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion! How could we sing the LORD’S song in a foreign land?” They were experiencing a spiritual desert.

To that anguished cry Isaiah speaks God’s word of confident hope, a powerful word of salvation: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people.” The water Isaiah speaks of here is transformative. These new rivers racing through the wilderness will carve out a fresh face on the land - lush, green and fertile. Where no life existed before, abundant life now will thrive. This is transformative for Israel’s spirit as well.

Where there is water there is promise of abundant life. That is why in the New Testament that the image of Jesus as living water is so powerful. In John 7 Jesus says, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

Do we have thirsty souls? Do our spirits resonate with the words of Psalm 63:“O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.”?

An article in Newsweek magazine about religious pursuits of today said that people are trying to fill the empty hole in their lives with meaning. People without embarrassment are asking questions like: Why are we here? What is the purpose of our existence? One man said: If all life is--is a paycheck--a bed partner whose name I don’t even know--an ego trip, and an empty shot glass--then life is a cruel hoax. The authors of this article in Newsweek bring it to a close by stating: "The answers change in each generation, but the questions are eternal.” Does this not reflect a spiritual thirst?

It is sad, really, that the article could frame the question but could not give the answer. It could describe the thirst but could not prescribe the soul quenching drink. We know that the living water that quenches that spiritual thirst is Jesus. William Willimon says it well: “Like streams in the desert that transform a barren landscape into a garden, the living water Jesus offers will slake our spiritual thirst for all time, giving it sustenance for the extent of eternity.”

That was the kind of world Jesus came to save, a world dying of spiritual thirst, a world of dry spirits, of parched souls, a world of inner deserts, of swollen tongues and cracked lips and dried up throats; a world of inner springs of the soul run dry. To be spiritually dry, to be in the soul's desert, is to experience real despair. The soul without Christ, the spirit without living water, is in such a dry place.

The strange truth about spiritual dryness is that it is altogether like some of the ironic Hollywood desert tragedies. As the Hollywood tragic hero collapses and dies on one side of a sand dune, the camera rises and seems to look over the other side of that dune. There is an oasis; there is water; there is life. Death is on one side, life on the other. The hero dies just a few paces away from life.

The person whose soul has dried up is usually only a little way from water, too. His tragedy is that something hides the water from him; something keeps him from seeing and drinking the water of life. It is terrible to thirst and not have the thirst quenched!

The legendary Presbyterian preacher Dr. George Buttrick, in his printed sermons while chaplain at Harvard University, wrote: "Whoever lives with Christ has in his heart a spring of water, perennial and inexhaustible; a peace that passes understanding, a joy deeper than all passing joys, a life more abundant than any other life, a power that meets any and all troubles, a perpetual fountain, clean and clear, cool and refreshing."

Parched souls do not forever have to stay dried up. Tardigrades, or water bears, are microscopic arthropods that inhabit ponds and films of water in soil or on mosses and lichens. When their habitat completely evaporates, these invertebrates can lose more than 95 percent of their body water and survive for decades in this dehydrated, inactive state. If these little animals are re-hydrated, they begin moving around again within minutes. Parched souls can similarly be re-hydrated with the living water of Jesus that restores life.

Horatius Bonar, a 19^th century Scottish churchman and poet, wrote “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Behold, I freely give the living water, thirsty one; Stoop down and drink and live.’ I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life-giving stream; My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, And now I live in him.”

If you are what you eat then you are what you drink. The hummingbird drinks its dinner - 50 or 60 times a day. So too should the Christian - from the living waters of Christ's word and spirit.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.