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Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost Drink Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! (Amen.) In today’s Gospel, Jesus wants you to know that He speaks His Words for the sake of thirsty people. His Words are intended and meant for thirsty people, in order that their thirst may be satisfied. First Jesus says to you, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Then Jesus promises you, “Out of [your] heart will flow rivers of living water.” Dear Christian friends, Thirst is one of the great benefits of hot and humid weather. Your body needs a regular supply of water in order to remain strong and healthy and to function well. Without water, you die. People do not always recognize their own thirst, though. Some scientists even suggest that a feeling of thirst is one of the last symptoms you feel when you are getting dehydrated. When the weather is cool and breezy, when you do not even break a sweat while you are out mowing the lawn, water is easily forgotten. Why drink when you are not thirsty? That is why thirst is one of the great benefits of hot and humid weather. Thirst brings to your attention your on-going need for water. Thirst is a gift and blessing from God. Without thirst, you would not drink; without drinking, you cannot survive. Jesus speaks about thirst in today’s Gospel, but it is not the thirst of the body. Jesus speaks about a much greater thirst when He declares to you, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” This is the thirst of the soul, “the hunger and thirst for righteousness” about which Jesus earlier spoke in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:6). This is the thirst about which David prayed in the Psalms: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2a). This is the thirst that God Himself turned into His boast and His glory when He said through His prophet Isaiah, When the poor and needy seek water, and their is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them… I will open rivers on the bare heights and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water (Isaiah 41:17-18). “If anyone thirsts,” declares Jesus, “let him come to me and drink.” Thirst is more than a benefit of hot and humid weather. Thirst is likewise one of the great benefits of the conflicts and the hardships of our lives. Do you think that it is without purpose that you struggle and sorrow as you do? · God loves you! God is 100% perfectly happy with you because you have been wrapped and swaddled in the glistening perfection of God’s Son Jesus. Knowing that God is delighted with you in Christ, why would you think that your life’s hardships might be expressions of God’s anger or judgment against you? · God has so securely vested you with the promise and certainty of Christ’s resurrection (Romans 6:3-4) that you now can boast with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:6). Knowing the resurrection is your future, why would you allow yourself to feel uncertain about the future, and why would you so desperately want to feel like you need to keep control of your present? We will all rise up from the dead to live with Christ in righteousness and purity forever. In a certain sense, what happens to us between now and then almost doesn’t matter. · Is your loneliness a signal that God has abandoned you? Are your feelings of guilt a signal that the cross of Christ is not quite so powerful as you first believed? Are your repeated, habitual sins a sign that you might not have been given as much of God’s Holy Spirit as other Christians appear to have been given? No, No, and NO! What can we say about the burdens you and I now experience, or the harsh things we wish we never experienced? Jesus is allowing us to grow thirsty. That is all! Jesus is allowing us to grow thirsty. When we are not thirsty, we do not drink! When we do not drink, we cannot survive! “If anyone thirsts,” declares Jesus, “let him come to me and drink.” There is nothing Jesus wants more to do for you than to give you drink. You can bet that Jesus will love you so faithfully and so generously as to allow you your thirst! In the early 1530s, more than a decade after the Lutheran Reformation had taken full swing and had spread throughout Germany, Martin Luther noticed what terrible things happen when Christians no longer feel thirsty. When the Word was first proclaimed twelve or fifteen years ago, the people hearkened to it eagerly. … People remarked: “Thank God, we now have water to drink!” At that time they were thirsty, and the Gospel doctrine tasted good to them. We drank of it; that was a precious teaching. But now we are sated and tired of the drink. Therefore God will have to forsake us and let us die of thirst, for He remains only with those who feel their wretched condition (AE 23, 269). Jesus says to you in today’s Gospel. “Come to Me and drink.” With these words, Jesus is lovingly and mercifully telling you why you struggle in so many ways through life. Jesus wants you to feel your thirst. He wants you recognize your thirst for what it is, so that you may drink and drink deeply! Jesus wants you never to grow tired or sated by the precious Gospel of your forgiveness, which He pours out for you so abundantly in His Word and in His Holy Communion. Jesus has given you the water of forgiveness and the water of eternal life, which He says now flows like a river of life within you. Why would Jesus want you to grow tired of this living water, or to think that you have now drunk enough? Why would He want you to fool yourself into thinking you have no need of it? Of course Jesus wants you to be thirsty! There is no better way for Jesus to give you thirst for His living water, other than to allow you to spend a few days each week in this dry and arid place we call life. His only other option would be to withdraw His Word and Spirit completely from you, so that you shrivel up and die. Thanks and praise to our God Jesus! He does not want to do that. On a mercilessly hot and humid day, there is nothing better for your parched lips than a cup of cold water. Nothing can better remove the pain of dehydration than a refreshing drink. That is how Jesus wants you to think of His Words; that is how Jesus wants you to think of the Holy Spirit, who will not separate Himself from the Words that Jesus speaks. In the same way that a cup of water will hydrate and satisfy the needs of the body, only the Words of God—only the Holy Spirit, who is inseparably joined to God’s Words (Proverbs 1:23)—only these will hydrate and satisfy the parched condition of our souls. ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. 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