Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
“Obey Your Thirst”
This is the first week of our emphasis on our stewardship of presence. When we join the church, we promise to support it with our prayers, presence, gifts and service. Although we may not be especially good at it, the church never forgets to talk about our stewardship of gifts. In fact, when I say stewardship, most people think about money. Stewardship campaigns are very often about asking people for money. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Financial stewardship is an integral part of our growth as Christians. It is vitally important for us to be reminded that everything we have is gift from God and it is our responsibility to us it in ways that honor God.
The word stewardship comes from a couple of old English words: stig- which means hall and weard – which means guard. Hall guard or hall keeper. It has come to mean in English – one who manages another’s property, finances, or other affairs. The concept comes into Christian thought as this: all we have is truly a gift from God, and truly belongs to God, therefore, we are simply stewards of what is truly God’s and therefore need to think about how we use it.
God certainly gives us more than just money right? So, when we talk about stewardship, we are talking about all the things that God gives us as a gift and how we are, or are not good stewards, keepers of those things.
When we join the church, we promise to be good stewards of our lives and the church by supporting the church with our prayers, presence, gifts and service. These are all ways we are good stewards of what God has given us. As I mentioned, we talk about gifts, especially financial. Already this year, we have talked service, how we use our God given gifts and talents to support the church. Now, it is time to talk about presence.
I find it interesting that pastors are actually more willing to talk about money, something almost no pastor likes to talk about, than they are to talk about presence. It wasn’t that many years ago that when people missed church more than a couple Sundays, they could expect the pastor to show up at their house. But it has fallen out of vogue to tell people, you know, you really ought to come to church. So let’s talk about that. And as I do whenever I come across something difficult to preach on I start with something I saw on TV.
For the past couple of years, the marketing gurus at the Coca-Cola Company have been marketing their wonderful lemon-lime beverage, Sprite, with the tagline “Obey Your Thirst!” It is wonderfully successful campaign. It has a certain irony to it though. “Obey your thirst!” Is your thirst, the mechanism in your body that tells you that you are in need of hydration, telling you that you need carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, natural flavors, sodium citrate , and sodium benzoate? I bet what your thirst is telling you is, “Give me some water.”
Now, in case you are in the beverage industry, know that I am not knocking soft drinks. I have my own mild addiction to Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi. My purpose is not to even knock marketing people. This is just such a wonderful analogy. We are being told to obey our thirst by drinking exactly what we don’t need. Granted, Sprite will hydrate you, but it will also fill you with some things you don’t need, including 140 empty calories. What your body really wants is the real thing…
Which brings us to another slogan. I am just old enough to remember this song:
I'd like to teach the world to sing
in perfect harmony
I'd like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
That's the real thing.
Another great marketing maneuver by the folks at Coca-Cola, telling you that Coke is the real thing. But that it still not the real thing. What your body really wants is the real thing. Some hydrogen, a little oxygen, H20, water. But we are told that we need something else, and we usually believe it.
The prophet Isaiah says it so well in chapter 55.
2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
As I said, I am not trying to knock soft drink makers. I am trying to show that our spiritual thirst is much like our body thirst. We often quench it with the wrong things and people are always telling us what will quench that deep down thirst in our soul.
We are all created with a giant God sized hole in our soul. It causes us to seek out God. But we are easily distracted and misled. It has been that way since the beginning. Think of the wonderful story of the first man and the first woman in the Garden of Eden.[1] God provided for their every need, even providing for their loneliness by creating man and woman.
But one day, when God had stepped out of the garden, a serpent comes along and says, “Have you tried the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden?” “No, God said not to touch that one.” The serpent replies, “God just said that because ‘God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
They had what they needed, but the serpent says, “Obey your thirst!” And in case you haven’t read the rest of the story, things didn’t go so well after that. You can read about it in Genesis, chapter 2.
“Obey your thirst!” Why have water when you can have something better? -something that carries with it an image. Sprite features basketball superstar Lebron James in one of its television ads. Did you know the Lebron James drinks Sprite? So, perhaps Sprite will not only quench your thirst, it may make you into a multi-millionaire, world-famous, superstar, drafted right out of high-school basketball legend. No longer are we trying to quench thirst, we are trying to fill that emptiness that is in our very soul. We are trying to fill the hole that only God can fill by trying to be like God.
But all those things that we try to fill our lives with are just empty, carbonated calories. What will really quench our spiritual thirst is the pure, unsweetened, fresh from the tap grace of God.
13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
How do we partake of this water? It is very easy, yet sometimes a little hard. You know, I never drink as much water as I should. You know why? Because I am always drinking too much other stuff – sodas, coffee, etc. These things temporarily satisfy my craving but eventual it catches up with me and I am really thirsty.
My spiritual life is the same way. Going to the movies, watching TV, reading a good book, these things satisfy me in the short run. But in the end, it is only the living water of grace that will satisfy my soul. The way that I can drink of that water is simply to be in the presence of God.
Now, worship is not the only way to be in the presence of God. One can be in God’s presence in the outdoors. Some of the times I have felt closest to God have been on the tops of mountains. God can be especially present in times of solitude. God can be present in moments of great human achievement. But none of those can replace the need for Christians to gather together in community to praise God together and open their hearts to the presence of God, to the living waters of Grace. That can be in a large community like worship or in a smaller group. Whenever and wherever we meet together to read scripture, pray, give thanks to God and share our faith, we enter into the thirst-quenching presence of God.
Now I realize that I am, as they say in church talk, “preaching to the choir.” You are already here, partaking of the living water that is the grace of God. But we all need to hear this message. There are a few people among us who gather in community to worship God every week. For some, even when they are out of town, they find a group to be with on Sunday. Some of these folks obey their thirst even more by meeting with a smaller group every week, perhaps a Sunday school class or a reunion group.
But most of us, are just sipping from the glass of grace, slurping down the sugary, carbonated beverages of life and dedicating just a bit of time to indulge in the cool living waters of God. Think about it numerically. Grace has about 1000 members, but of that 1000 only about 317 make to worship at least once a month. Only about 200 make it to worship twice a month. We know that the quenching waters of grace are here but the world is telling us constantly, “Obey your thirst!” Drink this, eat this, buy this, succeed at this, try this! It is hard to hear that still, small voice of God, the words of Jesus, whispering to us:
John, Chapter 6 35Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
During these two weeks, as we as we focus on our stewardship of presence, I invite you to consider how you are obeying your thirst. You may have already gotten in the mail a commitment card, which you are invited to bring to worship next week to commit to drinking more deeply from the well of God’s grace. You will notice that we won’t ask you to sign these. We won’t know who committed to what so we won’t be following up to let you know how you are doing. This is for you. This is your opportunity to truly obey your thirst.
I challenge you to step up. If you come to worship sporadically, commit to coming regularly. If you come regularly once a month, commit to come twice a month. If you already come twice a month, come three times. If your job keeps you away sometimes, commit to come when you can. If you are already coming as often as you possible can, consider diving deeper, partaking of the living water in a small group Bible study or fellowship. If you are already doing all of that, you get an even bigger challenge: Do something that will take you deeper, fill your cup even further, and bring someone with you to the well.
And don’t do any of this to make me happy or to make Pastor John happy or even to make God happy, do it because God is offering you something that no one else can offer, the living water!
Amen.
[1] See Genesis 2:4-24
[2] Saint Augustine, Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book 1, Chapter 1, (Oak Harbor, Washington: Logos Research Systems, 1999) online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confess.ii.i.html, accessed 20 August 21, 2006; internet
