Paul Walker, “The Drink is on Me”
“On the last day of the festival, the great day, Jesus was standing there and he cried out,’ Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.” There is a visceral immediacy to Jesus’ urgent invitation, for sure. We are all thirsty, and thirst takes many forms. But there is a context to his harkening cry that is helpful to know on this Pentecost Sunday.
The festival is the Festival of the Booths, also called the Feast of the Tabernacles. The Israelites celebrated it every year – it was a joyful harvest celebration commemorating God’s miraculous provision for His people as they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. You may remember that God provided manna from heaven each day. And you may also remember that Moses struck a rock in the desert and out flowed streams of fresh water. To remember the water from the rock, every day of the festival, priests would take a golden pitcher and fill it up at the Pool of Siloam. Then they would pour it over the altar temple.
Then on the last day of the Festival, the Great Day – as our reading calls it, real drama occurs. The priests circle the altar 7 times while the congregation all recites Psalm 118, which includes, “I shall not die, but live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.” In the dramatic silence that follows this great ritual, Jesus stands up and cries, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.”
Let anyone who is thirsty. Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. Thirst takes many forms, as I just said. One of the forms thirst takes is, well, actual thirst. When you are thirsty, all you want some water to quench your thirst. When you are really, really, really thirsty, water is all you can think about. Think mirage in the desert. You are likely to say, “I’m dying of thirst.” And that may not be hyperbole. People can live only 3 days without water; in extreme temperatures and with physical exertion, that window can shrink dramatically. So, after a few days, you are literally “dying of thirst.”
But of course, thirst is a metaphor for every kind of longing. Garish things like wealth, prestige, beauty. Quotidian things like a better house on a better street with better neighbors. But also, good and right things like order, and love, and meaning, and relationship, and purpose. It is an apt metaphor, because are duped into believing that if we don’t get what we long for me might as well die.
I’m like a bloodhound, always sniffing for depictions of this longing inside the “human heart in conflict with itself”: in song, or art, or novels, or fellow humans. Mainly, because I am looking for descriptions of myself. Aurora Greenway, the beautiful, outspoken, charismatic 49-year-old widow at the center of Larry McMurtry’s novel “Terms of Endearment” has a moment of thirst after all her dinner party guests have gone.
She walks barefoot outside on her lawn, an act that usually restores her to herself. But instead, she feels what she calls “strangeness.” “The strangeness was an off centeredness, a feeling of distortion, as if already, years before her time, she was slipping away, losing touch, either falling behind or, perhaps worse, moving too far ahead. She had the feeling that everyone who knew her only saw her outward motions. Her inward motions no one seemed to see. If her inward motions were not checked, she had the feeling that she would soon find herself beyond everyone. The strangeness seemed to have chosen a physical place inside her, behind her breastbone – like a lump that sometimes nothing seemed to loosen.”
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.” Here’s the thing. God made thirst. God made us to thirst. And God made us to thirst for Him. And God made us to be ultimately unsatisfied with that which we seek to slake our thirst. All that is not God is like water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. The French poet Baudelaire puts it this way: “The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.”
C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia for his goddaughter. In the dedication, he said that by the time he finished she would be too old for a children’s story. But he said that once she grew up, she would be ready to take them of her shelf and read them again. I’ve found this to be true. There is a scene at the beginning of The Silver Chair that communicates everything that I want to say.
A girl named Jill is transported into Narnia for the first time. She came with her friend, Eustace, but they got separated so she is alone, nervous. After a while, she gets thirsty – really thirsty, dying of thirst thirsty. She sees a fresh stream of cool, delicious water. But there is a problem – between Jill and the stream is a huge Lion. The Lion, of course, is Aslan, the Christ figure in all the Narnian stories. But Jill doesn’t know that, so she is petrified.
If I run away, it’ll be after me in a moment,” thought Jill. “And if I go on, I shall run straight into its mouth.” Anyway, she couldn’t have moved if she had tried, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. How long this lasted, she could not be sure; it seemed like hours. And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouthful of water first.
“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.” …For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink.”…It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way. “Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion. “I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill. “Then drink,” said the Lion. “May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill. The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. …The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill. “I make no promise,” said the Lion.…“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill. “Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.” “There is no other stream,” said the Lion. It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion – no one who had seen his stern face could do that – and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once.
When Jesus was crucified, He cried out, “I thirst.” What absurd irony - the Living Water, the Only Stream, the Slaker of our Thirst, thirsts. It is as though he thirsts for all our thirsts, the thirst for the bad, the thirst for the good. He is literally dying of thirst. All so you and I and the world He so loves may drink deeply of the coldest, most refreshing water we have ever tasted. And drink of this water again and again and again, until we cross the River Jordan, where our thirst will be finally and forever quenched.
Amen.