Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost Year C 2010

The Fountain of Living Water

So you open your mailbox and there's this official looking piece of mail. You know, with the printed return address. Something like Smith and Smith and Jones, Partners. Or maybe a deputy's car swings into your driveway, your old friend Jim gets out of the cruiser and comes to the door carrying this piece of paper.

You've been served.

You're being sued. You're being charged. Your stomach turns to ice water. This is going to be trouble. It's going to cost money. There's going to be conflict and arguing. You might not win. It might be you're guilty but just didn't know the law, or it might be that you're not, but the system is so screwy you get convicted anyway. Oh, Lord, why did this have to happen to me!

But then you see the plaintiff in the case: The Lord of Hosts, in the courtroom of heaven. Yow.

The prophets, as we have been saying, spoke for God. This is really the simplest and clearest definition of the word. Prophets speak for God. You might have noticed if you've been coming to church over the last month or two that very rarely have we heard prophets predicting the future. Yet predicting the future is the what lots of people apparently believe prophets are all about. Nope. Sometimes they do, but a lot of the time, they simply speak for God.

At this juncture, similar to Isaiah, Jeremiah is trying to convince the priests and rulers of Judah to stop trying to play power politics and straighten up the domestic scene. And by straighten up, he means, get with God. In this particular oracle from God, Jeremiah is using a classic prophetic form that shows up in many of the prophets, the lawsuit of God.

In a very real sense we all live in covenant with each other. A covenant is really nothing more than a contract, but in the form of the divine-human covenant, the partners make it something a great deal more remarkable. But we all live in covenant. The law of the land is something we all more or less recognize and respect. Until someone doesn't. What happens then?

Well, then lawyers and cops and judges get involved. If the lawyers and the judges and the cops get involved it means that the whole covenant thing isn't working. In church life, I often say that the bylaws come out when the gospel leaves. If we're all being serious disciples and doing our level best to grow in our spiritual lives together, there is usually no need for any rules. It's when one of us or a group of us stop trying to be disciples, and behave on the basis of some other set of rules of ideas, that's when people drag the bylaws out of the file cabinet and everyone tries to remember what the rules and regulations are.

A marriage is a beautiful and happy thing as long as the partners are passionately keeping their covenant with one another. But if one of them turns to someone else, the covenant is broken. There might be an opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation but the chances are just as good, maybe better, that lawyers and judges are around the corner.

Jeremiah speaks for a wounded spouse, sick of betrayal, who is saying, "That's it, no more counseling, I'm calling my lawyer."

And, just like a wounded spouse, God tells God's counsel the long sad tale. After all I did for my spouse, God says, look how my spouse has treated me!

Now to really get at Jeremiah's message though, we need to look at the gist of the accusation. It's not just betrayal that outrages and wounds God. It's that the betrayal is with empty things that really can't deliver anything God can deliver. Cracked cisterns that can't hold water versus a fountain of living water.

God, the creator and sustainer of all life, has offered to be our king and lord, and has asked us, if we would like to accept this offer, to renounce everything else to which we give authority. From God's point of view, and I suppose even from ours, this would seem a no-brainer. God, who makes everything that grows grow, that makes everything that breathes breathe, that makes everything that is born alive, is saying, "Give up all the things you are chasing after, and serve only me." Why in the world would we say no?

God offers to create a society of people who not only love their friends and family but also strangers and aliens. God offers to create a society free of violence and warfare. God offers to create a society in which all who are sick are cared for. God offers to create a society in which human beings are provided with all that they need, and in which everyone is safe from each other.

This offer begins with the Israel and extends to the church. And yet it seems that periodically, both Israel and the church simply say, "we like this other empty thing better than we like God." We like power. We like recognition. We like control. We like acquiring things. And as our psalmist says, it's the nature of God to let us have the consequences of our unfaithfulness.

What amazes me is that despite the many things that one can clearly find wrong with the church not only now but all through history, the fountain of living water is still pouring into the world in the work of God's people. If you just take a little time to read what Global Ministries is doing, or for that matter, what local churches all over the world are doing, you'll find that living water gushing forth in the wildernesses of the world.

Right here in our congregation, we have a boatload of people who I know routinely share with those who can't repay, forgive those who should never be forgiven, show grace to those who deserve none. God is good and is able to work with us, even as we follow after what doesn't profit, even as we dig cisterns that won't hold water.

And so it is that I'm grateful to old Jeremiah for reminding me and warning me and yes, even judging me. Such a word from God is a blessing that saves.

Amen.