Rivers of Living Water: Thirst, Fulfillment, and the Approach of Great Lent

I’m so happy to see you all here. There were faithful in our community who told me they weren’t coming anywhere near the city of San Francisco on the day of Super Bowl, even though it’s, like, thirty miles away from here. But somehow they didn’t quite get the message that we would be just fine here as far as Super Bowl traffic was concerned. So I know that that’s also code for we’re hanging out at home. There’s a party. We’ve got other plans. Okay? We can read between the lines. But you’re here this Sunday, on this American holiday, and we’re reading from the Gospel together according to the Gospel of John, chapter seven. Page seventy-six in the New Testament, in the Gospel of John, chapter seven, beginning from verse thirty-seven.

In my version here, which should be the same as yours, it begins, “On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive. For as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” By glorified, they mean crucified and then resurrected, of course. “When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, ‘This is really the Prophet,’ and others said, ‘This is the Messiah.’ But some said, some asked, ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the Scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?’ So there was a division in the crowd because of him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.” And it continues further, but we’re gonna stop right here for the purpose of our message today.

Now, one thing that I just want to point out, I think a little tidbit that’s important for us to understand and value. Last week, we read the passage. Our Sunday school kids were in church, and we talked about this. Last week, we read the passage about Christ being the bread of life and those who eat of it will not hunger. Today, we’re reading the passage about those who are thirsty should come to him and drink, and there will be living waters. So last week was about hunger, this week is about thirst, and next week Lent starts. So the church fathers can’t really be too much more obvious about the fact you’ve gotta get ready, ’cause Lent is coming, and it’s important for us to be hungry and to be thirsty sometimes, as we talked about last week, because when we constantly satisfy ourselves, then we will ultimately always be dissatisfied.

Now, we’ve come here today on this great American feast day known as Super Bowl Sunday. But I am happy to treat you to the story of another feast day, of another celebration of the historical Jewish type, which I’m sure is going to be equally fascinating and fun for you all to learn about. But it’s important to know and understand ’cause otherwise what Jesus says in this passage doesn’t really make sense. It’s out of context. He seems to be just making a proclamation out of nowhere as everybody gathered together in Jerusalem for some sort of festival. So bear with me as we put on our Jewish religious history caps. Sometimes when we start to talk about esoteric aspects of Jewish religion at the time of Jesus Christ or in the Old Testament, I think about the fact that there are only a few more Jews in the world than Armenians. And can you imagine if there were people all over the world talking about Armenian history on Sunday morning just randomly, having no connection to Armenia? But here, we’re gonna learn more about Jewish history today.

The festival which they’re referring to at the beginning of this passage in John seven is called Sukkot. The Feast of the Tabernacles or the Feast of the Booths. I grew up going to a Catholic school as my daily school, and they were always talking about tabernacles. I never knew what they were talking about. What is a tabernacle? It’s a very obscure word in English even. Well, we also called it a booth, but what we’re really talking about is a pavilion or a large tent. That’s what a tabernacle is. Now, as a side note, there’s a synchronicity here in the fact that we call our Sundays and our major feast days Tabernacle Feast Days. We use the same word, okay? But we’ll come back to why.

But what was the festival that everybody was going to Jerusalem for? This was the festival of the booths or pavilions or tabernacles, which was one of the lawful festivals that required all of the faithful Jews to come to Jerusalem by pilgrimage and participate in this celebration. It was one of the most joyful and important celebrations in the course of the Jewish year. And what were they celebrating? They were celebrating the fact that they were brought through exile and into salvation. In finding and being given Judea and Jerusalem. So it commemorates the fact that, as we know, the Jews were able to escape slavery from Egypt under the leadership of the prophet Moses and the blessings and providence of God. We all know that story. And then they entered into a period of exile where they were wandering in the wilderness for quote, unquote, “forty years,” which means a very long time. And wandering in the wilderness means being nomadic and living in things like pavilions and tabernacles and booths, et cetera. And the temple itself, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, was itself a very big, blessed tabernacle. A mobile temple which stored the Holy of Holies.

So the Bible tells us throughout this period of exile, the people of Israel survived by the grace of God, right? They were given bread from heaven, which was known as manna, and they were given the essential gifts which were necessary for them to survive. And one of those essential gifts is water. So they needed water in order to survive in the desert. If you’ve ever been really thirsty, especially when it’s very hot outside, then you know even a water that comes from an expected source is something that you’re extremely thankful for, right? To quench your thirst.

So this multi-day long festival in Jerusalem, known as the Festival of the Tabernacles, included one ritual which took place at the Well of Siloam, which you can visit today in the old city of Jerusalem. And the priest would go down into this well. He would have to descend steps to where the spring was found, the spring of Gihon, by the way, of also very important reference to the Old Testament. And they would take a pitcher, and they would pull the water out of this well, and they would bring it up, and they would present it to the people. And the people would cheer, and they would celebrate. Why did they do this? Because the essence of the Festival of Tabernacles is about giving thanks to God for His providence, for taking care of us. When we say the Lord’s Prayer and we’re talking about giving us this day our daily bread, that’s what the Tabernacle Feast is about. It’s about Eucharistic celebration, like what we experience during the Divine Liturgy, giving thanks to God for providing for us in every essential way. And so when they saw the water from the Well of Siloam, it’s one of the essential aspects that they give thanks to God for. He gave us something to drink when we were thirsty.

So the priest pours this little pitcher of water. And this is the moment when Jesus says what He says when He says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” And so Christ in this moment is calling us to this deeper spiritual understanding of what it means to have our thirst quenched. You give thanks to God because He’s giving you something to drink when you’re thirsty, and that is good. But you have a deeper need, and I can fulfill that deeper need for you in a way where you will never be lacking. It will always be enough.

When you read the Greek text, it doesn’t say heart. It says, “Out of their heart,” and when we just read this in English, “will flow living water.” Does anybody know what it actually says? The Greek text says, “Out of their belly will flow rivers of living water.” The reason why is because at that time, more colloquially speaking, if you were to ask somebody, “Where is your soul?” they would point to their belly. So people at that time generally thought that the soul was in here. Actually, there’s some of that that aligns with Eastern teaching today. Not that I’m validating that approach, but they also believe that a person’s essence is stored in their belly. Today, in this English translation, it’s translated as heart because we might be more likely to think that the soul is somewhere associated with our heart today in a contemporary context. And you might misunderstand what it means for the text to say it flows from your belly. Like, what happened to your belly? But what they’re trying to say is out of your spirit will come such a flow of abundant satisfaction that it will not be able to be contained within you, but instead will have to burst forth into the world. It will enter into the world where other people themselves can be satisfied by it. It will be shared with those around you. It is an overabundance of fulfillment is what Christ is saying is being offered. That if you have thirst, then God has given you water to drink. But if you have a spiritual thirst, then I will give you something that you cannot get anywhere else, and it will always be more than you need.

And that’s a bold statement on a Super Bowl Sunday like this, where some of you guys are gonna go home, and you’re going to fill your bellies maybe to a state of overabundance, where it feels like it could burst forth, as is our style these days. We know what that feels like. It’s a sense of discomfort. But this is not that. This is a feeling that we will never run out of what we need because we know that we’re taken care of, that it’s always more than enough.

Often as a pastor, what I reflect on this because in our human limitations and in our mentality as sinful people, we come from a space of wanting, of feeling like there’s never enough of what we need, let alone of what we want. And on a spiritual level, that can look like there’s never enough love to be given or received. There’s never enough forgiveness that can account for what I’ve done, and neither can I forgive others what they have done. I cannot give from what I do not have enough of. Generosity is lacking. That we fail in our Christian calling when we assume that there’s not enough, that it will always leave us as Christians unable to fulfill our own calling, God’s vision for us in our lives. The message of the gospel today is if you are thirsty and you drink from Christ, then His love, His forgiveness, His generosity, His mercy, it’s always going to be more than enough, that you will not hit the limit.

When we read a few weeks ago about the wedding at Cana in Galilee, we talked about how big the cisterns were that the water was kept in at that wedding. Each one of those cisterns had sixty gallons of water in them. That’s a lot of water. And He turned it all into wine. How big was this wedding, do you think? It was not that big. It was more than enough. It was more than enough.

So as we enter into this period of Great Lent soon, where we’re going to be depriving ourselves of the excess of this world, it’s so that we can cultivate within ourselves a sense of appreciation and understanding that whereas the world around us is not able to provide for our needs, Christ is able to give us what we need and much more if we satisfy ourselves with Him. So what does that look like? That means prayer, reading of Holy Scripture, spiritual disciplines, fasting, engaging in the sacraments. And it also means putting these practices into actuality, into real life, living a Christian lifestyle. And like the passage says about that living water bursting forth from us as a river—