The readings for 20 March, the Third Sunday in Lent, are as follows (to read them, go HERE):
Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Have you ever been really thirsty?
I mean really thirsty, like you think you could drink gallons. I drink lots of water, I can easily get thirsty, but I know I have never experienced thirst so bad like someone walking across a desert or someone in a war zone, like the people in Mariupol in Ukraine in the basement of that bombed-out theater.
Thirst is so basic to human needs — the need for water — that the Bible uses thirst repeatedly to describe the longing for God. Like in the Psalm today:
“O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you;
my soul is athirst for you.
My flesh also faints for you,
as in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.”
And the person writing the psalm goes on to describe how much he longs for God’s protection and blessing, and how God’s “loving-kindness is better than life itself.”
And in our first reading, from Isaiah:
“Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!”
God gives us the waters that nourish us. I’m reminded of a book I’ve been reading off and on for a few months now. It’s called Glittering Vices, about the seven deadly sins. Yes, this is the type of thing that priests read. In case you don’t know, the seven deadly sins are envy, sloth, anger, gluttony, avarice (or greed), lust, and pride (this author says vainglory, caring too much what others think of us, because pride is at the root of all the sins). I mention this because of what the author says about greed (being overly attached to material things), gluttony (being overly attached to food), and lust. She says that all of them are attempts to use a physical pleasure to satisfy a spiritual longing. Deep within us is a longing for God, for the love and peace, the sustenance and guidance, that God offers us, a longing to be held and nurtured spiritually, meaning deep in our souls, but life and society make it difficult to acknowledge that we need this from God and also difficult to know how to get it.
And so we have Bible readings that ask us,
“Why 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.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.”
Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls us to come and satisfy our hunger and our thirst by turning to God for our sustenance. In John’s Gospel, Christ says that he is our food and drink, and with him we will never be thirsty again.
It’s like the fig tree in the Gospel reading. A man had a fig tree that produced no fruit for three years. So he tells the gardener to cut it down. Why should it waste the soil it’s planted in? But the gardener says, no, let me dig around it and feed it, and then see if it produces fruit next year.
We are like the fig tree. We need food and sustenance from God in order to produce fruit — in other words, to be the people God calls us to be and to do in our lives what God calls us to do. It reminds me of a prayer that I often pray, whether for myself or for someone else: that God might work in us that which is pleasing in God’s sight, to produce fruit for God. So this parable about the fig tree is a call to repentance: to leave behind that which gets in the way of God working in us, to accept God’s nurturing, and to go in the direction of bearing fruit for God.
Part of the Isaiah passage is also a call to repentance:
“Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them.”
And a line later it continues with these lines:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God’s ways are far beyond us, beyond our understanding, beyond our inventions.
And now I’ll be completely honest. When I first read this readings for today, I thought, Oh great, I love these readings — the Isaiah passage and the Psalm. This will be easy to preach on. And when it came to writing the sermon, it was really tough. At some point, both of these passages have been ones that I kept turning to. Years ago, as I felt God calling me to follow Christ, but I was resistant, it wasn’t the path I wanted to follow, I was drawn to Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul is athirst for you.” I felt that I was in a dry and barren land where there is no water — it’s called ordinary life without God — and I longed for the sustenance that God provided in worship and Scripture and prayer and being with faithful people.
And some years later, on two different occasions, as Kirk and I were preparing to move to a new place or I was preparing to take a new church position, but there seemed to be all sorts of obstacles and I was afraid what would happen, I was saying Morning Prayer and read the words from Isaiah. In the American Prayer Book, part of this passage is a canticle that one can use in the service. And I read, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” And I had an overwhelming sense that God had something in mind, some plan, and that all would work out okay, and my fears were understandable but unnecessary. And so it happened.
“Seek the Lord while he may be found,” Isaiah says.
God seeks us to follow, to come near, to be willing to lay aside our own ways and our own thoughts in order to follow those from God, even though they are beyond our understanding. We may never know how God will use us or work through us. Our job simply is to seek God, to turn aside from all the vain pursuits of this world that ultimately do not satisfy that longing deep within us, and turn instead to seeking God. Our job is to let God work in us that which is pleasing in God’s sight and bear fruit for God.
And God offers us food and drink that satisfy our deepest longings.
God offers us loving-kindness.
God’s hand shall hold us fast.