“The Thirsty Soul”

Rev. Dr. David E. Gray

Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church

October 4, 2009

Psalm 42

World Communion Sunday is a special time for our church. Our love for arts, beauty, drama, flowers, music and worship all come out here.

It’s a morning that highlights our unity – our unity as a congregation, our unity as a denomination, our unity as a broader Christian church and our unity as human race.

Our second lesson is from the book of Psalms, one of the most universally loved parts of the Bible in the broad Christian community. The psalms are important in Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity as well. They appeal to so many because they contain a full range of human emotions.  

This morning we’ll be focusing on Psalm 42, and the Psalmist’s longing for communion with God, as we read in a variety of languages as well as English.  Listen for the word of God.

Holy God, illuminate your word for us today. Help fulfill our longing to be in communion with you and to be united with each other. Amen.

I bet each of us can describe a time when we thirsted for God, or at least for the power that we hoped God would bring to our troubled lives.  To express his need for God, the psalmist in our lesson this morning uses images of water – of flowing streams, of pouring out his soul, of tears and, above all, of thirst. 

The image works because there is a basic human need for water. In the 8^th century b.c.e., King Hezekiah of Jerusalem was trying to defend Jerusalem from attack from the Assyrians. So he built a huge fresh water stream into the city so that Israelites would have fresh water if attacked because without fresh water the people would die of thirst.

The writer of Psalm 42 uses the simile of a deer longing for water to describe how much he longs for God. Water is not just something a deer wants, it’s something it needs. Water is necessary for life and neither a deer nor a human can survive without it. 

One of the important historical figures in the early Christian church, Sainte Augustine, loved our second lesson for today. In fact, Psalm 42 was read when Augustine was baptized on Easter Sunday in 387 a.d. Augustine believed that all human beings have an innate longing for God and that while we try and satisfy ourselves, we ultimately don’t find satisfaction until we develop some understanding of and relationship with God. Augustine wrote that “The thought of God stirs the human being so deeply that he or she cannot be content unless he or she praises God.” “Our hearts find no peace until they rest in (God).”

As I talk with people from a variety of backgrounds it is clear to me that there is nothing that can really take the place of God. We can try and fill our lives with businesses or work ourselves to a place of self satisfaction, but eventually we find that it’s lonely at the top. We can try and medicate ourselves, ignore our desire to connect or run away from our creator, but we feel empty and lost. Life goes along fine and we are perfectly happy to get along without God, but eventually something happens where we realize we are not completely self sustaining. We find ourselves needing care or learn that someone we care about is sick and we find we have a longing for God. There is a famous phrase that “there are no atheists in foxholes and few atheists in hospitals.” When we realize that the things that we take for granted or care about most are out of our control we turn to higher powers. While we can stay self focused for a long while, eventually our thirst for God will cause us to look outward beyond the limits of ourselves and what is around us.

On World Communion Sunday we express our need for God by recognizing our connection with people outside our immediate areas. For the writer of Psalm 42, his thirsting for God inspired him to think outside himself and his local community.  Psalm 42 was either written during the Babylonian exile when the Israelites had been taken from their beloved Jerusalem to Babylon, or it was right after that period in some post-exilic Persian kingdom, but either way the writer is separated from God and unable to visit the Temple of Jerusalem, the place where the Psalmist would “see the face of God.” When he wrote Psalm 42, the writer was separated from the presence of God he associated with the Temple. In his period of separation, the psalmist turned his mind to Jerusalem far away. And so he thirsts. 

Water played a key role in the Israelites eventual return. Babylon, like many ancient cities, was surrounded by a ditch, a moat, which the Babylonians would fill with water when an attacking enemy would approach. The Babylonian exile ended when King Cyrus of Persia and his troops attacked and defeated the Babylonians by building another channel, diverting the water and moat away from the city. They were then able to capture Babylon and eventually allowed the Israelites to return home. 

Too often in American history, we as a country have used the separation we have by water from much of the rest of the world as a reason not to engage in the concerns of the world.

Yet, like the psalmist, we do well to let our thirst for God lead us to care about people in other places.  Over the past few years, water has led to many of us looking outside ourselves. Hurricane Katrina opened the eyes of many Americans in 2005 to the needs of the poor in America. We realized that our nation has much work to be a socially just place. In 2004, the Tsunamis that swept from Indonesia to India killed more than 240,000 people and opened the eyes of America to our need to be involved in relief and mission and service throughout the world. Just this week, waves and earthquakes have waged destruction in the Philippines, Indonesia and American Samoa, and we are called to care once again.

On World Communion Sunday, we recognize that our thirst for God can bring us to care more deeply about people in places outside our immediate area. Jesus told his followers to make disciples of all nations - that is to think globally. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the presence of water in the sacraments. And he said, “know I am with you always until the end of the age.” The psalmist was separated from the Temple in Jerusalem and so felt separated from God. But our Christian tradition holds that because of Christ, we do not need to be in Jerusalem in order to see the face of God. We commune with God spiritually through the Lord’s Supper, and we see the face of God in the faces of those around us. We are called to be peacemakers and we are in communion with people outside the four corners of our church, who are also thirsty to know peace and to experience the grace of God.

The psalmist was thirsty like the deer. As opposed to, say, hungry like the wolf, to reference music from the 1980’s.

Bridget and I went to hear the Irish band, U2, play on Tuesday night. One of the interesting parts of being a pastor is how people will bring up things. Someone reminded me that evening that there is a style of communion that was pioneered here in Maryland in 2004 called an “U2charist.” It’s a communion service accompanied by diverse songs and artistic expression, and it focuses on global reconciliation, justice for the poor, and the importance of caring for one’s neighbors. Sounds a bit like a World Communion Sunday service.

The concert Tuesday was part of U2’s “360 degrees” tour. 360 degrees is the shape of a circle, an important shape to our sacraments. Circles are important places for water here at Bradley Hills. This circular baptismal font reminds us that every human comes from God. We are unified by a common source, by water and the Holy Spirit. And by God’s love for all of God’s creation. God comes to us in grace through the waters of baptism. It is through waters that we become a member of the church, the household of God.

Our communion table is in the shape of a circle. I have spent most of my life as the part of four other congregations and each had a rectangular table. The circular table is a symbol of inclusiveness and our loving the world. Communion is a place where we can find our longing for God fulfilled. For in communion we experience the spiritual presence of Christ.

We need World Communion Sunday to remind us that even in our fractured world, we are united by our need for God and each other.   In Luke chapter 18, Jesus told a parable about a Pharisee who was thinking too well of himself and said, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.” When the Pharisee thanked God that he is not like others, he ironically used the Greek word, “Eucharist,” to describe his attitude towards God. But we don’t find our separation from others in Eucharist. It is in the Eucharist that we realize that we are actually like other people. It is in the Eucharist that we realize we all have needs, human needs for food and water, for life and love, for peace, hope and grace. We look outside ourselves to a world that needs a circle of life, connection and above all love. We have an innate thirst for God, and the only thing that can quench it is the spiritual presence of Christ with us. God has chosen to be spiritually present with us in our communion.

We honor God’s grace and love for us by loving those whom God has created throughout the world. We can try and do it all ourselves, push others out of our lives and stay thirsty. However, sooner or later we will realize that the shortest and surest path to quenching our greatest thirsts is to draw a circle that includes others in love. Edwin Markham put it this way, “He drew a circle that shut me out – heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle that took him in.”

God calls us to love, serve and be in communion with people throughout the world. Forman Christian College has long been a mission partner of this congregation. It is in Pakistan, the country where part of our peacemaking offering this morning is going. The motto of Forman Christian College is “By love, serve one another.” Ruth Forman once told me that the focus of the motto matters a lot. She said, “it reads ‘by love’ for a reason, for without love we cannot serve one another.” If we believe that God is Lord of all and cares about the whole world, then by love, so should we.   We are not just bystanders, we need to be involved. And the more involved we are the more our thirst for meaning will be satisfied.

We thirst for God. Through water, we connect with each other in our sacraments. We thirst, but on World Communion Sunday we proclaim that thirsting is not all bad. It’s what we thirst for that matters. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his disciples, “blessed are those who thirst…for righteousness for they will be filled.” If we thirst for God, we will find what we are looking for. If we thirst to join each other in communion around the table, we will find that there is a place for us. If we thirst for involvement, God will show us how to help. If we thirst for righteousness, we will be filled. As the prophet Amos said, “Justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”

The world as it is has many needs. God has called us to act in love towards that world as a way to recognize our common communion with creation. God has created a world, a planet, that itself is a circle, a circle big enough to include all of us. 

God’s love is there for you. And when we seize it, we realize will not be thirsty forever. 

For there is a well that starts in the sky, that connects you and I, and that never runs dry. 

Drink it up and pass the cup.

Amen.