Thirsty for the Life that Satisfies

Pentecost Sunday, Year A
Sermon for May 24, 2026

My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Happy Pentecost, Church of the Epiphany. Happy baptism day, happy day of red clothing and vestments, happy day of doves and wind and fire. Happy Memorial Day weekend; I know many of our regulars are on vacation or are with their families today. Happy beginning of summer; South Haven really comes alive this weekend, doesn’t it? Though that last one may bring out the tourist-crowd-complainers among us, there really is a lot to celebrate today, a lot of opportunity for joy if you want to experience joy. Amen?

Last week, I preached about our hunger for God, a sense of awe that we all experience when we look at the mysterious world around us. This week, Jesus gives us a verse or three about thirst. Hunger, thirst: about as connected as we can get. I know that Pentecost is a day about fire and wind and doves, about the first reading, Acts 2, the birthday of the church, where we read the Holy Spirit fills the disciples and they can speak in different languages. Some churches, especially in big, diverse cities, make this the Sunday they read everything in different world languages, and I love that; there’s a lot about diversity and spirituality and mystery all mixed up in that first reading. That passage also gives me one of my favorite Bible quotes, at least as a teenager: “We are not drunk as you suppose, it’s only nine in the morning.” Maybe drunk later, but not at 9 in the morning… come on.

So too should the 1 Corinthians passage from our second reading be familiar: “To each of is us given the Spirit for the common good,” various gifts for each of us, all activated by the Spirit, many members of one body, all baptized into one body, each with our own gift to offer, all made to drink of one Spirit. We know we are different from each other, and sometimes those differences become reasons for fear, exclusion, oppression, or at the very least, distance. But Paul wrote to the church in Corinth about unity amid diversity, about how we are invited, together, no matter our differences, into this life of the Spirit.

But this morning I want to put the familiar Pentecost stories aside for a minute – we will come back to them – and go to this Gospel passage, John 7:37-39. If you’ll remember back to Lent, we were reading thirty or forty verses at a time for our Gospel reading, sometimes two pages in our bulletin just for the Gospel. This year, on this Principal Feast day, one of the biggest days in the church calendar, we have… three verses. And after preaching on hunger for God last week, this thirst for living water has not left my mind.

Jesus here in John chapter 7 is preaching at the Feast of Booths, one of the big Jewish festivals that we lost in our Christian tradition, or at least never carried over. The Feast of Booths is celebrated at harvest, in the fall, remembering the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert in Exodus, and it is one known for being full of joy; not solemn like many Jewish festivals, but particularly joyful. Jesus here, on the “last day of the festival” it reads, is “standing there” and “cries out:” “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture says, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” We don’t love to think of Jesus as a street preacher, as a soapbox stander, but this passage certainly gives us Jesus Christ, Son of God, on the street corner yelling into a megaphone at tourists who just want to be left to their party.  

So, Jesus yells, if you are thirsty, you’re looking for me. Come to me, and out of your heart will flow a river of living water; you will not be thirsty again. During the 40-year Exodus in the desert, the Jews were hungry and God sent manna from heaven; do you remember this story? When they were thirsty, God told Moses to strike a rock, and water came from it… God would supply all their needs, if they would only, truly believe in God. Now, street preacher Jesus is declaring at their Exodus-Memorial celebration that he is the water they were looking for, he is the reason for their joy, he is the fulfillment of this Festival of Booths. Come to him, receive the Spirit; you will never be thirsty again.

Jesus loves to do this, to take literal stories from the traditions of those around him and use them figuratively, to point to something much bigger. He loves his symbolism, and so does his Church; look no further than our font and altar. These people were celebrating actual water that would satisfy their thirst in the desert. Jesus says, your thirst for true life, for living water, that can only be satisfied by following me. Come to me and drink.

I met with Susan and Charlie yesterday to talk about their baptism this morning. First, I need to say that it is the greatest privilege for me, for us here at Epiphany, that you two decided to be baptized with us this morning, so, thank you. As we met and talked and I tried to answer any questions they might have, we briefly discussed how church attendance is shrinking in the United States, following decades of patterns in Europe. For many, that’s a cause of great alarm; endless reports are being written, solutions are being drawn up, social media posts are being posted, and conferences are being held about the decline of the church. This has also, obviously, led to the rise of Christian Nationalism, out of a fear that says we need to fight for Christian values, which is a wild response to the message of a crucified Jesus. Susan pointed out that the Catholic Church in Chicago isn’t doing too bad, thanks in part to Pope Leo… for that I think we can all be grateful.

But I assured them both, or at least, I shared my personal opinion, that I’m not worried about the so-called “decline of the church.” For a long time, church was the thing you were expected to do on a Sunday morning, there was obligation here: Come, make an appearance, admit you’re a sinner while you’re there, receive your safety valve release on guilt and shame, sing a bit, then go about your life, letting that pressure build back up until the next Sunday, the next safety valve release. Some skipped those steps and just showed up and left, leaving sin out altogether; some still do. Now though, now, that social obligation is gone for many; there’s no guilt or shame in staying home or enjoying the park or a sporting event on a Sunday morning. And so, churches built up on that social obligation of course are shrinking, of course they are. Maybe they should be.

But churches built on invitation? On Jesus’s invitation: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink?” I think they’re going to be okay. I think if we’re building our church on an invitation to love and community and care, on breaking bread together, on resisting evil, on the pursuit of justice and peace, and on respecting the dignity of every human being… that church is going to be more than okay.

See, there are many other sources of water out there, all expertly packaged through focus groups and algorithms, all marketed to us as some sort of satisfying cure to our problems. Of course, many of us buy that water, and then we feel thirsty just the same. The phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” came up in Wednesday’s Gather & Grow conversation… the “reduce” and “reuse” parts of that slogan don’t fit very well in a society of consumerism and infinite growth investment models. We are constantly told not to reduce or reuse: that if we buy enough, we won’t be thirsty. If we do enough, we won’t be thirsty. If we travel enough, we won’t be thirsty. If we collect enough wealth, we won’t be thirsty.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about… when infinite joy is offered us.” Friends, we have all that we need right in front of us, we have love and joy here on offer. We need not buy more, do more, travel more, or collect more. We have Jesus Christ, inviting us to come and drink of his life, his love, his joy, to drink of the life of God, to drink in the Spirit gifted to us on Pentecost. If only we would choose to do so.

This morning, two more will drink of this life, two more will join the Church, the body of Christ, invited to bring their gifts to us and to the world. Susan and Charlie are not Mary, or Frank, or Ellen, or John; they bring their own gifts to this body, and here, today, they affirm their intent and we invite them to live into them in joy. This morning, this Day of Pentecost, of red and fire and doves and wind, we believe the Spirit will live through them anew, as the Spirit lives in each one of us, satisfying our thirst and flowing out as a joyful river of living water for all the world to see, to love and change the world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.