Come All Who Thirst

Isaiah 55:1-13

John 4:13-14

12/12/21

 

               Today is the third Sunday in Advent.  And we are invited to remember on this “joy” day of Advent, that God’s coming is one of great and unexpected joy: that we find God in the surprising, the beautiful, the weird and different, and in the most unexpected places.  So, I invite you to pause for a minute and think of when you were surprised by something beautiful that brought you joy.  As you think I will name a few places that I have found recently: the email from Rina/Honey/James that began a wonderful friendship with them and Lizzie: a real gift.  Kristi applying for our director position here.  A bouquet of flowers arriving on my doorstep from Hope Solutions.  Getting to see the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit and being deeply touched by it.  Seeing my son so easily making friends at school.  Hearing the deep questions at our Bible study: all of these things have been deep gifts where God’s joy, God’s delight, God’s beauty showed up unexpectedly and profoundly for me.  Do you have those joy moments of your own in your mind?  Share one with your neighbor.

But on this day, I want to tell you that on this joy day, it is not just that we are called to delight in the God who comes to us in beautiful and unexpected ways.  I want to say to you something different.  I want to tell you that it is also God’s joy to delight in YOU.  God has given you this life to LIVE it.  I had a wonderful conversation recently with one of my heroes: Rev BK Woodson,  a pastor friend of mine in Oakland whom I respect, admire and value immensely.  I was telling him that I felt our purpose in life was love, kindness, generosity, service.  I said to him that for me I also thought preaching, teaching, caring for the “least of these”, parenting, nurturing was part of my job or purpose in life.  That this thing called pastoring is what I am to do with my life.  And that part of my struggle with SABBATH and rest has been that when I rest, when I am not actively DOING, I can sink into a feeling that my life has no value, no worth.  In those moments of non-activity or non-service, I feel useless and pointless.  BK challenged me and said, “God gave you life to LIVE it.”  He said our purpose in life is to celebrate this beautiful life God has given us and that we honor God through delighting in the good of this amazing world.  Look around!  Take time to delight in the good!

Father Gregory Boyle, in his book Tattoos on the Heart, described a time when his father was dying of a brain tumor.  He was in the hospital and he requested a pillow from home – but specifically a pillow from his wife’s side of the bed.  Father Boyle said to him, “you know, the hospital provides pillows...” but this was what his dying father had requested.  Father Boyle and his mother went into the hospital room, gave him the pillow and then his mother left to use the restroom.  He writes,

“I’m about to make small talk about the view… but I turn and see that my father has placed the flowery pillow over his face.  He breathes in so deeply and then exhales, as he places the pillow behind his head.  For the rest of the morning, I catch him turning and savoring again the scent of the woman whose bed he’s shared for nearly half a century.  We breathe in the spirit that delights in our being – the fragrance of it.  And it works on us.  Then we exhale (for that breath has to go somewhere) – to breathe into the world this same spirit of delight, confident that this is God’s only agenda.” P151

               Later he wrote, “I was brought up and educated to give assent to certain propositions.  God is love, for example.  You concede, ‘God loves us,’ and yet there is this lurking sense that perhaps you aren’t fully part of the ‘us.’  The arms of God reach to embrace, and somehow you feel yourself just outside God’s fingertips.  Then you have no choice but to consider that ‘God loves me,’ yet you spend much of your life unable to shake off what feels like God only embracing you begrudgingly and reluctantly.  I suppose, if you insist, God has to love me too.  Then you can explain this next moment, when the utter fullness of God rushes in on you – when you completely know the One in whom ’you move and live and have your being,’ as St. Paul writes.  You see, then, that it has been God’s joy to love you all along.  And this is completely new.   Every time one of the Jesuits at Dolores Mission would celebrate a birthday, the same ritual would repeat itself.  ‘You know,’ one of the other Jesuits would say to me, for example, ‘Your birthday is Wednesday.  The people are throwing a ‘surprise party’ for you on the Saturday before.’  The protests are as predictable as the festivities.  ‘Oh come on,’ I’d say, ‘Can’t we pass this year?’  ‘Look,’ one of my brothers would say to me, ‘This party is not for you – it’s for the people.’  And so I am led into the parish hall for some bogus meeting, and I can hear the people ‘shushing’ one another – el padre ya viene.  As I step in the door, lights go on, people shout, mariachis strike themselves up.  I am called upon to muster up the same award-winning shock from last year.  They know that you know.  They don’t care.  They don’t just love you – it’s their joy to love you.”

One day, a professor entered the classroom and asked the students to prepare for a surprise test.  They all waited anxiously at their desks for the test to begin.  The professor handed out the exams with the text facing down as usual.  Once he handed them out, he asked the students to turn over the paper.  To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions – just a black dot at the center of the white sheet of paper.   The professor, seeing the expression on everyone’s faces, told them the following:    “I want you to write about what you see there.”  The students, confused, got started on the inexplicable task.  At the end of the class, the professor took all the exams and started reading each one out loud in front of all the students.  All of them, with no exception, defined the black dot, trying to explain its position in the center of the sheet. After all had been read, the classroom was silent, and the professor started to explain.  “I’m not going to grade you on this, I just wanted to give you something to think about.  No one wrote about the white sheet of paper.  Everyone focused on the black dot – the same thing happens in our lives.  We have a white piece of paper to observe and enjoy, while we always focus on the dark spots.  Our life is a gift from God, with love and care, and we always have reasons to celebrate – nature renewing itself every day, our friends around us, our jobs that provide our livelihood, the miracles we see every day.  However, we insist on focusing only on the dark spots—the health issues that bother us, the lack of money, the complicated relationship with a family member, the disappointment with a friend.  The dark spots are very small when compared with everything we have in our lives, but they’re the only ones that pollute our minds.  Enjoy each moment that live gives you.  Be happy and live a life filled with love.”

I believe it was Jill who passed this onto me at the beginning of COVID and I want to share it with you now: 

Me: Hey God.

God: Hello.....

Me: I'm falling apart. Can you put me back together?

God: I would rather not.

Me: Why?

God: Because you aren't a puzzle.

Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling down onto the ground?

God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.

Me: You don't understand! I'm breaking down!

God: No - you don't understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.

Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?

God: Only the very best pieces of you.

Me: I'm scared of changing.

God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!

Me: Becoming who?

God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.

Me: There goes another piece.

God: Yep. Let it be.

Me: So ... I'm not broken?

God: Of course Not! - but you are breaking like the dawn. It's a new day. Become!!!

               IN today’s scripture from Isaiah we are told to enjoy the richest of feasts.  We are told that in listening to God we will really live.  God tells us that God’s ways are more and expanded and bigger than we can imagine.  And that the sun and rain and snow come down as gifts to all.  As we read, “Yes, you will go out with celebration,

    and you will be brought back in peace.

Even the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you;

    all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

 In place of the thorn the cypress will grow;

    in place of the nettle the myrtle will grow” 

               And Jesus too says, “The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”  These are words, too, of celebration, of delight.  Of JOY.

We always read in the Christmas story, “'Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.”  This advent, I’d like you to consider that that great joy is for YOU, too.  That Jesus’ awaited coming was the amazing and often surprising joy of a baby born in hard circumstances: the first born to a young couple.  The joy is that while they may not have stayed in the inn, they stayed somewhere.  The joy is that others celebrated with them. The joy is that God was there with them, in the baby, in the relationships, in the birth.  And that joy is for YOU, too.  That God is with you, Emmanuel, God with us.  And that God calls you to live lives of celebration and thanksgiving and gratitude and joy!  Thanks be to God.  Amen.