Dr. J. Lawrence Cuthill

March 7, 2010

Winter Park Presbyterian Church

O God, you are my God. I seek you, my soul thirsts for you: my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.

My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

~ ~ ~

If you’ve ever been to the Holy Land, you’ll easily understand why the images of thirst (and the accompanying image of hunger) would touch a responsive chord with the people who live there. Israel is, and has always been, an arid, a thirsty land, thirsting and hungry for security and hope as a starving person dreams of a full meal.

Thirst signals the absence of something vital to our lives. Think of the last time you were really thirsty, if you can. Thirst is urgent, insistent, consuming. If it is not satisfied, the consequences can become increasingly grave. Dry lips and a dry mouth give way to what is sometimes described as a “mummified” tongue. Eyes become sunken and skin less elastic. Severe dehydration leads to blue lips, a rapid pulse, panting, disorientation, lethargy and, ultimately, to death.

I’m told that you can be dehydrated and not know it until your need for water moves to more advanced and insistent symptoms.Athletes are warned, especially on hot days, to drink even when they are not inclined to do so. Not so many years ago, we read in the paper ever so often of a high school or college football player who, due to heat exhaustion and related dehydration, collapsed and died during an August practice session.

In 3^rd World countries, many children die of dehydration related to diarrhea from, ironically, water-born parasites. These are physical symptoms which have corresponding implications when translated to our spiritual lives. We dry up spiritually … sometimes without knowing it. . . and ultimately our thirst leads to death. Or, in the case of hunger, our lack of food leads to malnutrition – or to “soul starvation”.

One powerful tendency in our own culture, particularly where there is such an abundance of things, is to assuage our thirst with things. The equivalent of this is a thirsty person at sea attempting to satisfy histhirst with salt water. The immediate satisfaction is soon replaced by greater thirst and soon by serious physical consequences.

The Psalmist would say that being thirsty or hungry and trying to satisfy that need is not a bad thing. Even the Beatitudes says, “Blessed are you when you hunger and thirst. . . “ The hunger and thirst of which the scriptures speak is ultimately a longing for God. The problem arises when we try to satisfy the thirst with acts that are incapable of providing any substantial satisfaction. There are just so many things, and not any things will fill the bill.

David Rensberger writes that “[w]e thirst for intimacy, to offer ourselves to someone who will receive us, who will know us to our depths, and delight in us. When this is not forthcoming, we turn to sex and pornography in the unconscious hope that they will meet the real need that we hardly know how to acknowledge.”

We long for a new, better reality, to find a realm of freedom, wholeness and joy. Not finding that, but only more pain and frustration, we uncork a bottle or pop a pill, find a new relationship, or buy a new toy. Finding only frail, temporary gratification, we fall back on even more fleeting pleasures and diversions, trying to plug the desperate void.

Sometimes, we recognize the futility of such efforts; feel guilty, and resolve to make changes, but many such changes turn out to be cosmetic. Or perhaps we just can’t pull it off. Often a diet is just a yo-yo exercise. The resolution to change fades and the last state finds us worse that the first ... so why try?

But there’s still that nagging thirst, that gnawing hunger. Is this all there is?

Some wise heads counsel moderation. Good advice but I suspect advice isn’t sufficient. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, in her book Living Lent, writes,

“We didn’t know what moderation was. What it felt like. We didn’t just work; we inhaled our jobs, sucked them in, became them. Stayed late, brought home our jobs – it was never enough though, no matter how much time we put in. We didn’t just shop, we maxed out our credit limits. We shopped for new clothes, though we didn’t have any more closet space. We came home with new toys, not wanting our (already over stimulated) kids to be without. We bought more groceries while the food in the refrigerator spoiled.

We bought houses with double-height entry ways, chef’s kitchens, oversized garages, master suites and home theaters where, on our big screens, we cheered on the biggest loser [watched bachelors select from a bevy of women and the audaciously proportioned and maxed out on the] Super Bowl.

We didn’t just eat; we stuffed ourselves. Holidays were as big as we could afford … and bigger Our waistbands became bigger still. Michael Jackson told us, “Don’t stop ‘til you get enough,” but we never had enough. Moderation, hardly an option, if at all .. except when it came to God.”

Today, with recession, moderation’s call is loud and clear. Hummers and other “land yachts” are out of style and some of their makers are out of business. We’re spending less, eating more simply, saving more wisely. But will such moderation will pass … if and when the economy improves, as is likely.

If there’s hope that moderation (good sense) can continue, will that be because we love and serve God moderately, respectfully, cautiously, selectively … but without passion? Some cynics have suggested that the only connection between Presbyterian and passion is they both start with “P”. Lent might be the time to ask: do we have our priorities in order … and do we honor them?

Are we passionately loving the right things … which isn’t things, but the Christ? Listen to the way Lindsay Armstrong, a Presbyterian pastor, expresses it:

“While we may energetically desire a job, professional recognition, a hybrid vehicle, home renovation, or the latest I-Phone, do we yearn for God with similar zest? While we may steadily save for retirement or vacation, do we seek God with the same regularity, intensity and focus? Do we hunger for God so deeply it is as if our stomach growls? Do we love God with the kind of spontaneous enthusiasm that we might bring to one of our other loves: March Madness, jazz, gardening, NASCAR, travel or cooking with vine ripe tomatoes and pungent basil fresh from the garden? Our gusto for God can be remarkably small, particularly when contrasted with the joy and delight in God that we discover in the Psalms.”

In Psalm 63, the psalmist is not simply interested in, or respectful of God; instead, the psalmist craves God like a coffee drinker craves the first morning cup. More, in fact. Dire thrist symbolizes the need in Verse 1; hunger represents the need in verse 5. The psalmist’s longing for God is so intense that it is experienced physically

In Psalm 63, the psalmist is not simply interested in or respectful of God; instead, the psalmist craves God like a coffee drinker craves the first morning cup. In fact, dire thirst symbolizes the nThe longing for God is so intense,.

The hope held out in Psalm 63 is that our thirst for God will be satisfied, our hunger fed. Once we see that our thirst was put there in the first place by God, and can only be satisfied by God – we see that God does exactly that … generously, extravagantly, lovingly … in Jesus Christ.

There is a beloved hymn whose chorus goes “Bread of heaven; Bread of heaven, feed me ‘til I want no more.” Here we find the table set and an abundance before us that truly satisfies. What were you looking for? Often we don’t know until we meet and respond to. He invites us, “Come to the table. Here is the Bread of Heaven, and out of your inmost being shall flow rivers of living water.”

AMEN