But how much do you pay for water? Given that you use it every day in massive amounts, from everything to flush toilets to washing clothes, to boiling noodles to drinking, to showering every third day, and so on. You pay almost nothing for it at all. Yes, it costs money, but for an absolutely vital service, you pay probably a third for it as you do for cable and internet. We are so used to water being functionally free and easy to get, that we don't think about it at all anymore.
But like with so many other things, it becomes of extreme importance when it's taken away. It becomes absolutely vital, to the extent that you can't think about anything else, when it's taken away. Then, all of a sudden, you dwell on that more than anything else ever. If you don't have water, as people in Regina found out in this season of water main breaks, all the luxuries that you enjoy like cable, internet, beer, wine, spirits, they don't count for too much if you don't have water.
But the point I was trying to make, the major point from the sermon on Sunday, was that although we need water, we need water desperately, we die if we don't have it, our thirst mechanism is so thoroughly worn down that we don't even notice it anymore. It doesn't occur to us that much that we're thirsty, and we even have a nasty habit of eating to try to satisfy our thirst reflex. And when we get our sudden thirst on, we have a nasty habit of trying to quench our thirst with diuretics. You know when you're out in the hot sun, and you think to yourself, 'gosh, an ice cold beer would do the trick right about now?' Well, you may well be disappointed to find out that an ice cold beer will make you thirstier eventually. Oh, sure, it seems at first like that'll do the trick, it certainly feels nice going down, tastes crisp, and you feel less parched, but it sucks the water right out of you. That's what a hangover is, by the way. Dehydration.
Now, the Gospel reading was talking about living water welling up as a spring for eternal life. When Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman at the well, he does so by talking to her about living water. And Jesus is quite clear about thirst quenching - there is only one thing that will do. There is only one thing that will give us what we need, and won't give us what we don't. The grace of God is the living water that wells up, and if we are in our baptismal grace, we will never be thirsty again. We don't have to keep on drawing water, have to keep hauling it back and forth, have to keep on schlepping sacrifices to and from the temple. His grace is enough, and covers all our transgressions. It is free to us, it comes without cost, and without burden.
Isaiah 55 tells us to come, those who are thirsty, come to the waters and that we ought not to spend our money on what is not bread, nor our labour on what does not satisfy. It tells us that there is only the grace of God that satisfies. But you and I, we do what we do, and we seek more exciting fare. We know we're thirsty, we know that we are reliant on God's grace, but we get bored with it. Even though the promise is there that we need, we absolutely need God's grace for eternal life, in the same way we need water to stay alive, but we try to slake our thirst with other things. More exciting things. We fill ourselves full of intoxicants and diuretics, things that seem to help, but just make the problems worse. St. Augustine of Hippo famously said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, and sure enough, you might as well say that our hearts thirst until they are quenched by God. We are perpetually thirsty until God's living water quenches us.
What do I mean by this? I mean that we are desperately craving eternity. People who don't know about God crave eternity. Nobody is seriously approaching the vast eventual heat death of the universe we ought to last forever, that the decisions that we make matter, and that our legacy counts for something, which it wouldn't, if we just die and rot in the ground. We have eternity written in our hearts, we have the desire for eternity inscribed on everything we do, and yet death is ever present in our world. with the appropriate response, which is to stop doing their homework because nothing matters whatsoever. Pretty well all of us have in mind the notion that we ought to last forever.
And so, and so, and so, everything we try to satisfy this desire for eternity with that isn't God, has the side effect of making us thirstier, it has the side effect of making us crave God all the more. We desire him all the more the more things we try to add in the way.
But this thirst we have, the promise is that it would be satisfied. We are built and designed with a natural thirst for God, and he has made a way to satisfy us. When we eventually stop trying to cram other things in there, and allow God to satisfy our thirst for him, he satisfies that thirst. He satisfies that thirst with living water, with the living water of his grace, poured out for us on the cross. We are thirsty for his grace, and he satisfies it, pouring out water from his side on the cross as he died.
But like with water, we get lazy with it because it is free and cheap and easy to get. Water is so easy to get that we don't feel much about it at all, we just sort of expect it whenever we want it. And when it's not there, then it's a problem. But water isn't free. Call a plumber, try to buy bottled water, drill your own well, and you'll realize that water isn't free. It's the same with God's grace. It isn't free. It's free to us, but that doesn't mean that it is without cost total. It has an immense cost to God, and that's what we think about in Lent. It's not about how much we pay for this grace, it's about what God payed for us. In a sense, then, the water flows without cost to us, but the grace of God was purchased at the cost of his own life.
Over this next little while in Lent, be mindful of how much water you're using. Make it a part of your lenten observation. Think about those who don't have clean water, who would kill for clean water. Think about all the times when you've wasted water, and thought nothing of it. And also, think of all the times you've taken God's grace for granted. Remember the cost of both of those things as you continue your lenten journey.
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