Come to the Water

Ann Beaty
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

June 24, 2007

Text: Psalm 42

 “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.”  I’ve always been drawn to this opening line of Psalm 42.  Every time I read it, I get an immediate sensation of longing and can see in my minds eye the image of the deer searching for water.  At the same time, I can feel the dry places in my own soul and the thirst I have to be quenched by a more deeply connected relationship with God.
We don’t hear sermons very often from the Psalms.  A psalm is a bit of poetry from the religious life of ancient Israel.  Some psalms are prayers or cries to God for help.  Some are meant to offer God thanks or praise.  Other psalms are hymns and songs from worship.  Still others are reflective and prayerful pieces meant for meditation. 
The Psalmist, whose words we read today in our scripture, had seen a deer, probably many of them, thirsty, nosing about, peering into dry riverbeds, searching for water – and he knew that he thirsted for God in the same way
The only time in my life I can remember being truly desperately thirsty for water was when I was 4 years old and I woke up in the recovery room following surgery to remove my tonsils.  I still today, 40 years later, remember that feeling of complete and total dehydration.  The dryness in my throat was so intense I could hardly squeak out a word to the nurse to request a sip of water.  I remember that this intense dryness was very painful.
I was in recovery for a while – seemed like an eternity at the time - before they would allow me to have a sip of water.  I remember the incredible relief I felt when I took that first tiny sip of water and the dryness was quenched.  Lying still in that recovery room bed, there wasn’t any other way I could quench that thirst – and ease that pain – except to take a drink of water.
The Psalmist is experiencing some sort of unrest – of parched dryness in his soul – “Why are you cast down, O my soul” we read twice.  And we can imagine that he is remembering a time and place where water flowed more freely and his soul was fed. 
In the second part of the reading, we can well imagine a powerful waterfall that the psalmist is familiar with, such as the one at the foot of snow-capped Mt. Hermon, the source of the Jordan River.  The flow of water conveys the quenching of thirst; the sound, the roaring; it all touches the Psalmist deep inside, somehow enabling him to express the chaos and clamor of his own soul as he yearns to have his thirst quenched.
We’re all thirsty in our own ways for this deeply nourishing, thirst quenching relationship with God.  You don’t need me to tell you that most of us walk around with a gaping hole, or at least some small dry places, in our souls and we will pour anything and everything into it to fill it – material possessions, diversions to distract us such as TV or computer, food, alcohol, or drugs, surrounding ourselves with busy-ness all the time…you name it.  I do it too. 
It’s ordinary life stuff that isn’t necessarily inherently bad, but we sometimes get lured into believing that those things are the center of our existence.  When anything other than God becomes the center of our living, we feel the dryness in our souls and we want a quick fix.  We get frustrated when we feel emptiness and we see it as a problem to be solved.  So, we turn to anything to fill the hole and quench the void.
But maybe this hole inside of us that we are trying to fill isn’t a curse so much as a gift.  It seems to me that the hollowness might just be God crying out to us; our song is God’s song first!  Maybe God’s Spirit has burrowed out a place, so we would seek after God.  Otherwise, we might never sense any need for God.  It gets mislabeled – but it is God’s call to us to come home.  It is God loving us enough to put a place inside of us that can’t be filled with anything except God. 
I find this very comforting because it means that God has already done the work for me.  God has already reached out to me in loving relationship by putting this space in me and I don’t have to create it or figure out where to go to get it.  I just have to accept the gift of that relationship already initiated by God and fill it with God’s never-ending loving presence. 
It’s exactly what we say we believe in the introduction to our Baptism liturgy – “Through the Sacrament of Baptism we are initiated into Christ’s holy church.  We are incorporated INTO God’s Almighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit.  ALL THIS is God’s gift, offered to us without price.”
We do, however, have to take some action and respond to this gift.  And in my experience, it takes prayer to connect with God and fill the void of that space.
Prayer, connecting with God, is never quick and easy.  Prayer is like a muscle.  It requires use and discipline.  All the great masters of prayer teach us this.  Author and theologian Henri Nouwen said, “The only way to pray is to pray; the only way to pray well is to pray much.”  Catherine of Siena, a 14th century mystic wrote, “You, O God, are a deep sea into which, the more I enter, the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek.” 
One of my games is living under the allusion that if I can just get everything else done on my “to do” list, then I’ll have time to pray.  So, I work, work, work, thinking I can fill that void if just FIRST I can get all the emails answered and calls returned and errands run and family dealt with – THEN, I’ll have time for God.  But, what happens is that I’m exhausted, so I sit in front of the computer or TV with what little time is left and do nothing.
It’s not true…It doesn’t work that way and I know it.  I know that the prayer must come first and it is only in intentionally turning myself over in prayer to God that the space inside of me that rightfully belongs to God will be filled and then – only then – is my thirst quenched and my living full and joy-filled.
Think about our Psalmist again.  The Psalmist knows that God is everywhere  He references to knowing God in all places.  But there is a specific place, somewhere he needs to go inside of himself.  Henry David Thoreau (quote) “went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 
None of us want to come to the end of our lives and discover that we never really lived.  None of us who call ourselves followers of Christ want to go through life with a thirst so deep we feel the pain of separation from God who longs to love us.  We go in prayer – we come to church – we commit ourselves to participating in the body of Christ in community - to quench our thirst and taste of that living water that fills our well.
There’s a song often sung during Emmaus retreat weekends that I found myself humming as I reflected on Psalm 42.  It’s called “For Those Tears I Died” and I’d like to read you the lyrics and let you take in the poetry of the song as our prayer for today:
It begins with a person talking to Jesus…

“You said you’d come and share all my sorrows.
You said you’d be there for all my tomorrows.
I came so close to sending you away,
But just like you promised, you came here to stay,
I just had to pray.

And Jesus said,
‘Come to the water, stand by my side.
I know you are thirsty, you won’t be denied.
I felt every tear drop, when in darkness you cried
And I strove to remind you,
It’s for those tears I died.’

Your goodness so great, I can’t understand it.
And dear Lord I know now that all this was planned.
I know You are here now and always will be
Your love loosened my chains, and in You I’m free,
But Jesus why me?

And Jesus said,
‘Come to the water, stand by my side.
I know you are thirsty, you won’t be denied
I felt every tear drop, when in darkness you cried
And I strove to remind you,
It’s for those tears I died.

Jesus I give You, my heart and my soul
I know now without God, I’ll never be whole
Savior, you opened all the right doors
And I thank you and praise You for earth’s humble shores.
Take me I’m Yours!”

It’s the same message of the Psalmist – come to the water and you won’t be denied.  What a gift of amazing and perfect love.   Amen.

Notes:
For Those Tears I Died/Words and Music by Marsha J. and Russ Stevens
c. 1972 Communique Music, Inc.

Psalms and Practice; Worship, Virtue, and Authority/Stephen Breck Reid, Editor
Article, page 123 by James Howell