Lent 3a 2026; 8 March; Jack Hardaway
Ex.17:1-7; Ps. 95; Rom. 5:1-11; John 4:5-42
I Give My Heart: The Apostles’ Creed part 3
THIRST
We are thirsty people.
Without water we don’t last long.
Water is life.
Then there are floods, too much water, a destructive power that is unstoppable.
As an engineer once said, “Water always wins.”
Water has been a major story for our church for almost fifty years, bringing water to the village of Cange in Haiti. I was in middle school when Bishop Beckham first addressed the diocese about bringing water to Cange, then schools and a hospital. I remember it. A VHS tape was sent to every congregation to watch.
Stories about water.
Bringing water to the dry places. Moses striking the rock and water flowed in the desert.
Psalm 95 sings of that water, of the rock of our salvation.
Even Romans writes of God’s love being poured into our hearts.
And then there is Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, speaking of fresh water, living water gushing up to eternal life from within us, never to thirst again.
John’s Gospel has these stories of personal encounters with Jesus, of meeting Jesus, and the conversation having so many layers of meaning.
Give me this water.
Some of Jesus last words before his death in John’s gospel are, “I thirst.”
We are thirsty people.
We long for God.
God longs for us.
The Apostles’ Creed bears witness to this water that is life, that we believe in, that we give our hearts to, that we thirst for.
This sermon is the third reflection in a sermon series about the Apostles’ Creed, found on page 96 of the Prayer Book if you want to follow along. The series is called “I give my heart” which is what “I believe” means, Credo, I give my heart.
Today we look briefly at the end of the second section, “On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
We thirst for the water of the resurrection.
Resurrection is life.
When Jesus rises from the dead he carries humanity into communion with the Father of creation.
We rise with him. We are carried with him. Humanity rises and is brought into the heart of God to share in that divine love song of sharing, of communion.
The great scandal of Jesus being the communion of humanity and the divine becomes even more scandalous when we rise with him into that life.
A physical resurrection, that embraces humanity and creation rather than casting it aside as the heretics would have us believe in their disdain for material existence.
The early Christians even believed that creation itself came about because God longed to become human. To be in the Spirit is to be in the world, not to escape.
And judgement.
Jesus will be our judge.
And it is a judgement that we long for, that we thirst for, that we give our hearts to.
So often we are told to think of God’s judgement as punitive, especially for some people, you know those people.
When the great hope is about so more than having a pleasant afterlife, or some people not making the cut.
The great hope is the restoration and completion of creation, of history, of all relationships, of our drought stricken humanity.
Water for a dry world, from the rock of our salvation, the rock of ages cleft for me.
Cool water on dry parched lips.
That is the judgment that Jesus brings.
Water.
Bringing water to the world, more than one kind of water, that is what it means to believe.
Be that water.
Next week we venture into the mysteries of the Holy Spirit and finding evidence of that life giving ghost in the stuff of life.
We find the Holy Spirit in the church being catholic, and in the saints being in the communion that is stronger than death.
Tune in next week.
Same Grace time. Same Grace channel.