Loving God, you invite us always to come to you, the fountain of living water and the source of eternal life.  As we gather together today, help us to find food for our souls and hope in your coming; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

            Rev. Dr. John Pentland, who is a United Church minister in Calgary, likes to talk to servers in coffee shops and restaurants.  In fact, he likes to ask them, “What are you hungry for?”  His question is not about food, but about life in general.  What are you hungry for?...  The answers that he gets almost always include things like acceptance, and tolerance, and unconditional love.  He has also encountered people who are hungry for meaning and purpose.

         In the same way, we can talk about spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst.  Many people are looking for something more and are trying many different things in order to feed their souls.  However, just as that which is not bread will not satisfy, any attempts to feed the soul without the Lord of heaven and earth also will not satisfy.

         Today we hear an amazing invitation from Isaiah to those who hunger and thirst.  “Come to the waters… Come, buy and eat…without money and without price” (Is. 55:1).  “Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live” (Is. 55:3).  Those who first heard Isaiah’s message had been looking elsewhere for satisfaction.  They had been spending their time and money on things that simply do not satisfy.  Martin Luther writes about these verses, “You are always looking, listening, and going elsewhere.  But I say to you, unless you incline and come in this direction, you will die of starvation” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 17 [Is. 55:3]).  In other words, only the life-giving Word of God can feed the soul.

         A song keeps coming into my head – Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places.  We look for all that we need to live, but sometimes we look everywhere except to God.  In the case of the Israelites, they had spent too long in Babylon, where people looked to the Babylonian gods and to their own efforts.  Even when they started to come back to Jerusalem, many of them did not turn to God in order to find what they needed.  They found themselves in desperate circumstances, but remained that way because they did not return to the One who was able to provide them with all that they needed.

         Thus, they were given Isaiah’s message:  Come!  Seek the Lord.  Return to the Lord.  Call upon the Lord.  “Listen, so that you may live.”  Perhaps not surprisingly, Martin Luther reads this passage from Isaiah and focuses squarely on God’s Word and on God’s grace.  For, buying without money and without price is simply a poetic way of saying that the food and drink are given as a gift.

         Here is part of what Luther has to say, which I think is worth hearing:

Hearken diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in fatness, because our endeavors do not produce bread for us but leave our souls hungry and faint. “But you hearken, that is, to the Word, because if you hearken, you will eat good things, excellent and savory food, like partridges, lampreys, white bread, and malmsey wine. Before this you had no food. Now I will fill you with the choicest marrow. You must think which you want: To achieve nothing by your own labor or to obtain everything by someone else’s labor.” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 17 [Is. 55:3])

What Luther is addressing here is the gift of salvation.  When it comes to trying to earn salvation by our own efforts, we achieve nothing.  However, we obtain everything by someone else’s labour – in other words, through Jesus.  “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (Is. 55:2)

The image has kept coming to mind this week of parents frantically trying to get whatever the most popular toy is each year for their children.  We could perhaps add the image of people simply trying to squeeze everything in – trying to get all the right presents and decorating and baking and wrapping and preparing and attending one celebration after another.  What emerges from all of this is people who are frazzled and worn out, and even resenting everything that they need to do.  Why do you spend your labour for that which does not satisfy?

Just as Isaiah points to seeking God and listening to the Word and feeding the soul, so Jesus also gives an invitation to come to the waters.  “The water that I will give,” says Jesus, “will become in [you] a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14).  It is an image that is used several times in the gospel of John to describe the Holy Spirit.  For this is the same life-giving word that waters the earth and accomplishes God’s purposes.

The danger, of course, at this time of year is that we get so occupied with other things that we neglect to breathe deeply and to invite the Holy Spirit to be at work in our minds and in our hearts.  For we, too, are hungry and thirsty.  Luther speaks of the church as “the assembly that clings to the Word, an assembly that is in need, in hunger and thirst” (Luther’s Works, Vol 17 [Is. 55:2]).

We, too, thirst for the living God.  We, too, hunger for acceptance and unconditional love.  We, too, seek the peace and the joy that only the Holy Spirit can give.  The good news is that God continues to come to us through Jesus Christ, offering us these things and more – including forgiveness and eternal life.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Advent 3 (NL 4)                                                                    Isaiah 55:1-13

December 17, 2017                                                                        John 4:13-14

St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church

Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2017 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved