September 1, 2013 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

In Search of Living Water

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 81
Jeremiah 2:4–13
John 7:37–52

The eternal life Jesus promised isn’t just something we must wait for until we die, and we don’t have to go searching for it on the top of some mountain, or in the renunciation of possessions, or in the pursuit of justice, or in the profession of certain beliefs and the denunciation of others. These methods are the currency of the merchant—religion. Nothing is wrong with them, but they are not requirements of the river. The river is only interested in our thirst and trust in the One who guides us to it.

Shane Hipps
Selling Water by the River

The big pop culture story this week was the provocative and sexually explicit performance by twenty-year-old Miley Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards last Sunday evening. My guess is that most of us here didn’t actually watch the show, but many of us have probably seen clips or news reports throughout the week. We often have a news show on in the morning at our house as we get ready for the day, so thanks to extensive coverage of this story, my four-and-a-half-year-old son has now seen more of Miley Cyrus than he ever needed to.

After coming on stage wearing next to nothing and performing a song from her new album, she stripped down to as close to nothing as she could get for a duet with Robin Thicke, singing his popular and sexually charged song “Blurred Lines,” dancing in simulated sex acts and wagging her tongue in suggestive ways.

She’s trying really hard to make you forget, but perhaps you remember that not so many years ago Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana. On the Disney Channel.

Unfortunately it’s not exactly an unfamiliar story. Britney Spears and many others have done the same thing: they begin as child stars on Disney shows targeted at children and young teens but eventually feel the need to embrace a more “adult” persona and sexually provocative public image.

Now as a youth pastor, I have a fairly high tolerance for teenaged rebellion and identity experimentation. It’s a natural part of growing up and becoming your own person. And I am fully aware that mores and taboos are rapidly changing in our culture. I’m certainly not a prude or easily offended. But what Miley Cyrus did on Sunday crosses a line for me—a “blurred line” perhaps—because she’s still a role model for young girls and the awards show during which this performance happened was rated as appropriate for fourteen-year-olds.

Honestly, though, my biggest concern this week hasn’t been the envelope-pushing competition among performers and celebrities over who can be the most sexually or otherwise provocative and grab the most attention and media real estate. I’m not on some moral crusade to impose puritanical modesty upon youth and popular culture. In fact, I know quite well from my fundamentalist past that such a posture among religious leaders doesn’t really help and often only adds fuel to the fire of rebellion. And, frankly, that’s not really the kind of Christianity I’m interested in.

Mostly, I just feel bad for Miley. I’m sad that this talented young woman feels that the best way for her to reinvent herself and establish her own identity is to reduce herself to a sexual object. I’m disappointed that Robin Thicke followed suit and treated her as such. And whether she’s being exploited or is in fact driving the exploitation herself, I just don’t believe that the person we saw on stage last week is the real Miley Cyrus. It’s an act that she assumes in order to get attention and sell her music. But we’ve seen far too many times how the line between the persona and the person does in fact become blurred as life gets out of control.

You see, I think Miley Cyrus has abandoned her story. She’s forgotten who she really is and has gone after what the prophet Jeremiah might call “worthless things.” Ironically, she’s done so precisely because she believes that it will increase her value. But she may discover that it renders her brand “worthless” as well. Worse yet, she may one day start to feel “worthless” herself, a “blurred line” that can lead to catastrophic results.

On a larger scale, this is in fact what Jeremiah was talking about in his critique of ancient Israel. The people had abandoned their story—their sacred story of being a people enslaved in Egypt and led through the wilderness into the freedom of the promised land. They forgot who they were. They crossed a “blurred line” between the culture in which they lived and the people they were called to be. They turned away from the God of their ancestors and pursued other deities. Instead of following the living God, they put their faith in superstition and idols.

“Idolatry” may sound like an anachronistic or pharisaic issue for a sophisticated and progressive church like ours. But the prophetic critique of idolatry that we find in the Hebrew Bible has endured as a cornerstone of Reformed faith and theology. From John Calvin on through contemporary Reformed theologians, Presbyterians and others have recognized that we have a ubiquitous and perennial tendency to place our trust and hope in things other than God. As such, these things functionally become gods to us.

In the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Brief Statement of Faith, we confess that “in a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage . . . to unmask idolatries in church and culture.” How courageous and bold are we? Are we really willing to name the idolatries—the “blurred lines”—that consume our culture?

Some are easy, of course. We actually call celebrities icons and idols. The cult of celebrity that surrounds them and the incredible influence they have in shaping culture is obvious, an influence that’s not likely to abate anytime soon.

Some other low-hanging fruits on the idolatry tree are money and success. It’s pretty clear that many of our lives are driven by a desire to be the best at what we do and reap the rewards accordingly. It’s a “blurred line” indeed between hard work and greed, between having enough and having more than your neighbor.

Football season is starting this week. I’ll confess that it’s pretty much one of my favorite idolatries, whether I’m gathered around the altar of a high definition television screen or packed into a temple of worship like Soldier Field. With our “tailgate communions,” Hardy and I are trying to remind each other and our community that God is there in those places too, but it’s an admittedly “blurred line” we choose to walk.

Indeed, various forms of pleasure and entertainment can easily become the idols before which we regularly bow. The lines between joy and addiction or consumption and gluttony or love and exploitation are often blurred.

Some other idols are more difficult to unmask. Things that seem good can eventually become dangerous. Concern for others can blur into obsession. The pursuit of health can slip into disorder. Generosity can lead to a loss of self.

Some of our idolatries are divisive and polarizing. As it has become inevitable this week that we are heading into yet another military intervention in the Middle East, with our without key allies, we are likely not all in agreement about how to understand this situation. Where is the “blurred line” between self-defense and aggression? In what ways have we idolized military might or American exceptionalism? Are there “blurred lines” between moral imperatives and imperial self-interest or between national security and war profiteering? The unmasking of these idols is more complex.

We fail to notice some other idols because they are so cleverly masked as goods. Church itself is a prime example. We are a large church necessarily organized and driven by programs. A week from today, the program life of this church kicks back into gear. Sunday School and youth gatherings will begin again. Adult education classes and small group fellowships will soon follow. Volunteer opportunities will multiply. Mission initiatives will increase. This place will once again become a beehive of activity, all supported by professional staff, volunteer committees, capital campaigns, a brand-new building, the annual pledge appeal. Believe me when I tell you—and perhaps you know this well yourself—in the midst of all this, it’s easy to lose sight of God. Church itself—church as institution—can be a deceptive idol.

Shane Hipps, who was the pastor that briefly followed Rob Bell at the mega-church Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, has written a powerful little book called Selling Water by the River: A Book about the Life Jesus Promised and the Religion That Gets in the Way. It’s a fabulous metaphor.

Every human being has natural thirsts that we try to quench through love, sex, family, friends, money, food, work, play—these are the thirsts that give rise to the “blurred lines” and idolatries that we’ve been thinking about this morning. Shane notes that they all quench our thirst for happiness for a time, but it never lasts. Life itself doesn’t last. Each one of us will one day die. And throughout history, religion has provided answers to this dilemma. Each answer is, of course, a little different. Each mechanism for delivering it is different.

But those answers and mechanisms are not the same thing as that which truly quenches our thirst. In our readings today, both Jeremiah and Jesus talk about “living water.” In the Jewish understanding, “living water” is not static or collected, as in a pool or a cup or a bottle. “Living water” is alive; it’s moving; it’s active in the world. It’s like a river, a river to which every one of us has access.

And this is the sobering beauty of Shane Hipps’s metaphor. So often instead of leading people to the river of living water, which is free and available to all, we set up shop right next to the river and sell bottled water. We argue with each other about the best way to package and sell it. We package faith according to our own ideas, our own needs, our own desires. Sometimes we even profit from it. As Jeremiah puts it, we dig cisterns to contain it, but those cisterns—those idols—are cracked. They’re broken. They don’t work.

It’s not a surprise that we try to control religion. We try just as hard to control God. Reformed theologian Don McKim notes that “idolatry is the attempt to gain control over God by substituting some power, thought, or object in God’s place” (Don McKim, Introducing the Reformed Faith: Biblical Revelation, Christian Tradition, Contemporary Significance, p. 42).

Radical theologian Peter Rollins takes this a step further. In his recent book, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction, Rollins suggests that our conception of God is itself a product of our addiction to certainty and satisfaction. More often than not we worship a God we can understand and therefore control. But the God Rollins challenges us to embrace is shrouded in ambiguity and mystery. This God transcends our stories, our doctrines, our theologies, our attempts to sell water by the river.

Are you ready for a God like that? As we saw in today’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees weren’t. They had preconceived notions of God and religion that they simply couldn’t let go of. In a similar way, the ancient Israelites turned to worthless idols and false securities.

Are you ready for some living water?

“Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is within you’” (Shane Hipps’s translation of Luke 17:20–21, Selling Water by the River, p. 126).

“The kingdom of God is within you.” There is nothing between us and the river. We don’t need cracked cisterns of our own making. We don’t need empty idols. We don’t need to cross blurred lines.

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,” says Jesus, “and let the one who believes in me drink. . . . Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” Imagine how the world would be changed if from each of Christ’s followers flowed streams of living water.

Each of us thirsts for love, joy, happiness. Each of us thirsts for that mystery we call God. Each of us thirsts for something—we may not even know what to call it.

As a professional seller of water, for me this is one the busiest times of year. There are programs to plan, volunteers to recruit and prepare, phone calls to make and emails to answer, families to connect with and people to care for, lessons to outline and sermons to write.

Add to this the anxieties that have become common for us these days. How do we pay for these magnificent buildings, our professional staff, our excellent music, our exciting programs? When will we call that new pastor?

Maybe you have your own kind of busyness. Maybe you have your own kinds of anxieties and stress. Maybe Labor Day weekend is also the calm before your storm, a last chance to squeeze in some fun or projects before work and school and other things take over.

Maybe church is one of your stresses. Maybe God is one of your anxieties.

As I was preparing for this sermon, I came across the following passage from Shane Hipps’s book, a passage we’ve printed on the cover of your bulletin.

The eternal life Jesus promised isn’t just something we must wait for until we die, and we don’t have to go searching for it on the top of some mountain, or in the renunciation of possessions, or in the pursuit of justice, or in the profession of certain beliefs and the denunciation of others. These methods are the currency of the merchant—religion. Nothing is wrong with them, but they are not requirements of the river. The river is only interested in our thirst and trust in the One who guides us to it. (Shane Hipps, Selling Water by the River, pp. 7–8)

As I read this, I heard God’s voice: “John, chill out. Fourth Church, chill out.”

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink. . . . Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

Amen.