Sunday, October 7, 2007 ~ World Communion Sunday
Psalm 63:1-8
“The Blessings Of A Thirsty Soul And Fainting Flesh”

Psalm 63
1 O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.
5 My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
6 when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.


Sometimes it is good to be hungry and a blessing to be thirsty. Now, it is a mighty rare occasion indeed when such a phrase is said from this pulpit. “Good to be hungry?” “Blessing to be thirsty?” When there is so much abject poverty and desperate hunger in our nation and our world, how could one bear to say such words, even if in a rhetorical or a spiritual sense?

“Good to be hungry?” Clearly I do not mean that it is good to have hungry people. Bread for the World, one of the premier organizations fighting poverty around the globe, estimates that there are 854 million people across the world who are hungry, up from 852 million a year ago, and that every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes – one child every five seconds. In the United States, 12.4 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means one in ten households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger.(1)

It is a moral crisis for there to be undernourished human beings on a planet that has such advanced techniques for food production and transportation as well as so many people who profess a religious or spiritual tradition. In that time it has taken me to read this paragraph of my sermon, 12 children have died.

“A blessing to be thirsty?” Obviously, I do not mean that it is good to have thirsty people. While most Americans rarely think about it, around the globe water is worth more than gold and is necessary for survival above all other resources on earth. The organization Global Water reminds that over one billion men, women, and children (more than four times the population of the United States and Canada combined) do not have safe water to drink and therefore cannot live a healthy life. Currently, many communities in over 50 countries throughout the world are suffering needlessly because water is either insufficient or polluted or may not exist at all. A sad irony is that many times there is life saving water just 100 feet away! Directly underground. So near, yet too far for people lacking the tools and knowledge to reach it. A full 80% of fatal childhood diseases that kill children and destroy families worldwide are caused -- not by shortages of food and medicine -- but by drinking contaminated water. (2)

Again, it is a moral outrage that our civilization has progressed to the point of having the technology but not having the willpower to get clean and safe water to all who need it. The shame is made all the worse by the rampant privatization of water by the bottled water industry.

Having said this, I stand by my statement: Sometimes it is good to be hungry and a blessing to be thirsty. When is it good to be hungry and a blessing to be thirsty? When it helps us to understand more humbly our place in the world and to rely upon God, the divine source of life, even more completely. Put simply, hunger and thirst force us to depend upon God.

The primary cause of the poverty in our world that leads to appalling hunger and desperate thirst is that many of us in cultures and societies of abundance rely more upon ourselves than upon God. If we were to truly rely upon our Creator, and acknowledge that truth openly and often, we could not amass such stockpiles of resources for ourselves alone because we would have to admit it isn’t ours in the first place!

It would be good for those of us sitting here in this sanctuary, and many other persons in sanctuaries, mosques, synagogues, and temples around the globe, to face up to the fact that we did not create the ground that produces the food we eat nor did we establish the skies which bring us the water we drink. It isn’t written in the scriptures, but in this case it is a sacred saying: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

The absence of what we want, what we crave, even what we need, helps those of us who usually have enough to know that we probably need less of the stuff than we have! In the great spiritual equation, having less allows us to see we have been given more! The clenched hand cannot receive the gifts God offers! The vaulted heart cannot be open to the grace God is pouring out in abundance!

Thus it should come as no surprise when Jesus, in preparing his closest disciples for his terrible death and most wondrous resurrection, would take food and drink to help them – and us – to remember him. I suspect that the wine and the bread were given to them, for the room in ehich they met was borrowed and even the donkey upon which he came into Jerusalem was not his own.

Gifts given by the Maker of All Good Gifts, a loaf of bread and a cup of drink, broken for us, poured out for many. I believe in that moment, the gathered disciples, no matter how full their bellies were, recognized they were very, very hungry and thirsty beyond belief. In coming to love their blessed friend and savior, Jesus, they were now realizing he would not be with them forever. Surely the most painful hunger and most overwhelming thirst came over them.

But Jesus, knowing that all Good Gifts come from heaven above, around, and within, gave him his very body and blood, and they would come know, as we do today, that true abundance is ours, and for the sharing. Good news was never meant to be hoarded, neither is food and water. From the pain of scarcity in our stomachs and our hearts we can more fully rely upon God, and more passionately vow never to let another man, women, or child go hungry or be thirsty again.

We have the means to feed the hungry and quench the thirst of those in need. The financial costs to end hunger are relatively slight. The United Nations Development Program estimates that the basic health and nutrition needs of the world's poorest people could be met for an additional $13 billion a year. Animal lovers in the United States and Europe spend more than that on pet food each year. (3)

And with technologies ranging from simple and inexpensive to state-of-the-art, organizations are helping poor communities in developing countries find new supplies of clean, life-sustaining water. And when clean, fresh water begins to flow in a community -- a whole new life begins –– free from the threat of food shortages and a myriad of health-related problems that are associated with hunger

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.
My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

(1) Bread For The World Web Site, “Hunger Facts: International” at http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html
(2) Global Water web site: http://www.globalwater.org/
(3) http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/
(4) http://www.globalwater.org/whoweare.htm

Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096