I was really intrigued when I first discovered the passage of the Gospel we have this year to celebrate the Holy Spirit on this Pentecost Sunday! I was so intrigued I thought there must have been a mistake and I went to double check if it was the right reading (It is!). But this is a surprising choice: First of all, it is very short, only two verses, not even five lines taken from John’s Gospel where there are so many other great passages about the Holy Spirit. And then there’s this image about the Spirit: It says it’s like rivers of living water, when we’re so used to compare the Holy Spirit with fire. Most of us know quite well the story of Acts, we read it each year, with the disciples all “gathered in one place” and then they hear “the rush of a violent wind” and suddenly tongues of fire come to rest on them. We usually symbolize that by wearing red on Pentecost, and we’re used to this image of the Spirit of God being like fire, the prophets on fire with God’s word, the early church like fire propagating from on place to another, the fire in the believer’s hearts: “Were not our hearts burning within us?” ask the disciples in Luke’s Gospel (24: 32). I used to know a church where they had a hot chili contest on Pentecost Day, because they said it’s “the day of the tongues on fire”. But today is different. Today, John leaves us with this image that is quite the opposite of a burning fire, the Spirit being for John like water, and you know not the little sprinkling we get on the day of our baptism (at least in the Episcopal church) but full immersion, rivers of living water.
Now what are we to think about that?
First of all, we can notice that this is certainly a refreshing image and it draws our attention on the fact that there are many different images for the Spirit, which helps us to understand better what the Spirit is all about. In John’s, the Spirit is already associated with living waters when Jesus meets with the Samaritan woman at the well (Chapter 4, We talked about that during Lent), the Spirit is also compared to the mother’s womb (3:5), and the Spirit is like a dove at Jesus’s baptism (1:32). I like it that we have many different images because it can be limiting to always associate the Holy Spirit with fire. To me at least, it’s an image that can make me nervous late Spring, especially in the middle of a drought, and then…well I don’t know how you all feel on Sunday morning, but I guess we’re not necessarily all fired up when we have to get up early to come to church…But drinking from a source of living water, this I think we can relate to. Our time with Jesus, when he communicates his Spirit to us, is meant to bring us some refreshment, relief, renewal. Jesus extends the invitation he made to the Samaritan woman (John 4: 14) to all in Jerusalem on that day, and to all of us today: “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst…the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
So there’s that, right?
And then I also think it’s interesting that John say in our little passage that Jesus was talking about the Spirit, “which believers in him were to receive, for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified”. John must have been a teacher, because his Gospel is always interrupted by explanatory notes, like he wants to make sure we get it right. Now of course, chronologically there was a Spirit before Jesus, over the waters of Creation, in the heart of the prophets and so on. But John wants us to understand that this Spirit is the presence of God’s Son, the Son who was revealed in Jesus’s life, death and Resurrection. And it’s very beautiful and helpful for us because most of the time we don’t know what or who the Spirit is, but John makes it clear for us: The Spirit is Jesus’s presence among us, beyond time and space, we see that in 16: 7 when Jesus says: “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate [Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” When we are at church, because of the Spirit that comes when we share the word and bless the bread and wine, Jesus himself is made present among us, and that’s when he can bring us the living waters: Refreshment, relief, renewal. It does not happen at church only, but each time we ask the Spirit in prayer: “How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who keep asking him!” says Jesus is a passage of Luke’s Gospel (11:13).
It goes even further than that. If we keep digging in those two verses, we’ll realize soon that the Spirit is not given for our own benefit only. Interestingly Jesus gives us to drink, but it’s “Out of the believer’s heart” that “shall flow rivers of living waters”. It’s actually a quotation from the prophet Ezekiel (36: 25-26) “I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean…I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” By claiming these words for himself, not only does Jesus confirm he is the Messiah, but he makes it clear that the invitation to drink water from him, as it brings refreshment, relief and renewal to the believers, is not just meant to help them “feel better”. It is meant so their hearts are changed. Cleansed from their sins, the believers can bring the same refreshment, relief and renewal around them. Once the Spirit is in us, we become embodiment for the Spirit wherever we are: Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? (1 Corinthians 6:19). It is a very ancient idea in the Scriptures, since its starts in Genesis, that we are blessed to be in our turn a blessing. God says to Abraham: “In you shall all the nations be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). The water Jesus gives us is not stagnant water, it is meant to keep flowing (Read Ezekiel 47: The water flowing from the Temple waters the whole land). We are blessed to become a blessing, to carry the Spirit into the world. The Apostles, on that day they received the Holy Spirit, didn’t open the doors hoping people would join them in worship, they went outside to share the good news with them. Our call as Christians is to bless our community, to bring to others God’s love, in words and actions. Stagnant water can quickly become contaminated, right? We need to keep it flowing.
Now I know it’s not that easy…It’s not like: Well, we’re going to show up at church or say a prayer to the Holy Spirit and then everything will change in us and around us! But Jesus does not give us his Spirit so we have it all figured out and can start saving the world according to a program he has for us! Jesus gives us his Spirit so our hearts are plugged into his heart, and that’s when our faith and our churches can become alive, seeking him more passionately and working to discern his will more intentionally.
To understand more deeply Jesus’s invitation today, it’s important to have a little bit of context. John tells us that Jesus makes this proclamation during the “festival”, the “great day”. He speaks about the festival of the booths, one of the biggest and most joyful festival for the Jews. For eight days they went to Jerusalem and lived in tents that reminded them of their time in the wilderness, and each day they would go in procession to the pools, sing psalms, and light giants lamps at night in the Temple. On the last day, the priest would lift a pitcher full of water and pour it on the altar that people had covered with palms and branches. It was a ceremonial made to celebrate God’s provision, especially since water is such a precious resource in the middle East, especially in Jerusalem where there is no main river. And so when John tells us that Jesus was standing there, crying out on that day, it meant that he interrupted this most solemn moment to draw all the attention to him. You know, he wasn’t preaching on the side to a few disciples, he shout out while the priest was officiating. It was very disruptive, and actually it says later that Jesus got in trouble with the Temple police. It’s like if someone started screaming during the Eucharistic prayer! Surely the ushers would drag them out, or at least invite them to go get some fresh air, because you just don’t do that, right?
And yet, this is our Jesus, crying out to get all the attention on him during people’s ceremonies and priestly rites, and he does that because he is the only one who can give us what we long for. He does not want people to come to the Temple to enjoy the show or even to run the show. He wants people to give their hearts. I think this is still true. Jesus is still crying out in the midst of us, and we don’t hear him. He’s crying out because we don’t give him our hearts, so often we stay at a distance, even when we say our prayers or come to church. Like the people in Jesus’s time, we enjoy the comfort and the predictability of our services, and why not, we enjoy the joyful get together, and why not, but do we pay attention to whom it really all points to, and do we take seriously his invitation to come live in us, so he can reach the whole world? Sometimes we think we act reverently by not asking God for too much, or really wrestling with our faith, but maybe we only suffer from spiritual shyness or even spiritual dryness. We stay at a distance when we should run towards him and ask for everything! Because that’s what the Pentecost means, it is that he wants to give everything. His body and blood. His heart. His Spirit. He wants to give himself to us, all of us.