Keepers of the Spring
Holy Ground - Part 5
Sunday, August 8, 2021
John 1:1-5, 10-14; John 7:37-38; Ephesians 2:17-22; 1 Peter 2:4-10
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
John 7:37-38
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
Thin places can be found throughout the scriptures; most notably in the person of Jesus, whose incarnation brought the full presence of God to dwell among us in the flesh and whose death tore the veil which separated us from the Holy of Holies where God’s presence dwelt in the temple. John opens his gospel with the claim that the “Word was God” and that the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” in the person of Jesus. One of John’s central claims is the oneness of God the Father and God the Son. “When one sees Jesus, one sees God. When one hears Jesus, one hears God.”[1] If the fullness of God’s presence has come near in the incarnation of Christ, it may be said that Jesus himself is the ultimate “Thin Place” where heaven touches earth. Through the lens of Jesus, humanity can see and know God intimately. We are given firsthand access to God’s character lived out in the context of ordinary human life.
While the Biblical writers did not use the language of thin places, I believe this image beautifully reflects God’s original and final intent to dwell among those God created and loves. The streams of living water we find winding their way through the Biblical narrative and throughout church history tend to bubble up in such thin places, offering healing and hope to those wandering in the wilderness. In Revelation, John sees the headspring is the very presence of God.[2] In our desperation for institutional survival and maintaining control, our walls have grown thick and often impermeable to the rushing wind and fiery tongues of the Holy Spirit which cannot be contained.
If the incarnation is indeed the primary “thin place” through which the world may encounter and be reconciled with God, it is not a far stretch to say that the church as the Body of Christ has inherited that same purpose. In Ephesians, Paul describes the church as God’s temple in the world, a people who are “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”[3] “Do you not know,” he writes to the church at Corinth, “that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”[4] Like living stones, we are built into a spiritual house with Christ as the cornerstone.[5] Just as God chose to dwell in the tabernacle among the Israelites in the wilderness and later in the Jerusalem temple, God now dwells among the people directly through the presence of the Holy Spirit. In this way, the faith community becomes “the locus of God's love in the world, just as the incarnate Logos was that locus.”[6] Immanuel, or “God with us” cannot be contained by buildings or holy sites. As the dwelling place of God’s presence in the world, the people of God serve as a primary point of access to the river of life so that the world may continue to drink freely from the spring of God’s restorative and healing presence.
The late Peter Marshall, former chaplain of the United States Senate, often told the story of the “Keeper of the Spring,” about a man who lived in the forest above a quaint Austrian village in the Alps. [7]
The old gentle man had been hired many years earlier by a young town council to clear away the debris from the pools of water that fed the lovely spring flowing through their town. With faithful, silent regularity he patrolled the hills, removed the leaves and branches, and wiped away the silt from the fresh flow of water. By and by, the village became a popular attraction for vacationers. Graceful swans floated along the crystal clear spring, farmlands were naturally irrigated, and the view from restaurants was picturesque.
Years passed. One evening the town council met for its semiannual meeting. As they reviewed the budget, one man's eye caught the salary figure being paid the obscure keeper of the spring. Said the keeper of the purse, "Who is the old man? Why do we keep him on year after year? For all we know he is doing us no good. He isn't necessary any longer!" By a unanimous vote, they dispensed with the old man's services.
For several weeks nothing changed. By early autumn the trees began to shed their leaves. Small branches snapped off and fell into the pools, hindering the rushing flow of water. One afternoon someone noticed a slight yellowish-brown tint in the spring. A couple days later the water was much darker. Within another week, a slimy film covered sections of the water along the banks and a foul odor was detected. The millwheels moved slower, some finally ground to a halt. Swans left as did the tourists. Clammy fingers of disease and sickness reached deeply into the village.
Embarrassed, the council called a special meeting. Realizing their gross error in judgment, they hired back the old keeper of the spring . . . and within a few weeks, the river began to clear up.
This story paints a beautiful picture of the church’s role as keepers of the spring of living water. Sadly, the church tends to act more as a gatekeeper restricting access to those who we deem worthy of a drink. It is as if we feel the need to ration a limited water supply for the sake of our own survival, not recognizing the abundance available to us and to the world in God’s eternal spring. Like the exiles in Jeremiah’s day, we in the church today have “forsaken [God], the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns for [ourselves], cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”[8] As it has throughout history, the life-giving water Christ offers will spring forth in the deserts beyond our walls, and even the deserts within our walls.
Where are you drinking from the spring of living water right now and how are you working to keep the spring pure and accessible to others in your life?
[1] Keck, The New Interpreter’s Bible, 9:520.
[2] Revelation 22:1-5.
[3] Ephesians 2:21-22.
[4] 1 Corinthians 3:16.
[5] 1 Peter 2:4-6.
[6] Keck, The New Interpreter’s Bible, 9:796.
[7] Marshall, Peter, “The Keeper of the Spring,” A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll, Insight for Today, August 1, 2018, https://www.insight.org/resources/daily-devotional/individual/the-keeper-of-the-spring.
[8] Jeremiah 2:13.