(3) Living God, Living Water

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Living God, Living Water, originally shared on April 6, 2020. It was the third video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Today, we’re going to look at another place in the Bible where it speaks of living water.

    A friend shared a meme with a picture of Cousin It (all hair and no visible hands or feet, but wearing a hat) from the classic TV series, The Addams Family) with the writing, Me After the Quarantine is Over. That probably will describe me as well.

   I saw that Corona beer is not selling well because people think it might be associated with the coronavirus. These are strange times.

 Jeremiah 2:11-13

 We are now in what Christians call Holy Week. Almost half of the Gospel of John focuses on this week in the life of Jesus.

    One of the positive things that has come out of this is the appreciation for those legions of people who are doing their jobs every day to fight the virus and keep the rest of us safe.  Steve Higgins, Jimmy Fallon’s announcer and sidekick on the Tonight Show, sent Jimmy a video he received from his daughter, an emergency room nurse, that showed her walking to work in Manhattan, wearing her scrubs, and people hanging out of windows cheering and clapping, cars honking their horns, people yelling their thank you’s from their apartments, in tribute to her sacrifice. We’ve seen scenes like that all over the country! The best of us. We’ve also seen the worst, the hoarding, the fear, the blaming. Human nature doesn’t go away.

    This coming week, and the one after that, are predicted by our Surgeon General to be among the worst the world has experienced of this virus.

    That’s why we needed a holy week. That’s why the Friday in Holy Week is called Good. It was bad for Jesus. Real bad. But it was good for us. Really good.

    A prophet is someone who speaks to God’s people for God. They don’t usually bring good news, but usually a warning. Mammas Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to be Cowboys; some might have said the same about becoming prophets. There were prophets in the New Testament, but not for very long. They would travel around the churches, getting the people all riled up, and then they’d move on, leaving the local pastor holding the bag. They weren’t very popular either, to say the least.

   In the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) the prophet Jeremiah speaks for God to the people of God, and he says:

 Jeremiah 2:11-13

    We are not God’s chosen people, Israel, but we are a people. We are not like ancient Israel, a theocracy, a nation ruled by God, but we are a part of the people of God. Have we given up on God? And, have replaced God with ourselves?

    Have we stored up stuff for ourselves that can easily be lost or stolen from us? Have we stored up water in leaking containers in place of the One who gives us living water, that is God giving us God himself?

    Lent is a time for self examination, and Holy Week is the climax of Lent. We see ourselves as we are at our truest selves: sinners in need of a savior.

    Remember your church. Identify one if you don’t already have one. And remember to support your pastor and church leaders.

    Open yourself to receive what were created for from the beginning. Open yourself to receive the one who dwells within us and created all of us for a living relationship with the living God.

    Open yourself to receive God, the living transformational water.