174 From Rain to Reign

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From Rain to Reign”, originally shared on December 20, 2021. It was the 174^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We had some much-needed rain last week, but we are still longing for a Reign. We are living between two Advents. The first that points us to our painful past present, to Christmas, to God incarnate come to die for our sinful and suffering world. And the second, that points us to the present future, to the coming perfect reign of God. Where is the already, but not yet Reign of God being poured out today? How do we get from rain to Reign? Today, we’re going to find out.

   We got rain! We had a genuine gully-washer last Tuesday and, while it didn’t solve our water supply issues, it did make a decent start. We even got a little bonus “heavy mist” on Thursday, and today is a beautiful clear day. We are happy that we received what we needed. But can we count on enough rain to supply our needs in the midst of climate change? Can we be like the guy who sowed his wild oats, and then prayed for a crop failure? How can we hope for relief from that for which we are responsible?

   The answer to that question is the central message of Christmas.

   John writes, at the very beginning of his gospel, in John 1:1-5,

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

   God has come in Jesus Christ at Christmas, the first advent. He has come to die for sinners.

   And God is present for us in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Triune God, poured out to be our comforter, our advocate, and the indwelling presence of God to give us a reason to hope.

   Streams of living water literally flowed from our roof last week, out our downspouts and through the streets. It saturated our dormant garden, helping prepare it for the spring planting.

   Streams of living water is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit found both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament sections of the Bible.

   We chose “Streams of Living Water” as the title for these videos that we started producing last year at the beginning of the pandemic because we were “streaming’ them (get it? 😊). Our podcast, “Living Water Radio”, and our blog “Words of Living Water” flowed from there.

   The Bible mentions rain quite a lot, in various ways.

   Israel has a climate much like that of Southern California’s. There is a dry season and a rainy season. When there is no rain, every living thing suffers. So people prepare for times of drought by storing water during the rainy seasons.

   We have reservoirs to store water and water collection basins to receive rain and allow it to soak into natural underground aquafers where it can be pumped out when needed.

   People in Israel at the time of Jesus had to mainly depend upon themselves. Homes were typically constructed with what we would call a basement, only in those days it was coated so that rainwater could be channeled into it and stored for the dry seasons. They were called cisterns.

   God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, makes reference to them in Jeremiah 2:11-13

¹¹ Has a nation changed its gods,
    even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
    for something that does not profit.
¹² Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
    be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord,
¹³ for my people have committed two evils:
    they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
    and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
    that can hold no water.

   “Living water” in the Biblical era meant water that is moving. Fresh, clean water. The people, Jeremiah says, have abandoned God who sustains the people like a fountain of living water, and have put their trust in false gods, even though there are no other gods. God is the fountain, the source of living water who would dwell within His people and fill them. And the people are like leaky cisterns.

   Jesus makes reference to this when he wa s in Jerusalem and many people were there for a religious festival, in John 7:37-39,

³⁷ 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, ³⁸ 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.’” ³⁹ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

   The Holy Spirit is God. It is God’s personal ongoing presence for good in the world. It is poured out, if flows out of the believer’s heart, it gives us a foretaste of the feast to come in the fully perfected Reign of God.

   It is within us. It flows like a fountain. It is active, and present, and powerful and alive. It brings life that really is life.

   We’ve been waiting for a decent storm for a long time. As in Advent, we have been hoping for something that will bring life, but a billion times over. We are awaiting the second advent, or coming, of Jesus Christ to redeem the world.

   The Kingdom, or Reign, of God broke into the world with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But people still defy God and evil enters the world. We are awaiting the time of Jesus’ return, when all will be judged, and Jesus will reign in a new heaven and a new earth forever.

   In between, is where we are now. We live in the presence of, and by the power of, the Holy Spirit, God’s personal ongoing presence for good in the world as we await the perfection of God’s perfect Kingdom.

   We are grateful for the rain that nourishes the earth and for the presence of the Holy Spirit that gives our lives here purpose. The Kingdom of God, God’s reign has come to us in Jesus Christ. We long for the perfected Reign of God in the world to come. And we work to make this world more like the world that is to come.

   I saw on the news, during the storm, that 6” of moving water can knock a person over.

   And 12” of moving water can sweep away a motor vehicle.

   Living water is powerful, and the streams of living water within us that is the Holy Spirit is powerful. It transforms lives. It endures forever.

   We don’t work in our own power in this world. The Holy Spirit is our power.

   We had a brief power failure during the storm last Tuesday. We will never experience a power failure of the Holy Spirit. It gushes up to eternal life.

   Jesus was traveling through Samaria one day on his way to Jerusalem when he encountered a Samaritan woman, in John 4:5-14,

⁵ So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

   Seek this water, this living water, gushing up to eternal life, the power of the Holy Spirit within you that opens your heart to receive the gifts of faith and the water of baptism and seek the reign of God.

   The rain has come to bring life to the earth. The already-but-not-yet perfected reign of God has come in Jesus Christ to bring eternal life for all who receive it and live by faith.

   His reign is seen wherever God’s justice, that is, God’s will, is being done in the world. We are called to do God’s will in God’s power in response to the gift of God’s self within us, gushing up like streams of living water. This is the source of the hope that does not disappoint us.

   The Holy Spirit is God poured out. Take him into your heart. And let the Holy Spirit become in you a transformational spring of water gushing out of you to eternal life.