Living Waters

Has a nation given up its gods though they are ungods?
But My people exchange its Glory for what cannot avail.
Be appalled, O heavens, for this, be shocked, altogether, desolate—
said the LORD.
For two evils My people has done: Me they forsook, the source of living waters,
to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold the water [Jeremiah 2:11-14, The Jerusalem Bible, translated by Robert Alter].

Cisterns—artificial reservoirs (usually underground) for storing liquids such as rainwater—are generally unnecessary in North Carolina. Portions of the state receive twice as much annual rainfall as does “rainy Seattle.” Some elevations in our Smoky Mountains “enjoy” up to 100 inches of precipitation each year. Indeed, much of the Old North State is categorized as a temperate rainforest.

Things are/were quite different in Palestine. Each year Israel receives one-fifth as much rain as we do. Moreover, the Holy Land must endure a long dry season—from May to mid-October—during which it almost never rains. Anthropologists suggest that significant portions of Palestine were uninhabitable until some enterprising Iron Age engineers began to craft underground cisterns more than 3,500 years ago.

My technical reading indicates that for those in the Holy Land during the time of Jeremiah [625 B.C.E.], careful maintenance of their cisterns was vital. Appropriate filtering had to be installed to keep out dirt and debris. Best practices also dictated that the cistern be carved out of bedrock, with a narrow opening and wide well to help protect against contamination and evaporation. To prevent the precious water from seeping into the nearby bedrock, the interior walls of the cistern had to be sealed with a plaster of sorts.

Cisterns allowed the Hebrew society to live through the dry season. What the Hebrew man or woman longed for, of course, was fresh, spring water. Sometimes called “living water,” it was a delicacy not often enjoyed.

As I sit here in my home office, with a cold glass of Perrier and a slice of lime, I wonder if my own context could be any more different from that of Jeremiah. And yet, Jeremiah’s message in the verses that form the Old Testament reading for this upcoming Sunday [Jeremiah 2:4-13, the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C], offer a warning to any of us who have eyes to see and/or ears to hear. As Jeremiah warns his Hebrew neighbors about the dangers and consequences of abandoning Yahweh and seeking out after “ungods” [2:11], his words cry out to our society as well since we have an almost unlimited supply of false gods that compete for our attention and loyalty.

Speaking through Jeremiah, the prophet, Yahweh begins with a vivid metaphor. Using matrimonial references, and referring to the ancestors of Jeremiah’s contemporary Hebrews, Yahweh says that in the beginning of “their” relationship, all was good. Yahweh had provided for His people. He led them out of Egypt, saved them from an angry Pharaoh, and provided for them as they made their long and winding journey to the Promised Land. It was as if Yahweh and Israel were on a honeymoon. Indeed, Yahweh had led them to a fertile land where they were allowed to eat its “fruit and its bounty” [2:7b].

The operative question: “Why did their ancestors turn from their status as the beloved and faithful bride to that of an unfaithful spouse? Showing true pain and vulnerability, Yahweh implores, “What wrong did your fathers find in Me that they grew distant from Me? [2:5b].

And not only did the ancestors grow distant from Yahweh; they did something worse. As the OT scholar, Robert Alter, translates verses 5 and 6, the Hebrew’s ancestors “went after mere breath and turned into mere breath.” That is to say that they went out after the emptiness of false gods, or as Alter calls them, “ungods,” and in doing so, the ancestors became empty themselves.

Well, of course, the Hebrew nation who lived in Jeremiah’s time could scarcely be blamed for the sins of their grandfathers. Perhaps not, but Yahweh insists, Jeremiah’s contemporaries have sins of their own. And so, in verse 7, Yahweh changes pronouns. In the preceding verses, Yahweh (through Jeremiah) had been referring to “they” and “them;” now Yahweh addresses the listeners as “you.”

Yahweh breaks the sad and important news that the current Hebrew nation is guilty of the same sin as was their ancestors. That sin: idolatry. They have given up “living waters” and in their stead they have substituted “broken cisterns.” Having been given vibrant, fresh, flowing life from Yahweh, they have chosen instead the brackish, partially contaminated, and now leaking life that is represented in their broken cisterns.

Can we see that Yahweh, in His words through Jeremiah, has a powerful warning for us as well? This passage teaches us that as we—both as individuals and as a society—move more and more away from Yahweh and toward the shiny objects represented by and in our advanced technology, our enlightened social networks, and our busy calendars, we run the risk of idolatry. You see, the funny/tragic thing about idolatry is this: when one engages in it, it rarely seems as if we are worshipping an “ungod.” It usually feels as if we are pursuing something worthwhile. We rationalize that God wants the best for us and this new shiny thing, this new shiny idea, this new shiny technological advancement seems not at all inconsistent with our devotion to God.

And yet, many of these advancements allow us to draw ever inward, toward that kingdom that we can construct within our own minds, where we think we are in control, and where only our needs are to be served. As Jeremiah teaches, all too often, we trade a wondrous gift for something that is empty, something that lacks substance and meaning.

As I have studied these verses this week, I am struck by a point that I had not earlier fully considered: that when we exchange God for an idol, we are transformed [2:11]. That’s the double tragedy of seeking out after “ungods.” It isn’t just what our actions do to God. It isn’t just that our actions mock and hurt the God who loves us. It’s that when we give up and trade the Ultimate for the less than ultimate, the God for the ungod, the Substantial for the insubstantial, we are transformed into emptiness ourselves.

God’s powerful motive in teaching us not to go after idols is not, then, rooted in divine jealousy or anger. God’s motive is love. God knows what happens when we turn our eyes, our minds, and our hearts toward something other than the loving, Creator who not only promises, but provides powerful, living waters [Jeremiah 2:13]. We evaporate!

It is eery how sometimes the reading from our Wednesday morning Bible study will resonate with one or more of the Lectionary readings for the upcoming Sunday. I think this is so because there are a number of powerful themes which flow—like living waters—throughout all Scripture.

This morning, we discussed the wonderful, beautiful story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well, a natural cistern [John 4:7-30]. Jesus asked the woman for a drink. Referring to their common ancestor, Jacob, who had miraculously moved the heavy stone covering that same well in order to water Rachel’s flock (it generally took three men to move the stone), the Samaritan woman turned to Jesus and essentially said, “Without a bucket, you’ll need a miracle to draw water from this holy source.”

Jesus replied that he offered her a different kind of water—“living water”—the kind that when she drank of it, she’d never be thirsty again. This is the same water spoken of in Jeremiah.

“Sir, give me this water,” she had said [John 4:15].

You remember the rest of her story. Jesus tells her to go call her husband. She can’t, of course, because she’s had five husbands and the man with whom she is currently living is not her husband. But friends, here’s the important point: when confronted with the truth about her life, she still wanted Christ’s living water.

You see, one of the interesting aspects of idolatry is that it also works in reverse. As I’ve already said, if one turns one’s heart away from God and toward the empty idol, one’s heart will inevitably become like the idol: empty. But if the empty heart turns toward the the living God, toward Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Son of Man, then the transformation reverses itself. Like the totally transformed Samaritan woman, who ran and told her friends and family about her encounter with the Messiah, so also, we who turn to our LORD will be transformed from emptiness to abundance. Through the life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the horror of our sin is reversed.

Thanks be to God.