24 th March: 3 rd Sunday in Lent

The Psalmist writes: ‘my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water’ (Ps. 63:1).

Jesus said: ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled’ (Mt 5:6) and ‘out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’ (Jn 7:38).

After an exhilarating liberation from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites wandered through a ‘dry and weary’ desert for 40 years. It was a season characterised by disappointment, desperation and surges of reckless faith. The desert landscape saturated their collective imagination and infused their spirituality from that point on. Desert images flow forth from the Old Testament stories and feed the minds of New Testament authors. The vocations of Jesus and John the Baptist were nurtured and tested in thirsty deserts.

More than 40 per cent of the world’s surface is arid. Geographers understand deserts as ‘places where the average annual rainfall is less than 250 millimetres and where precipitation, by rain or fog or dew, is exceeded by evaporation and the transpiration of plants’. ¹ Climate change and deforestation means that the deserts will expand in the years ahead; a process called ‘desertification’. In a book The Natural History of the Bible, Daniel Hillel writes:

The desert has always been a place of great allure and fascination. It is as much a state of mind as a physical domain. Like a vacuum that draws, so the very emptiness and enormity of the desert’s expanse, the awesome grandeur of its sculpted landscape, the enigmatic silence that pervades it—all these qualities and more have intrigued and challenged inspired people since the beginning of time. ²

The desert may be beautiful, but it’s a savage beauty. The desert is a place that cares little for human life. For most of history it’s been held in awe as ‘a place of danger and terror, its mysterious vastness to be entered only at great risk’. ³ For the Israelites the journey into the desert was driven by desperation. Horrific slavery and brutal oppression lay behind them. They only entered the desert because a dream of fertile vistas on the other side fuelled their hopes. In the desert the unity of a tribe, faith in God, and support for leaders was tested to destruction. Above all it was a place of thirst. We read these words in the book of Exodus:

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ […] The Lord said to Moses ‘[…] Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. (Ex. 17:1–7)

It seems that Moses had some skills in desert survival. In some desert places shallow ground water oozes toward the surface. As it evaporates, if forms an encrustation of calcium carbonate and calcium sulfate. ⁴ This porous and brittle structure may look just like the rock that surrounds it, but for those with eyes to see, there’s a life-line to be tapped. By breaking the crust with his staff, Moses could have released the water percolating underneath. Encountering this geological oddity had great symbolic power for the Israelites: it was a sign of God’s care for them. No matter how hostile the landscape, God would remain faithful.

Life sustaining water oozes through the most unpromising of rocks: St. Paul takes up this image in 1 Corinthians and expands on it. The water-yielding rock that meant salvation for Israelites prefigures Christ. Jesus continues the sustaining, dependable presence of the God who quenches the thirst of human beings at the point of their deepest need. The rock is Christ’s dead body lanced by a soldier’s sphere. That which seems most lifeless becomes the source from which a tide of blood and water flow (Jn 19:34). Jesus invites us to wash in the cleansing waters of baptism and to drink the saving blood of the new covenant. He calls out to us: ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.’ (Jn 7:37)

The Israelites thirsted in the desert, just as Christ thirsted in the desert of Golgotha. Here, earth-bound, fragile bodies cry out for water. But the human heart knows other kinds of thirst too. There’s the ‘soul thirst’ of the psalmist, which speaks to our longing to know that we’re not abandoned to wander a cold and hostile universe without meaning or hope. The mystics express this thirst when they speak, often in erotic images, of their desire for union with Christ and the joy of being enfolded within divine love. And then there’s also the thirst for righteousness about which Jesus speaks in the beatitudes: a thirst for a better world, where the plight of the poor is heard, the tortured prisoners released, the grief-stricken find comfort, and the natural world is cherished, not trashed.

It’s this thirst for righteousness that underlies the gospel reading from St Luke, in which people are hurting in the midst of various calamities. We hear of the ‘Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices’ and we hear of 18 souls lost after the collapse of a tower in Jerusalem (Lk. 13:1–4). Jesus’ context was one in which political despots reached quickly for violent solutions and freak accidents and rampant diseases rendered life precarious. And despite all the advances in science, technology and governance, we too live in an age where some people’s hopes are devastated and death comes prematurely for many. Some in our midst are disorientated and thirsty, wandering in deserts of faceless bureaucracy and consumer waste. Jesus’ response was not to blame the victims, nor to rationalise their suffering, nor to speak glibly about the potential for ‘some good to emerge’ out it all. Jesus heard the cries of those around him. He wept with them and shared their thirst. He gave them living water. Above all, he encouraged all who would hear to make use of the precious freedom they had to build oases of goodness and compassion in hostile environments. He urged his listeners to bear fruits worthy of true repentance.

In the reading from Isaiah we hear of a spring of water which flows freely for you and for me; mingling with our tears and washing our wounds. We hear of a spring which meets our deepest thirst for love and righteousness. It’s a spring that waters the arid wastelands and bubbles up through rock. We hear of waters flowing free, transforming burning dust into the Garden of Eden. This water is so valuable that money can’t buy it. This is the spring of eternal life and unquenchable love, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the God to whom all praise and worship is due, now and forever.