Cracked Cisterns
Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
Several years ago, when my wife and I were in the process of buying our first house, we settled on a little, broken-in old farmhouse situated on a hillside in the rural county where I was serving a church. Among all of the quirky charm that this house presented to us, one of the most romantic features of this particular property was that it had a well. Visions of drinking a glass of cold, clear water that came from deep beneath our own land danced in our heads as we imagined our life in this new place.
Some of the romance of having a well was diminished, to say the least, when a representative from the health department came and inspected our water. Surrounded as we were by cow pastures, it was perhaps unsurprising that there were traces of E. Coli in our water. Before we could move in and begin enjoying that cold, clear water, something would have to be done. We would have to diagnose the problem, and then treat it. The cause of our water’s contamination was a fairly common one—the well was cracked. In order to fix it, superficial solutions, like a Brita filter, wouldn’t do the trick. We had to address the issue at its source. The water would have to be treated at the source of the crack. It was costly—a bit more than we were prepared for—but it was necessary. Without addressing that problem, the water wouldn’t be safe for us our our children to drink.
When the prophet Jeremiah was sent to the people of Judah, it was impossible to ignore the dire state the people were in. Teetering on the edge of exile, fearing the future, stumbling through a spiritual wasteland of their own making. And faced with this contamination, Jeremiah addresses the problem at the source: the idolatry that had captivated the people of Judah, from the kings and priests all the way down. In choosing an image to convey just how bleak things had gotten, Jeremiah reaches for a metaphor that would have been all too resonant in the dry and dusty land of Judah. The people have forsaken the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water. When the people leaned on idols for salvation, it was akin to drawing water from these cracked cisterns. They were met with only dryness and despair. There was a problem at the source, a problem that would be impossible to overcome without radical transformation.
The vision that the author of Hebrews casts for the life of the church might seem idyllic, if not romantic. Hospitality. Generosity. Fidelity. Sacrifice. And above it all, shaping it all, mutual love. When we look at the state of the church, let alone the world, we find that our lives are too often corrupted by the kinds of things that make such a life impossible. The love of money. Fear of strangers. Unchecked desires. Our lives, our communities, can sometimes feel less like fountains of living water, bubbling up with a freshness that comes from the Spirit of God, and more like the kinds of cracked cisterns that can never serve as vessels for God’s kingdom promises. It’s so important that, in order to be the kinds of communities that God calls us to be, in order to be the kinds of disciples that God calls us to be, we get to the source. We discern the cause of our contamination. We address the cracks that render us unable to keep hold of the things with which God longs to fill us.
Jesus zeroes in on the cracks in our cisterns in a manner that is at the same time shockingly simple and deeply transformative. The problem, at its root, is our focus on ourselves. Our desire for prestige. Our jockeying for position. All the energy we spend securing the best seats at the table for ourselves. When we don’t root out these tendencies, when we don’t allow God to repair these cracks in our foundations, we will never be able to live the kind of life or bear witness to the kind of kingdom that God holds out. We will never be able to invite to our table those who are poor, crippled, lame, or blind. We’ll be too concerned with what is in it for us, what we might stand to gain from such a display of generosity, or with how such practices of hospitality might come back to bite us. In short, we’ll never taste of that first drop of fresh water, because we’ll remain cracked at the source. It’s only by dying to ourselves, by drowning our selfish strivings in the fountain of living water, that we’ll be able to grow into the community of disciples that continually offer to God the sacrifice of praise, honoring God with our lives and with our worship.
