Water: The Thirst for Righteousness

It is not who we are that enables us to worship, it is who we are not.


It is not what we are capable of but, is born from what we cannot create or live without.

The analogy of hunger and thirst is universal. Is there any living creature that does not become hungry or thirsty? Don’t all animals need nutrition? Even plants hunger and thirst instinctively for survival.


It’s woven into the mortal fibers of nature. Without hunger, without thirst, nothing would eat. Nothing would drink. Without consuming in even minimal ways, every living thing on earth would die.

Scripture uses this same analogy of hunger and thirst as an instinct for salvation, “Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35

But scripture goes even deeper to distinguish us as humans from other living creations; Even in distinguishing humans from one-another in saying, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6


Do some humans hunger and thirst for righteousness while others do not? Does this mean that only some of us are seeking a ‘right-living’ while others seek a ‘wrong-living’ or nothing at all? Maybe.


Or maybe some are like me. For over thirty-five years I never had a hunger or thirst for righteousness. I was a special type of super-human born with a unique form of righteousness embedded in my DNA,
self-righteousness!

That’s not to say that I didn’t have the daily need to feel justified. In fact, I justified on an hourly basis everything I ever did. I justified where I lived, how I lived, who I lived with, and ultimately who I was, all quite creatively I might add. Over the years I’ve written poems and songs, performed monologues, dialogues and even gave barroom sermons about the justifications I had reached.

It was a system that worked quite wonderfully with only one small flaw, it demanded continual attention. You see, being me and remaining full of self-righteousness requires a constant stream of justification flowing into me. Think of a cracked vase with a slow leak. There was always a sense in me that never seemed totally fulfilled unless I kept adding to it. Personally, I liked adding to myself by pouring in an even amount of women, money, adventure, alcohol, and drugs.

But not everything we use for self-righteousness is as obviously visible though. Some people are continually filled by adding marriage, kids, careers, and mortgages. And before you get upset with me for comparing a drug addiction to a healthy family let me ask you this- Does your family give you a sense of purpose, a sense of love, a sense of duty, a sense of living? If you suddenly (God forbid) lost your family or career or home, wouldn't these senses of ‘right-living’ be lost as well? Do you not thirst and hunger for these things daily? Wouldn’t you say that their ongoing presence in your life gives you a sense of righteousness?

“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Jeremiah 2:15

When I lost my self-righteousness was when I first started in sobriety. A counselor told me I might want to look into the Bible. I had never really read the Bible and so as a grown man reading scripture for the first time it was quite an experience. My shelves were already full of books on philosophy and right-living including but not limited to Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Machiavelli, Yeats, and Shakespeare. “That’s kinda a lot” you might say. Well like I said before, I needed a daily flow of justification and I also tend to consume everything as an addict.

Right away though, there was a difference between the Bible and every other book I’ve read. Namely, in terms like “never go hungry” and “never be thirsty”. Imagine a one stop shop for all my needs! That sounded like the kind of philosophy and right-living for me! And now some time later, as I sit back and meditate on the journey of my life that lead me here I’m left wondering, am I blessed? Have I stopped filling my own self-righteousness and in doing so, began to hunger and thirst for something better? Isn’t that the thing I’ve truly sought after all these years?

That leads us to today’s parable:
Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” John 4:6-15


In all, so long as we continue to seek a sense of right-living from ourselves and from our world, we will never be content. We will always be addicts with a need for continual attention.


But there is a gift we've been given called Worship.


It’s a gift to those who can no longer fill themselves. It’s a gift given to the broken, to the thirsty, to the poor in spirit. To come with a neglected heart, with a starved body, and with open hands.


To ask out of our mortal need for that which a glimpse of the immortal caused us to crave.


And it’s only through this surrender to poverty in my own Worship that I can begin to not just be filled but, to overflow from a spring within me of His promised blessing.