When I was little, I remember going to the beach. One of the earliest times we went to the beach, someone showed me how to make a sand castle, complete with a moat. Of course, by that point, I had figured out that moats are supposed to have water in them, maybe with alligators or sharks I thought, so my moat needed to have water too. So I started heading to the water with a bucket to bring back water for my moat. I made a lot of trips back and forth, and discovered I had two problems: the first was that no matter how much water I put in the moat, it always went down into the sand; and the second was that I had been given a bucket full of holes! The people of Israel faced a similar situation in Jeremiah’s time. The people in the area kept giving them buckets to carry spiritual water, but they were completely full of holes, and so the life-giving spiritual water always seemed just beyond their reach. The three leaky buckets they were given are leaky buckets people still try to give us today—that God is whatever you want God to be, that believing in God is all you have to do, and that spiritual health is about meeting our needs.
Leaky Bucket #1: God is whatever and wherever you want. We live in an age of designer religions—take a little bit from Buddhism, another bit from Christianity, a third bit from New Age stuff—mix them all together and you have something that works for you. We kind of like the idea of God, but let’s not make it too restrictive. That’s similar to the situation the people of God in Jeremiah’s time were facing—surrounded by all sorts of religions, many were making their own, including taking as much of God as they wanted. Jerry Adler of Newsweek remarks that we want “religion without the hard parts.” Take the best seller, Conversations with God, that “offers advice, jokes and opinions on a wide range of subjects, but nothing in the nature of commandments.”* This bucket just doesn’t hold water! We don’t decide what and who God is, God does. It’s not whatever and wherever we want, but what has God told us and shown us in the Bible and in Jesus. Baal did not rescue the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt or part the Red Sea, and Buddha didn’t die on a cross for us. And we didn’t receive “25 Guidelines for Healthy Living,” but the 10 Commandments. People can believe what they want, but that doesn’t make it the best, the most real, the most challenging, the most fulfilling. As Harry Emerson Fosdick, NY City pastor during the mid-20th century and known for his tolerance, “Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.” Jeremiah’s message is that only the Lord is the fountain of living water that completely refreshes us. God is always the source.
Leaky Bucket #2: Believing in God is all you have to do. Was it really thirty-one years ago that Cynthia and I were married in Atlanta on a hot and sticky day at the end of June? You know, that was a great day. We have lots of great memories of our wedding, but Cynthia and I knew that day was not THE finish line. The real goal of getting married is to build a life and home together. In the same way, the children of Israel, remembered the way God rescued them from slavery, but it was a memory not something they lived their life by. As great as it is to accept the grace and love of Jesus Christ, that is not the finish line…we complete the race by living a life under Jesus’ direction. The Lutheran pastor and World War II martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”** The message that accepting Jesus is all you have to do doesn’t hold water. Accepting Jesus is just the beginning! The best parts of walking with Christ come as we bring our lives in line with Christ.
Leaky Bucket #3: Spiritual health comes from meeting my needs. I am a fan of looking for a church home. I believe that when we find the place where God wants us to grow, we will have a sense of coming home and belonging. But I know some people who go church shopping this way: which church has the right kind of music (meaning, what I like) and the most attractive building or the funniest pastor? The danger of course is that we start to turn church into a kind of spiritual mall, going wherever the product suits our needs best. In Jeremiah’s time, the people of Israel did all sorts of things to try to be spiritually healthy, but were they actually seeking God? In our day, we have to remember that we are not the point of church—God is. Above all else, we gather to offer God the worship of our hearts, a pleasing sacrifice of thanksgiving—all we are for all He has done. We’re not here for a concert or a good self-help session, but for God. At times, God’s Word will make us uncomfortable where God is stretching and growing us. At times, we will come to God with our broken selves and find Jesus meets our confession with healing. And sometimes we will find ourselves catching a vision of the life we might have—if only we would trust a little more. In the end, it’s not just about us being refreshed, but about letting God shape and mold us into channels of grace so God’s love can flow more clearly to our neighbors, classmates, families and workplaces. Spiritual health comes as our lives give glory to God.
Can your life carry water? Sometimes in our lives we feel like the sand on the beach, dry and wanting water. The world tries to hand us all kinds of buckets, but they just don’t hold water and always run out. The versions of God we make for ourselves just can’t compare to the real, wild, wonderful, loving God of Scripture, who came in Jesus Christ to show what love really means. We don’t even need buckets, because when Christ is in us, the refreshing life of Jesus is the fountain of living water that completely refreshes us. If Jesus is really our model, then we find true spiritual health and hope as our lives become like His. And we discover that buckets are not for us to drink from, but to carry that refreshment to others. Just as Jesus lived to make God’s Will real in His life, even if that meant His body was broken for the world, so we are meant to carry the living water to the world, to be poured out so thirsty people can experience the living water and learn how to find Him. The water is sweet and there is more than enough to share and as people drink from the spring of grace, we will see our lives and others’ lives changed. Can your life carry water? Don’t you wish your life could carry more?
*Jerry Adler, “Heaven's Gatekeepers,” Newsweek, March 16, 1998.
**The Cost of Discipleship [New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., (1937) 1963], 47.