I would like you to try and imagine you are there. Picture you are in ancient Israel during the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, as they called it. It is a long seven-day festival that has the whole city buzzing with activity. Normal business, the usual routines of life, all came to a halt, and the rituals of this festival took center stage. This celebration was commanded by God in Leviticus as an annual remembrance of The Lord’s deliverance through the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. So, the faithful people of God would commemorate it by building and staying in little booths or tabernacles outside their homes in remembrance of the realities of their nomadic forebearers before they entered the Promised Land. We think Easter or Christmas celebrations are a big deal. Envision if everyone in town started camping in their front yards for a week. It would be a strange sight to behold.

And there you are, enduring the heat of the day, hoping for a cool breeze to provide some relief in your makeshift booth. But your day was not just for sitting around and contemplating the hardships and God’s protection of your ancestors. No, there were rituals associated with it. Perhaps the most anticipated, the one which brought everyone out to celebrate, was the water pouring ceremony. You rush down from the Temple Mount early in the morning to the Pool of Siloam to catch a glimpse of the priest dipping a large golden pitcher into the water. The water of this pool was used to anoint the king of the House of David. It was a symbol of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Lord’s chosen ones. So, carrying the golden pitcher full of water, he was accompanied by a great procession and loud trumpet blasts from the shofar, as he made his way back up to the Temple. In the Temple precincts, everyone watched as the priest circled the altar carrying the water, and on the seventh day, he circled it seven times. Then, he would lift up his hands high in the air so everyone could see and pour out the water on the altar. As the water streamed out, the music began, and the temple choir would sing, and all joined in the celebration. It was a remembrance of God’s provision, a visible pouring out of God’s gifts.

As you are caught up in the moment, as you celebrate and give thanks to God for His compassion and deliverance, as the dry stones of the Temple are being drenched by the water, a single voice is heard behind you. You turn from the altar to a man whose message is clear and rises above the crowd. “If anyone thirsts,” He says, “let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” He is for all those who thirst for hope and liberation, who thirst for the outpouring of the gift of God, who thirst to be made whole again. Jesus declares, “Come to Me.” Come to Me and you will find welcome. Come to me and you will be more than satisfied. You will become a spring of living water. The abundance of God’s grace will overflow out of your heart to water the thirsty around you.

We are told in John’s Gospel that what Jesus is speaking about is the outpouring of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive. Our Lord promises that after His glorification, which is when He is lifted up as the final and perfect sacrifice for our sins, He will send another comforter to lead the faithful into the truth. The dramatic beginning of this reality is witnessed on those very streets of Jerusalem, at another festival: Pentecost. Pentecost is when they recalled how they had received the Word of God from Mount Sinai in the form of the Ten Commandments. And it is on Pentecost that the Spirit descends on the disciples like tongues of fire. So, filled with the Spirit, what do they do? They begin to preach in the mother tongues of all those gathered in the city for the festival. Out of their hearts flow rivers of living water as the life given by the Good News streams into the streets of the city.

This gift, this great work of God, changes lives. At the end of his sermon on Pentecost, Peter responds to the crowd and says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.” He is reiterating our Lord’s bold proclamation at the water-pouring ceremony. To repent and be baptized is to come to Jesus Christ and drink of His gifts. And we told that after making this proclamation, “Those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”

And we hear even today the ongoing invitation of our Lord. He continues to invite you to come to Him and drink. And we are a thirsty bunch. We try all sorts of ways to satisfy the thirst. Perhaps, you pour yourself into your job, not just because you enjoy it, but because you are seeking to define who you are through the work you do, to give your life some sense of purpose and meaning. But the harder you work, the more time you spend, the more you feel yourself drifting from what really matters. Or maybe you spend every free moment doomscrolling on social media, consuming the endless, detached content for some cheap thrill of entertainment. You are longing to be inspired or motivated or simply enraged to act, searching for something that really matters, something that endures. Or perhaps you escape from life by delving into the bottomless trap of pornography as it twists your view of relationships that matter and expectations of intimacy. You dive into anything that will end the constant search, which will give you rest, that will satisfy the thirst.

So, you devise your own rituals, your habits that shape your quest as you navigate this world. And you have small bursts, small moments when you believe you have finally satisfied the thirst, but it never fails to come back. But your Lord has not left you alone. He has not forsaken you to your own desires and devises. No, He continues to stand in the midst of your rituals and shout out to you, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.” It does not matter what form your thirst took. It does not matter how messy your life has become. He invites you to come to Him and drink. He welcomes you into His forgiveness and love.

Into your hearts the Spirit is poured out. All who repent and are baptized are filled with this gift of God. So, every time you love, every time you have compassion, every time you forgive, every time you tell the good news of a Lord who invites all to come to Him and drink without payment, you are becoming the very rivers of living water that our Lord promised.