Finnish Lutheran Church in Ball

Pastor Timo’s sermon, May 11, 2008

Day of Pentecost, Mother’s Day Sermon, John 7:37-39 Translated by Katja Kupari

Today we are celebrating Pentecost, celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit and the founding of the Christian church. In the gospel Jesus talks about people’s longing, thirst.
   In our time it is inherent for the environment to be constantly changing, for a variety of stimuli and information to be flowing. The whole world opens up in front of us as an avalanche or internet, entertainment and news flashes. Our time produces more and more of things that we can use to fulfil ourselves and our thirst for life, things both tangible as well as virtual. There is no shortage of the things and possibilities that one could use to quench his thirst for life.
   Wellness and abundance are things that we often value and aspire to. According to the economic experts money does not make you happier. There is a level of standard of living that is sufficient, and once that level is reached, people do not actually become happier as their financial comfort increases. For example, the explosive post-war economic growth in Japan did not make the Japanese happier, quite the opposite.
   Whether we want to be a part of the ever-accelerating life with its pros and cons, or not, we may still have to ask ourselves how to quench our thirst for life. What is it that actually nourishes and feeds us?

The economic research I mentioned emphasizes the importance of basics in happiness; close relationships, sleep and food. If they don’t exist, people are not doing well.

But we can also ask if they are enough? If food and drink are enough to fill our stomachs, are close relationships enough to quench our thirst for life and longing? Are an inspiring job and enough free-time enough? Or do our thirst and longing originate from far deeper, from our innermost being? And what if we couldn’t quench this thirst with relationships, work or hobbies, no matter how hard we’d try, but after all that trying something inside us would sigh or cry for something better and more lasting.
Philosophers and authors around the world have looked for an answer to quench this thirst for life. One of them, Leo Tolstoy, in his book ”A Confession” tells about his own life and looking for the purpose and meaning of life. As a child Tolstoy had rejected Christianity. After graduating from university he wanted to have fun. In the Moscow and St.Petersburg societies he drank a lot, lived with women, gambled and lived a wild life in many ways. But he did not obtain satisfaction from any of it. Then he started lusting for money. He had inherited a farm and was making good money with his books. But yet he did not obtain satisfaction from any of these either. He looked for success, praise and status. And all of those he did obtain. He wrote some of the biggest novels in the world history. But yet he was left with the question:”Then what?” And he could not answer his own question.

He married and obtained a loving wife and 13 children. Even so, one particular question took him to the brink of suicide ;”Does my life have any meaning that does not vanish with the inevitable death?” He looked for the answer from all areas of science and philosophy. The only answer to the question of the meaning of life he found was :”In the infinity of space and time, the infinitely small particles change in infinitely complicated ways” He was surprised that his contemporaries were not asking the oldest questions of all times: where did I come from? where am I going to? who am I? Finally Tolstoy realized how the Russian farmers had been able to answer these questions based on Christianity and then he also realized that the only answer was in Jesus Christ.

A couple of hundred years after Tolstoy’s death one of the greatest rock legends, the lead singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury, wrote in one of his last songs :”Does anybody know what we are looking for?” Even though he had made a fortune and had thousands of fans he admitted in an interview a little before his death that he was hopelessly lonely. He said :”You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man and that is the most bitter type of loneliness”.

In today’s gospel Jesus says in a loud voice that He is the spring (fountain) for man’s thirst of life. A spring describes well the difference between the water given by God and all the other quenchers of thirst for life. The water of a spring is ongoing; it wells up and flows over and over again. It is not a disposable commodity that expires and needs to be updated. It is not something that improves by exchanging it, like we sometimes believe.

The spring that Jesus talks about, is forever. The thirst that Jesus tells about, is also forever. The person drinking, whom Jesus talks about, is you and I. The water for our eternal thirst can only stream from the eternal spring, God.

This water streaming from an eternal spring gives an another kind of a perspective to everything that is important in this time. Pentecost represents the opening of the eternal spring in this temporal, human life where we all age, get tired and weary.

The Holy Spirit creates eternal faith in Jesus. It is through this faith that the eternal spring of life is open to us. Like Jesus says : ”he who believes in me, has streams of living water flowing from within him”

Baptized in Christ, we have been allowed to drink the same Spirit, as today’s Epistle tells us. As a consequence the Holy Spirit works amongst and through us in many different ways. Through the Holy Spirit the temporal and secular life receives a pinch of heavenly and forever: ”the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Gal 5:22-23

It is through the Holy Spirit that God also engineers His parish to live with Him and to serve one another by sharing various gifts of grace that have all been given to be used for a common good, to construct the parish. The Holy Spirit gives courage, hope and perseverance, comfort and joy.

As an answer to the thirst for life of humans Jesus invites us to be with Him. Someone has said that all we have to do is guide one another to Jesus, Jesus will take us from there. "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as^[^a] the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." John 7.37-38

Saarnat Suomeksi	Previous Sermons in English

Huhtik.27, 2008	April 27, 2008
*Maalisk. 30, 2008*	Mar. 30, 2008
Maalisk. 23, 2008	Mar. 23, 2008
Maalisk. 09, 2008	Mar.09, 2008
	Feb.10, 2008
	Jan.27.2008
	Jan 13,2008 Baptism of Our Lord