Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome back to our series,
The Way Home.
We've been traveling together through some of Scripture's beautiful stories of return.
We began by watching a son leave home and discover the welcome of the father,
And then we watched the shepherd search for what was lost.
We walked the road to Emmaus and discovered Christ beside us in the midst of disappointment.
We sat with Peter at the fire and discovered that failure doesn't disqualify us from love.
And last episode in Psalm 23,
We slowed down enough to see that we don't always need to know.
The way home ourselves,
Sometimes we simply need to allow the shepherd to lead us.
So today we come to the prophet Isaiah,
And Isaiah asks us a really confronting question.
One that reaches right into the heart of the modern world that we live in.
What are you spending yourself on?
What are you giving your time to?
Your attention to,
Your energy to.
Your heart to.
But most importantly in all that… Is that actually satisfying you?
I think one of the reasons we tend to wonder.
Is because we're hungry.
And that's not a bad thing.
Hungary,
I think we're talking about Hungary for meaning and belonging here.
Hungry for peace.
To be sane and to be loved and when we don't know where to take that hunger.
Quite often we feed it with things that really don't satisfy it.
So Isaiah's invitation is come home.
To the source of your deepest hunger.
And lit that.
Hold you and satisfy you.
So as we begin,
Let's just settle ourselves.
Take a deep breath in.
And out.
And just allow yourself to be fully present here in this moment.
As we pray.
God of abundance,
You know the hungers within us,
You know the places where we're restless and the things that we reach for when we're afraid.
Teach us to recognize what truly satisfies us and free us from the things that promise life.
That tend to leave us empty.
And lead us home to you.
The source of the ultimate fulfillment.
Our text today comes from Isaiah chapter 55.
Let's just pause and listen.
To the words from Uzziah.
Ho,
Everyone who thirsts.
Come to the waters.
And you that have no money,
Come.
Bye.
And eat.
Come.
By wine and milk.
Without money.
And without price.
And then the Prophet asks,
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?
And your labour for that which does not satisfy.
And then comes Isaiah's invitation.
He writes,
Listen carefully to me.
And eat what is good and delight yourself in rich food.
Seek the Lord while the Lord may be found,
And call upon the Lord while the Lord is near.
So Isaiah begins here with thirst.
Everyone who thirsts,
Come to the waters.
And I think maybe the most important word in that sentence is.
.
.
Everyone.
Not just those who are in the in crowd.
Not just those who have all their ducks lined up.
Not just all those who've reached some sort of spiritual maturity,
Whatever that means.
But everyone,
Everyone who thirsts,
That's literally everyone.
This is an invitation for the thirsty,
Which means it's meant for you and me,
Because beneath all of the accomplishments and distractions,
I think we're all still thirsty for something.
Peace,
Meaning,
Connection,
Rest,
Purpose,
Love.
And sometimes we don't even know what we're thirsty for.
We just know we're missing something.
And so we just act and we reach and we consume.
And we achieve the things and we distract ourselves and we keep on moving and hope that the next thing might satisfy us.
But it doesn't.
And so what do we do?
We reach again.
So the question we start with is what are you thirsty for?
Just become aware of the deepest desire within you.
The desire for another attention or distraction.
Or achievement or a possession,
But go deeper.
What are you really thirsty for?
Is it peace?
To be loved?
To be known,
To feel that life matters,
To know you're enough.
Or to encounter God even.
Just ask that question,
What am I thirsty for?
And then name it before God.
And give it to God,
Saying,
God,
I am thirsty for.
.
.
Isaiah's good at asking the uncomfortable questions,
That's for sure.
And this one.
Well,
It's quite the challenge.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
You could translate that question into the language.
Of our own lives.
Why do you spend your life on things?
That cannot give you life.
Why do you give your best energy to the things that leave you empty?
Why do you keep returning?
To the things that you already know can't satisfy.
It's a question that's well worth sitting with as uncomfortable as it is because There's things that occupy our lives but they really don't nourish our souls.
And for all the things that do,
They could also ultimately be things that don't.
Work can do both.
Achievement camps,
Social media,
Entertainment,
Even religion.
And so we can become really busy doing things for God while becoming increasingly distant from God.
And we can fill our calendars and yet at the same time be emptying our souls.
And Ozier asks the question.
Why?
Now I think there's a difference between consuming something and being nourished by it.
We can consume enormous amounts of information.
And yet,
I don't think for the most part.
Were any wiser for doing so.
Consume Entertainment.
And still feel lonely.
We can consume possessions and still feel poor.
We can consume approval and still feel insecure.
We can even consume religious activity and still feel spiritually dry.
Not everything that we consume nourishes.
And maybe one of the beautiful spiritual practices of our time is learning to distinguish between the two,
What feeds the soul and what just fills the space.
What distracts us from life and what gives us life.
So just for a moment,
Imagine an ordinary day from the moment you wake up.
What receives your attention and your energy,
Your imagination?
Your emotional investment.
And then ask.
What actually gives me life?
And what leaves me emptier.
And just notice what rises as you sit with those questions.
Now if you've ever worked with the homeless and people who are hungry.
You'll know that quite often they'll try and sleep as much as they can so they don't feel the hunger because hunger is uncomfortable.
And the same goes for the sort of hunger that we're talking about here.
For instance,
If I admit.
.
.
Say that I'm lonely.
I have to face it.
I have to face the loneliness.
If I admit that I'm afraid,
Then I'm going to have to sit back.
And acknowledge the fear if I admit that I'm spiritually hungry.
Then I have to acknowledge that the things I've been relying on.
.
.
Aren't doing what I hope that they do.
But rather than face the hunger,
We try and block it and we distract ourselves.
We feel silences,
The good old phone and the TV,
Or we work longer,
Or we shop,
Or we eat,
Or we stay busy.
Anything to avoid the uncomfortable truth.
I'm hungry.
And I'm thirsty.
But Isaiah is interesting because he doesn't tell us to eliminate the thirst,
He tells us where to take it.
Come to the waters,
" he says,
And There's something beautiful about the simplicity of the word come.
In coming to something.
We don't have to fix anything or gain some sort of worth or measure up to something.
We don't have to work harder.
And the way home begins with that invitation,
Come.
And as I was saying,
Come with your thirst,
Your questions,
Your failures,
Your weariness,
Your uncertainty,
Your emptiness,
Just come.
So imagine standing.
In a desert type landscape,
A dry landscape.
Maybe even are.
A field in time of drought,
The ground beneath you's cracked,
Hot sun,
You're tired.
You've been carrying something for a long time and then you hear a voice saying,
Come to the waters and you look ahead and there is water.
It's clear,
It's cool,
It's living.
You don't have to pay for it.
You don't have to work for it.
You don't have to prove for it.
It's just offered.
It's there.
Take a step towards it.
And another.
And simply And this is where.
.
.
A lot of people who are on spiritual journeys and particularly those in the Christian tradition.
Really begin to struggle.
Because this is what grace is.
We talk about amazing grace and accepting grace and God's wonderful grace.
We talk even about the definition of grace being The one we hear a lot is things like unmerited favour.
And that's true.
But then you start talking like this and people really start to be bothered by it.
What do you mean,
Just come?
What do you mean,
Everyone?
And I think that's why Paul talked about grace.
Being audacious.
And if you thought the invitation was audacious so far here in Isaiah,
It now gets even more audacious.
He says,
Come by and eat.
Without money and without price.
Can you see the contradiction there coming by?
But you don't need money because it's not a transaction.
God can't be purchased,
And love can't be earned,
And God can't be manipulated into loving us anymore.
Those deep gifts of life.
They're simply to be received.
We can't earn the way home.
And we can't purchase belonging and we can't achieve our way.
Into peace,
We just simply come and we simply.
.
.
Receive and like I said this is one of the hardest things that we can do.
Because receiving.
.
.
Makes us vulnerable.
Giving,
Makes us feel stronger,
Powerful.
But receiving reminds us that we need someone else,
And certainly in the Western world.
That's something that life and the way the world thinks tries to shake out of us.
But the gospel really is,
At its core,
An invitation to receive freely.
To receive mercy and love and grace and life and God.
So imagine for a moment again that you didn't have to earn God's love.
Imagine that your spiritual life was not a performance,
So you can stop trying to impress God.
Stop trying to be good enough or worthy enough and just receive.
So I invite you for a moment,
Just take a nice deep breath in.
And out and hear these words.
You are invited.
You are wanted.
You are welcome.
You are loved simply because you are God's beloved.
And then Isaiah says,
Listen carefully to me.
And there's that word again,
Listen.
And I think sometimes the way home requires us to become.
Quiet to hear,
To still ourselves so that we can hear properly.
The voices that we have all around us,
Telling us what it thinks we need,
I suppose.
Buy this,
Become that,
Achieve this,
Look like this,
Live like this,
Be more successful and attractive and productive.
But as I say,
Listen carefully to me.
So the question isn't what's everyone else saying,
But what's the voice of God saying?
Maybe it's.
.
.
You don't need as much as you think.
You don't need to prove yourself.
You don't need to hurry.
You don't need to become somebody else.
Just come and drink.
And receive.
And leave.
So let's take a moment just to allow.
.
.
The prayer.
Here to become very simple.
With each breath just say silently to yourself as you're breathing in,
I'm thirsty.
And as you're breathing out.
Come to the waters.
Let's try that breathing in.
I'm thirsty.
Breathing out.
Come to the waters.
And again,
Breathing in.
.
.
And out.
And as you meditate with those words in the next few moments.
Let them become words that you are receiving as well.
Coming home.
Isn't about eliminating desire.
Maybe it's about allowing desire to lead us.
You know,
Our deepest longings can be signposts.
Like a longing for love points towards love,
A longing for beauty points towards beauty.
When we long for truth,
Point towards truth.
And then the longing for home,
Well,
That points us towards God.
So some of the restlessness we experience,
I don't think it's something we have to suppress.
Maybe it's something we should listen to.
Because beneath the surface of our desires there may be a deeper desire,
A desire for God.
St.
Augustine famously prayed that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
And Isaiah says something familiar.
You're thirsty?
Come to the waters.
Before we finish,
Let's just think again about the question,
What am I spending myself on that doesn't satisfy?
Maybe there's one thing that comes to your mind straight away,
An activity or a habit,
Maybe a relationship.
An expectation that you have of yourself or someone else has this view.
An ambition.
A distraction.
Whatever it is.
You don't need to get cranky at yourself about this.
Just notice it.
And then,
As you're noticing and holding it,
Just ask a second question.
What might I turn towards instead?
Maybe silence,
Or prayer,
Or friendship,
Or nature,
Or scripture,
Or service.
Maybe you need to sit with the Eucharist.
Maybe rest,
Or beauty.
Or just God.
What would it mean?
To make a little more room for what actually nourishes your soul.
God of living water,
You know our thirst.
You know the places where we've tried to satisfy ourselves with things that can't give us life.
Forgive us when we've forgotten where the true source is.
Teach us to listen,
To receive.
Teach us to stop spending ourselves on what can't satisfy and when we're thirsty remind us of Isaiah's invitation,
Come to the waters.
May we come without fear,
Without pretending.
Without needing to earn anything.
May we discover that what our souls have been searching for.
Has been waiting for us in you.
And may grace,
Peace and love hold us as we make that journey home today and always.
Amen.
Before we go with that question.
What do you want?
Has stirred you a little bit,
The one we had just a moment ago.
Talking about desire.
And understanding our desires.
I invite you to.
Have a look at the series.
What do you want?
That I did just a little while ago.
And to look there and to go through that series and to contemplate that question in a number of different ways,
And ultimately learn to see beneath the surface of our desires and understand why they're there,
And how they could be leading us towards the thing that ultimately.
.
.
Will give us life.
Thanks so much for being with us today on the way home.
As you go,
Take this question with you.
What am I spending myself on?
That doesn't satisfy.
And then listen for the invitation.
Come.
To the waters.
I don't think the way home.
Is about discovering a new destination.
I think it's about finally drinking from the well.
That's been inside us all along,
Just waiting for us to come.
Grace and peace friends.
Bye for now.
