This morning’s reading from Jeremiah makes a profound point which should cause all of us to pause and reflect on this Labor Day weekend as we rest from our labors and rejoice in the bounty of creation. At the end of our reading God says through Jeremiah, “my people have … forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” According to God, Israel had turned their back on God. In place of rejoicing in the life which God provides to his people, in place of the Living Water of God, Israel had turned to other supposed sources of life, Israel had turned to other gods. In place of living in a society marked by justice and peace Israel had gone its own way. Working for the god of wealth, seeking after the god of power, rejecting the poor and needy as expendable parts of their desire to be a great people. Israel had dug its own wells, wells based on other religions, wells based on secular ideas of life, wells that held brackish water that often led to death and not to life. On this day when we celebrate our labor, the question that hangs in the air is, are we laboring after the living water of God or the brackish water found in cracked cisterns?

 

To understand the imagery of this passage of Jeremiah we need to understand some of Israel’s history. Before Israel had abandoned God, Israel lived as God’s people. They had depended on God and God had provided for them. As the chosen people God had freed them from slavery in Egypt, God had led them through the desert—providing food and drink in the midst of a wasteland, God had given them a new homeland flowing with milk and honey.  This dependence which God reflects on wistfully was not an easy period in Israel’s life. It was challenging to trust God in all things, to trust in God for freedom, land, and nourishment. But in the midst of this challenging time Israel experienced the faithfulness and love of God time and again. But, as we already know, this way of trust-filled living did not last. Israel was comfortable, settled in the promised land, surrounded by their own armies. Israel no longer saw the need for God and thus they abandoned the Covenant relationship which had been established at Sinai with the giving of the Ten Commandments. Israel broke its agreement to trust and follow God and chose to go her own way.

 

The basic foundation of the agreement between God and Israel is summed up in Deuteronomy 6:4ff, “Hear O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This text, known as the Shma in Hebrew, is so fundamental that it is part of nearly all major Jewish liturgies. It has been set to music and is often sung as follows—Shma Ysrael, Adonai Elohainu, Adonai Echad. 

 

For Christians this text, which points to the fact that God alone is to be worshipped, is filled with resonance and power. We too know this command because Christ echoed it when he said, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.” One of the most basic parts of faith in God is that nothing and no one can take God’s place, not safety, nor security, not wealth, not happiness, not power. The people of Israel in the time of Jeremiah knew the Shma, they knew they were called to keep covenant with God.

 

We too know that we are called to trust God fully, we need only look to our Baptismal service to realize that we have promised to trust completely in God. And yet the closing words from our reading from Jeremiah hang in the air, echoing throughout history in a disquieting way. “You have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for yourselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”

 

Israel rejected the living water of God through following false gods, through seeking secular power and glory, through seeking after wealth at the expense of the poor and downtrodden. Israel does not stand alone in rejecting God and digging cracked cisterns which yield only death. All of us, all of our society, all of the world turns away from God as we seek our own power, prestige, wealth, and happiness. And yet in doing this, in turning away from God and seeking after our own good we end up with wells that are filled with sand, wells that yield nothing. In seeking after ourselves and not after God we end up without joy, without life, without living water.

 

We can all think of times when we have chosen to follow our own course and in place of finding joy found pain and suffering. We can all think of places in our country and in the world where the quest for power and wealth has left not life but death—physical, economic, and spiritual. We can think of relationships which have cracked and fragmented, seeping away through the years. The truth of Jeremiah continues to echo in our hearing. When we turn away from God we find ourselves empty, alone, dry.

But there is good news. Our God, the God of Israel, the God of Jeremiah, the God of the universe, always stands ready to offer us new sources of living water. God always is ready to welcome us home, to show hospitality to us even when we have grown estranged, to show love to us even when we feel unlovable, to give life to us even when we feel dead inside. This incredible mercy of God is seen throughout the story of the people of Israel who were taken back and comforted by God time and again even after they abandoned God. This is the story of Christ, who came to us and loved us and welcomed us home even after we nailed him to a cross and denied that we knew him. This is the story of the Church, which, for all its failings, is meant to be God’s vehicle of grace and love to a world which is filled with shattered and leaky cisterns. God continues to provide living water for us, God continues to offer life, forgiveness, and nourishment. 

 

As the family of God in Christ we are called to be filled with living water. God fills us with this water through Bible study, through worship, through service, through times of renewal such as Cursillo, Happening, and De Colores. God fills us with this water through our connection to small groups,  through outreach ministries, and through financial stewardship and tithing. God offers us living water in thousands of different ways. The joyful fact is, in serving God and reaching out to a parched and thirsty world filled with cracked cisterns we discover ever greater supplies of living water. Through the church, through you and me, the living water of Christ is enabled to flow freely throughout the earth. Through the grace of God we are enabled to give ourselves, our mind, energy, money, talent, and time fully and completely to God. In doing this we discover that God’s life-giving water will never forsake us.

 

So as we celebrate this Labor Day Weekend I pray that we might all take a moment to stop and reflect on our labor—labor in the past and future labor. May all that we do from this point on be focused on the living water of God, that water which is given to us as a free gift, that water which fills us with life, that water which enables us to do incredible, world-transforming things. May all our labors be given over to God’s good and gracious purposes.