"Fill My Cup, Lord"

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
 On May 19,  2002

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

       John 7: 37-39

It is Pentecost, and the text that the Gospel brings us is the text where Jesus speaks of the Spirit being like water. Not like wind, but like water. Water. The kind of water that fills things up. It might fill your cup.

Earlier in January, I got to go to the Management Development Institute over in St. Petersburg. And one of my friends, Margaret Cooley, was a teacher there. Towards the end of the week, she told the story about her brother. She was talking about the importance of people in management doing self-care. She talked about her brother, who has a daughter about 23 years of age, who had been injured in a terrible skiing accident that summer. She said when that happened, her brother just found his whole life being re-prioritized. Some of you who have had this kind of tragedies or accidents happen in your family systems know what that experience is like.

I’m not sure it’s a re-prioritizing so much as it is a bringing up to the surface what your deep core values are, and structuring your life around you then suddenly by those core values rather than all of the other things that may typically influence them. But he suddenly found himself very devoted and committed toward the care of his daughter, and trying to do anything he could to help her. He described it as a deep desire and need to give to her, to try and be there for her. After he had been about that for about a month, Margaret met with them and tried to care for him. She said, “Tell me how it’s going with you. What’s going on in your life."

He said, “You know, I think that I actually personally am taking as good care of myself as I ever have. After about a week of suddenly needing to care for my daughter after this accident, I realized that if I was going to be able to show up and to give to her in some way every day when she needed me to be a means of giving to her, that I was going to have to see that my cup got filled every day. Real quickly, if my cup wasn’t filled, I was just running out for her. And I didn’t have the energy emotionally, spiritually, physically, to give to her. So I suddenly started adjusting my life. I am eating with healthier patterns that I ever have before, and I am getting more rest than I ever did before. And I am doing other things to take care of myself, not so much because of my own self-interest, but because it seems critical to me as a way of being sure that I have something to take to her every day."

That story kind of stuck inside me. I have been carrying it around, and I found it intersecting with this text on this Pentecost Sunday, where Jesus stands up and says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink." And then this line: “For out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water."

I’m thinking Jesus is talking about you, you believers. You partial believers. You on-the-way-to-believing believers. Jesus is saying that out of you will come streams of living water for others. And if we are going to be vehicles of the living water, the Spirit of the Living God to others, then we are going to need to present our own cups that they might be filled on a regular basis, so that we can be a means of this water of Christ coming to others.

Pentecost is a time when God filled the cup of the Church.  They were alone. They were uncertain. They likely were tired. I imagine they were tired. They were in need of direction, and the Spirit fell on them as a gift. The Spirit fell on them when they were together, and it was accompanied by clear and visible signs that made it an undeniable experience of the Spirit for them. It was like a mighty wind that entered the room.  And like tongues of fire suddenly appearing over some of their heads. They spoke in different languages, and each one could understand, and there was great unity in that experience. They knew that they had been given something. Something that gave them power and filled their cups so that they might be able to move forward in care for others.

There are lots places when Jesus speaks of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit he uses the metaphor of wind. I think there is a lot of intelligibility in that, because understanding the Spirit as wind helps us to know that the Spirit comes and goes where it will. Like the wind, we don’t control it.

We are not able simply to summon the Spirit and say, “Come now, Spirit!"  God gives the Spirit as a free gift. The Spirit of the Living God will not be manipulated. Speaking of the Spirit as wind helps us to remember that.

But here in John, in the seventh chapter, Jesus speaks of the Spirit as water, as a river. I think the metaphor speaks of the image of thirst. Jesus draws to their minds the experience of being thirsty. He says the Spirit is going to be like water that will quench their thirst. Anyone who is thirsty can come to me, as those who believe in me drink.

Have you ever been spiritually thirsty? Just empty? What are the signs of being spiritually thirsty? I’m thinking this week that it may be some of these: If you find yourself irritable. If you find yourself fatigued. If you find yourself struggling with despair. If you find yourself struggling with anger, or greed, or fear. Those may be clues to you that you are not only physically in need but that you are also spiritually empty. Then it is time to ask the Spirit to replenish you, to fill you back up.

You can't control the Spirit. You can't manipulate it. The Scriptures tell us that God sends the Spirit as a free gift. But the Bible also witnesses that there are things that Christians can do to present themselves so they may be filled again by the Spirit.

We are invited to spend time in prayer, both alone and with others, as a way of asking the Spirit to fill us up. We are invited to read in the Scriptures, both alone and with others, as a way of inviting the Spirit to fill us up. We are invited to come together and to find faith apart from other tasks, apart from the world, that the Spirit might use that space to renew us. To take time, and not to spend it on other things so that there is openness in our lives, so that the Spirit might be able to use that time to fill us up. We are called together to worship, so that the Spirit might renew us.

We are also encouraged in the New Testament to use music. All the epistles are full of these exhortations to sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, and I think in part that is a way of asking the Spirit to fill you up. The Bible says, Jesus says here that when your cup is filled, then you will become a means of the water to others. That you ask the Spirit to fill your cup so that you can then serve others.

Think about it. Think about some of the folks who have been means of the gift of the Spirit to you, renewal for you. As I thought about it myself, invariable they are people who very intentionally presented their own cups to have them filled.

I was thinking about Helen Vaas, whom I never knew, but whose influence as a source of the Spirit has been felt by many women in this community. As I’ve heard the talk about her teaching and her life, they have shared how she so faithfully was about prayer herself. How she was so faithfully was engaged in the study of scripture, and out of filling her own cup, her life became a means of the Spirit’s filling the life of others.

I’m thinking about The Reverend I.H. Williams, who pastored here for so long, whom I did know. I’m remembering what an encouragement he was to me. And I remember how deeply he had the scriptures in him. This was a man who was familiar enough with the scriptures that they were a part of his daily thought. They came to mind simply by his familiarity with them in many different occasions. And that familiarity on his part with the scripture was a means of filling up my cup, as he encouraged me and as he coached me in my early ministry.

I’m thinking about The Reverend James Forbes. You all have heard me speak of him a couple of times now. He’s the pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City. He’s not somebody who knows me from Adam’s housecat. I’ve heard him preach about six times in person. But each time has been an occasion when my own cup has been filled by the Holy Spirit. I’m thinking about how he recounts, over the thirty years that I have heard him preach six times, he recounts that music has been a part of filling his cup. Forbes has said that sometimes he will be in the middle of a day and he will have something that he has to do that is hard for him. When that happens, he will sing a little song to himself. He makes up these songs, little spiritual songs that he’ll sing to himself as a way of inviting the Spirit to fill his own cup. He talks about getting up in the morning and singing songs to himself, spiritual songs, while he showers and gets ready for the day, as a way of asking the Spirit to fill him up and to send him out.

That’s been in my mind this week, and really in the last six months, since I heard him preach. I have found myself singing songs on occasion. There is a song that often comes to me as a way,  I think, of the Spirit filling my cup. Many of you know it. It’s on page 322 in the hymnbook. It goes like this:  “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me…."  Some of you know it. Sometimes when I find myself empty, I will try to find a moment just to sing that song to myself. “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me…." And I am helped. I am filled a little bit when that happens. “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me…." 

You know what it makes me remember? It makes me remember Oral Hersheisher. Remember that baseball pitcher? Does anybody remember him but me? He pitched in the World Series about twelve years ago, and I remember watching one of the games and they were showing him between the innings. He was leaning against the dugout as he waited to get up and pitch again. He was singing, and the commentator says, “He’s singing the Doxology." Yes. He sings the Doxology to himself between innings. It made me sing a little more… “Spirit of the Living God…" I thought if it’s good enough for the World Series… “fall afresh on me.…"

I had to do something about three weeks ago that I didn’t want to do.  Do you ever have to do that? Do you have to do something that you don’t want to do? I had a visit I had to make that I just did not want to make. The Spirit kept sending all these voices to tell me to go and do it. All of these people that I am accountable to. So my friend Bill Wallof, who is a means of the Spirit in my life, left me a voice mail saying, “I’m thinking that I haven't heard you say that you went and did such and such yet. I just wanted to remind you that you might want to do that this week."

I’m thinking, “Get out of here, Spirit!"

Then my administrative assistant tapes a note on my door saying, “Don’t forget you need to do such and such."

I’m thinking, “Get away from me Spirit!"

Then my wife, whom the Spirit sends to me in this work of honesty, who always speaks the truth to me, says to me as I’m getting ready to go out the door one morning, “You know, you haven't done such and such yet, have you? You’ve got to go and do such and such, remember?"

It’s just unavoidable any longer. So I get in the car and I drive to the building where I’ve got to go. You don’t need to know the details on what this was. That would just take it away a little bit. I want it to be close to all of the things that you have to do that you don’t want to do. The details would just obscure that. I go to this building to make this visit, and I say to myself, “Spirit (I’m not really talking to myself but to the Lord), I do not want to do this. I do not want to do this. But everybody else seems to think I should."

So here I go. I get out of the car and I start walking in. Not a bounce in my step, really, you see, but moving forward nonetheless. I just start singing to myself, “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me." I get to those words in the middle, “… melt me, mold me..." (I don’t remember the rest of the lyrics – I just make them up. Do you ever do that? I just say, “shape me, make me get on this elevator, push that button, go knock on that door… Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me." It helps. A means of God’s grace to me.

It helps me to feel like my thirst is quenched. It makes me able to pour out a little bit more to others.

©  John T. DeBevoise, 2002