The context of this passage is one of the great feasts that took place in Jerusalem several times a year.  This was the feast of tabernacles, or the feast of booths.  Every morning during the feast there is a procession to the fountain of Gihon and hear the priest fills his golden pitcher with water as the choir sings:  With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation (Is. 12:3).   On the seventh day, the “great” day of the feast, the crowd marched around the altar seven times to celebrate the time when God gave the Israelites water in the desert when Moses struck a rock with his rod.   It was in the midst of this celebration that Jesus spoke the words in our passage.
 

 Oscar Wilde was a flamboyant writer of the nineteenth century.  He’s known for writing such plays as “The Importance of Being Earnest.”  Oscar Wilde died penniless in Paris in 1900.   In 1992, a letter arrived at his home in Chelsea, England, addressed to Oscar Wilde.  On the outside of the letter, it informed him that he might already be a winner in the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes.  In fact, he had reached the third stage in the “Strike it Rich” draw and could win $300,000 in cash, a trip for two to Tahiti or a Ford Sierra car. (Parables, etc. 15.5.7)
 I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait until after my death to be a winner.  And I’m not just talking about winning a sweepstakes.   I want my life and my work to count for something now.   I want to make a mark on the world, and have my life make a difference.  I want our church to be a winner, too.   In my lifetime.   I want our church to be a community where real healing takes place; where people find Jesus Christ and grow to be mature Christians; where broken people are mended and the lost find their way.  I want Morning Star to be a genuinely magnetic church, where people are drawn here because the grace and mercy and peace of God are so apparent that they can’t help but see it and feel it and experience a difference in their life.
 Does that describe what you would like as well?  To have a life that is meaningful and effective and full of purpose.  To be part of a community of believers that is alive and growing and making a difference in our world?
 Then, listen closely to Jesus’ words because this is the promise of Pentecost:  “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”       In other words:   If you know that there’s something missing in your life,  come to me.   Come to me to fill that emptiness.   I will fill you with the Holy Spirit, who will work through you to bring my life to the world.
  What this means is, our effectiveness as individuals, and our effectiveness as a church has everything to do with where we are in relation to Jesus Christ.
 The challenge that I want you to consider today—Pentecost, 1999—is this: where is Jesus in your life?  And where is Jesus in the life of our church?
 To help you think through this challenge, I’m going to talk to you about three rather familiar scenes in the New Testament.   I want you to observe in your mind where the various characters are and what they are doing.  And I want you to ask yourself, where is Jesus in this picture?  Where would you be if you were there?
 Behind curtain 1, (from Luke 10) we have two sisters who are entertaining guests.  Do you know this story?  The sisters’ names are Mary and Martha.  Where is Martha in this story?  In the kitchen, sweating over a hot stove, jumping frantically from the cookies in the oven to the lamb on the grill to the hors d’ouevres on the kitchen table.  And she is steaming—why?  Her sister Mary is sitting on her hands out with the company instead of helping with her sister with the chores.    Martha’s attitude isn’t just about the chores.  In that day and age it wasn’t proper for a woman to be interacting that freely with a bunch of men.  She belonged in the background.  And where is Jesus?   He’s with Mary and his other disciples, teaching.    He says that Martha is distracted—which means to be pulled in all directions at once.   She is pulled in every direction except in the direction she needs to be pulled, which is toward spending quality time with Jesus.  So she is missing out on a vital part of her life.  Now, it’s important for me to point out that Martha is not an unbeliever.   She is a friend of Jesus, a believer.     But she cannot fully appreciate what Jesus has to offer, because her busy schedule has precedence over what Jesus wants for her.   And her opinion about what’s proper keeps her from responding to Jesus’ call to her.
 Can you see yourself in this story? Are you scurrying around in the kitchen or the garage or on the computer or somewhere else,  while Jesus is saying “come to me” and learn?     Are you saying to Jesus, I’m too busy right now, maybe later? And what about Morning Star?  Do we, as a church, get busy sometimes to the point of distraction, and miss the point of why we’re here in the first place?
 Behind curtain two we have a crowded outdoor scene, and it takes place near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem (John 5).  There is a pool there called Bethsaida, or Bethesda.  Legend had it that the pool had magical powers.  From time to time the calm waters would be riffled slightly – by an angel from God so they said.  Can you see it? As the story went, the first person into the pool got healed.  The lame, the blind, the paralyzed all elbow their way as close to the edge of that pool as they possibly can.  There is a man there among the crowd of sick people, who is painfully aware of his illness.  He has been paralyzed for 38 years.   And he lives his life by the side of this pool, waiting, dreaming, hoping that someday he will be the first one in, and be healed.  The thing is, he knows, he just knows it will never happen.  Still, he is there day after day, staring into the mesmerizing waters of that pool that promise hope, but can not deliver on that promise.   Every day, at every riffle of the water, someone else gets in first.   Is this scene familiar to you?  Where’s Jesus?  While everybody is staring into the pool, Jesus—the life of the world—is walking among all those sick people.  He taps our man on the shoulder and says, “Do you want to be healed?”  And the man sputters about the fact that he has no one to help him into the pool.  Jesus heals him anyway.
 Are you among the great crowd of sufferers at the pool of Bethsaida?   Aware of great needs in your life and the needs of people around you.  In search of an answer, but never finding it.   Coming back to the same solutions time and time again, in spite of the fact that they didn’t work before?  The self-help gurus, talk shows on TV, drugs or alcohol or sex?  Where is Jesus in your life?  He is within arms reach but maybe you can’t see him or feel him, because you’re so focused on your problems.  How about Morning Star?  We know we have a disease called sin, and many of us struggle with other maladies as well.  But, what’s happening here?  Are we a bunch of sick people who are not getting any better like the people by the pool?  Do we focus so much on our dis-abilities that we are unable to respond to Jesus when he calls?
 Behind curtain number 3, we have a house in Capernaum (Mark 2).  A huge crowd has gathered because Jesus is there teaching.  So many people have come to hear Jesus that they’re spilling out onto the sidewalk.   There’s not room for one more person to come inside, so four people who are carrying a sick friend on a stretcher, crawl up on the flat roof of the house, tear a hole in the roof, and lower their friend down to where Jesus is so that Jesus can heal the man.   Where’s Jesus?  He’s right in the middle of the crowd.  He’s the focal point.  Every eye is focused on what he is doing; every ear is tuned to his words.   The presence of Christ in the center of this house is a great illustration of the way God wants each of us to live our life.  With Christ at the center, and the rest of our life built around him, things begin to fall in place, and great things can happen.
I don’t know about you, but I want what’s behind curtain 3.  This scene in Mark 2, is a great picture of the church we want to be.   The church we can be.  The presence of Christ is so strong, that people are drawn naturally.    You can’t keep them away.
But the real question is, are we willing to pay the price of having that kind of church? Of being that kind of church?  That kind of magnetism will only happen when we as a community keep Christ at the very center point of our lives.   Each of us as individuals, and all of us together as a community.  If, like Martha, we are busy with everything but the business of Christ, we will continually find ourselves trying to quench the world’s thirst with an empty cup.   If, like the man at the pool of Bethsaida, we rely on superstitions and habits that are comfortable, but do not produce constructive change in our life, our own paralysis will keep us from even trying to help someone else.
We know that the world needs Jesus and everything he has to offer.  The lives of people today are filled to the brim with pressure, demands, stress, goals, and activities.  Yet so many lives are lacking in fulfillment, peace, and joy.   So many people have lives, jobs, and relationships that are constantly on the verge of breaking from the strain of trying to fill their cup with drink that does not satisfy but keeps them coming back for more, just the same.  These are the people who need to know Christ and need the fellowship of the church.  (Turning Points, ix) And we, the church, are the people who are called to dispense God’s grace to these people.  Yet what is often true is that we, the church, are a mirror image of the overly busy, stressed out, addicted world that we seek to serve.  We try to fill the world’s empty cup with a dry pitcher.
The reason for our dry pitcher is usually simple:  we have developed a kind of spiritual amnesia—we forgot that we aren’t God.  If we are trying to live our life and do our ministry merely on our own strength, we will fall flat every time.   As Jesus once said to his disciples, I am the vine, you are the branches.  Apart from me you can do nothing.   The opposite is also true:  with Jesus, we can do anything he calls us to do.  When we first started Morning Star a few years back, I used to tell people that as far as our goals and ministries are concerned, the sky’s the limit.  But in truth, when we are drawing our strength from Jesus, even the sky cannot limit us.
 Our human weaknesses are no problem to God.  The Apostle Paul once described the Christian ministry as the apparent contradiction of an ordinary clay pot that contains a treasure of diamonds or gold.   We ourselves are ordinary, easily broken, clay pots, but God has placed in us a great treasure—the Holy Spirit and with the Spirit, the ability to do ministry.
In  December of 1996 then Los Angeles Times reported that David Suna and John Tu sold 80 per cent of their company, Kingston Technology Corp., the world’s largest manufacturer of computer memory products, for $1.5 billion dollars.   The two men decided to share their windfall with their employees.  The average bonus payment their workers received was just over $75,000.  Suna summarized their decision:  “To share our success with everybody is the most joy we can have.”  (Fresh Illustrations, 185)
That’s what God is like, only in greater measure.  So, the good news today is, you may already be a winner.  Do you believe in Jesus Christ?  Have you made the commitment to follow him?  Listen again to what Jesus said.  “He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”   The Holy Spirit is in each believer.  We just need give the Spirit room to work in our own lives.