The Rev. Frank Logue
The Diocese of Georgia
Clergy Preparation Day for Easter
Christ Church—Dublin, Georgia
March 21, 2001

Soaking in Salvation Springs
Isaiah 12:2-6

In 1988, my wife, Victoria, and I hiked more than 2,100-miles from Georgia to Maine, completing the entire Appalachian Trail in a single hike. For six months, our only concerns were the very basics of survival—food, shelter, and water. Most of the time, we easily met those needs for the essentials. We could get off the Trail every five to seven days to find a store and resupply with food. We carried a tent with us for shelter and sometimes stayed in the three-sided Trail shelters provided for hikers along the Appalachian Trail. Water, however, that most basic of necessities, proved to be the most difficult to manage. If you want to find out how vital water is to your very being, try hiking 15 to 20 miles a day without any water.

Of course, there were times when we had far too much water. Once in Virginia, we were saturated with eight days in a row of heavy rains. Each day, we trudged on through a downpour, sloshing down the Trail in wet boots. Further to the north, in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, the rains stopped completely. Springs dried up, streams slowed to a trickle and many of the water sources we were relying on were gone. Hiking 15 to 20 miles a day, our bodies were burning through water faster than we could find it along the Trail.

In Massachusetts, we hit a point where we simply could not go any further. It was a blazing hot day. Our canteens had only a tiny bit of warm water held in reserve and our throats were dry. Our bodies were craving water and there was no water to be found. Finally, in desperation, we got off the Trail on a western Massachusetts back road looking for water. There were no houses in sight, but after going around a bend in the road, we saw a house with a water spigot by the garage door. That water spigot was the thing that really caught our eyes. Water! Lots of water. We quickened our pace anxious to get water from the hose.

A sense of decorum kicked in as we were dashing toward the house. Politely, we went to the door and knocked, almost hoping no one was home so that we could quickly get to the hose and drink our fill. A woman answered, looking a little puzzled to find sweaty, smelly backpackers on her doorstep. Her husband joined her at the door as Victoria and I explained our parched predicament. Almost instantly, they escorted us into their kitchen where they plied us with cold lemonade from the refrigerator and warm cookies right out of the oven. They topped off our canteens with fresh water and added ice cubes to keep the water cold. Victoria and I felt that we were in the most luxurious oasis in the midst of a dry and barren land. The fluids our bodies craved were here in abundance, together with the delightful surprise of fresh-baked cookies and gracious hospitality.

Of course, to Roy and Marilyn Wiley, the couple who extended the hospitality, it was just their plain old everyday kitchen. There was nothing special about what they had to offer. The tap water was always at the ready. The refrigerator almost always had something cold to drink inside and a steady procession of food was cooked in the oven, nothing special really. They didn’t even know the Appalachian Trail passed near their house. The Wileys had no idea that water was in such short supply for hikers. Later, we would hear that hikers who came after us would find a sign where the Appalachian Trail crossed that western Massachusetts back road. The Wileys found the A.T. and they put a sign there to let thirsty hikers know that they were welcome to come up to their house to get water.

More than a decade has passed since a drought caused Victoria and me to go knocking on the Wiley’s door. I’ve heard from time to time that the Wileys still welcome hikers into their home. I decided to look them up in The Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker’s Companion. It’s a guide with the where-to-find info hikers need to make the more than 2,150 miles from Georgia to Maine. There they were in the book. The Wileys were listed under Washington Mountain Road in Massachusetts. Hikers know Marilyn now as the “Cookie Lady.” The water spigot by the garage door is always available to hikers and that book notes that homemade cookies are often available too. The Wileys phone number was there in the book, so I gave them a call. They still remembered us, not by name actually. But they never forgot the couple that came up to their doorstep in need of water. Marilyn told me, “You enjoyed the cookies so much, that I tried to keep fresh cookies around for hikers.” Our need had been so great and it was so easily met, they couldn’t help but help others. I thanked them and hung up, amazed by the hospitality of this couple.

Now y’all have a lot more exegetical experience and homiletic prowess than I do, so you have probably, hopefully, made a number of possible connections between that dry day on the A.T. and our readings for this meditation. Here’s what I see. First Isaiah was written during a time of impending judgment on Israel in the form of the Assyrian Empire. With the Syro-Ephraimite war raging, Isaiah looks ahead to a time when a remnant would return to give thanks to God. That remnant would draw water from the springs of salvation with joy. The remnant would know and appreciate that springs of salvation after their sojourn in the dry and barren spiritual wasteland that would follow the Assyrian Conquest.

Isaiah didn’t compare salvation to springs of water lightly. Isaiah compared salvation to springs of water for a desert people who knew just how much they needed water. Water is a precious commodity all over the world, but living in the land of Israel makes that reality all the more clear. That’s why water and salvation are so intimately connected throughout scripture. In the first Psalm, a person who meditates on Torah day and night is like a tree planted by streams of water. In Jeremiah, the Lord is a fountain of living water. Jesus uses this metaphoric use of water when he talks to the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” As you would expect, the Samaritan woman wanted the living water Jesus promised.

Those verses concerning springs of salvation and living water carry forward into our own day, filled with meaning for those of us who work in what should be a spiritual oasis. Sitting in the shade of the palm trees, away from the heat of the spiritual desert, we can be like the Wileys who needed some hot, dry hikers to appear on their doorstep to even appreciate what a gift they had in a water spigot out by the garage door. We enjoy the amazing gift of being able to lead God’s people in worship each week. We are saturated by the goodness of the Lord. In fact, we can get so soggy from sloshing around in the springs of salvation that we can forget that we actually live in a desert country.

South Georgia is a spiritual wasteland. While our towns are largely culturally Christian, we are surrounded everywhere we go by pre-Christians, people who are lost and don’t even know it. They are thirsty for living water and they don’t even know it. The people we stand in line with at the grocery store, the clerk at the local WalMart, the bank President, the cook at the Waffle House, and on and on and on. They need to know God. They need to be in God’s presence and to feel God’s love more than they need the water.

Our churches are springs of salvation. People should be pouring in our doors to draw water with joy, but they don’t. How can they? Most people who are seeking are not sure what they are searching for and they are often pretty sure that they won’t find it in our churches. They are not reached when we gather around the water cooler sipping salvation as if we deserve it. What spiritual seekers need is someone willing to do what the Wileys did. Not what they did for Victoria and me, but what they have done for 13 years since we showed up on their doorstep. Once they learned that thirsty hikers were just down the road, they didn’t sit in their kitchen hoping another hiker would stop by. The Wileys sought out the Trail and actively advertised the thing hikers needed most. The Wileys went to the people who needed them and offered them what they needed.

How can we do that? How can we get away from the business of minding the spring long enough to get out and offer thirsty spiritual seekers a cup of living water? How can we lead by example and show our parishioners how it is done? What would we have to do to get seekers’ attention? What would we have to do to let them know that we know how they can fill that God-sized whole in their heart with the only thing that can fill it—a spring of living water?

South Georgia does not have people clamoring to get into an Episcopal Church on Sunday. I bet there is no more of a thriving interest in becoming an Episcopalian in Bainbridge or Dublin than there is in Kingsland. But all of our towns are a dry and barren land for the people we see everyday who do not know our Lord. All of us have something to offer people who are thirsting after a real relationship with our God. The Holy Spirit is already out their breaking the dry, dusty soil, preparing the way. All we have to do is figure out how to get the water out of the spring and out on to the fertile soil.

Amen.