Isaiah 55: 1

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

We have seen recently the devastating impact of natural disaster on two nations – Haiti and Chile. And for us who live in a relatively stable environment it is hard to imagine national tragedies of these sorts of dimensions that bring nations to their knees. Those who find themselves caught up in such devastation and destruction are desperate for signs of hope. They look with longing for some outside intervention that will force some change in their circumstances. Hopefully, the requested international response will bring the hope and encouragement they need so badly.

Now let’s go to some 550 – 540 years before the Christian era to Babylon, a great centre of civilization in the ancient world, and to a community of Jewish people whose nation has been destroyed. It has not been natural disaster. Rather, their homeland has been conquered by the Babylonians, their capital city of Jerusalem razed to the ground, and they have been taken into exile in this strange and alien foreign land. For some 30 to 40 years they have languished in exile, struggling to maintain their Jewish identity in a surrounding hostile culture. They are clinging on. They are desperate for signs of hope. They look with longing for some outside intervention that will force some change in their appalling circumstances.

Their psalmist voiced their despair in Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion… How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?

It was the very lowest point in that nation’s history.

Then along comes the prophet who brings the long-awaited word of hope. His words are recorded in chapters 40-55 of the Book of Isaiah. The exiled people of Israel can look forward to an end to their captivity. A new empire, that of Persia, has arisen and its all-conquering Emperor, Cyrus, has his sights set on Babylon and he was in the practice, for very good political reasons, of allowing exiled peoples to return home and rebuild their nations. Outside intervention is on its way. The people can hope again. They can lift up their heads. They can take heart. They will be able to return and restore Jerusalem. And all this is God’s work. His ways are higher and more mysterious than they can imagine. He will bring his people home.

So now is the time to get ready. Now is the time for God’s people to make sure their relationship with God is right. They are going to be given another chance, so now is the time to repent. Now is the time to turn to him.

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

And when they do turn to God in repentance and hope, they will find a satisfaction which all their petty and selfish attitudes can never give.

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.

So what is this richest of fare that God invites them and us to partake of? It is obviously more than physical sustenance. It is God’s very presence that will sustain them and us. It is God’s faithful love that will surround them and us. God is offering fullness of life. That is his purpose for every human being.

David, Israel’s greatest leader and king, knew this so well. Psalm 63, the psalm we read earlier, is attributed to David. So let’s go to the desert of Judah in about 1000 BC. This is the very lowest point of David’s life. His own son, Absalom, whom he loved was trying to kill his father, David, and usurp the throne. Can you imagine anything more likely to bring you to a point of utter despair? David is having to flee in the desert from his own son. So David seeks hope and sustenance from the only source that he knows can provide – from the living God himself.

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you. I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

The barrenness of the desert reflects the desolation of David’s heart. Yet he finds hope in God. He remembers those times when he has known God’s presence:

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

And he allows those memories to fill his being and bring him hope once more:

I will be satisfied with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

He knows that life itself in all its fullness and richness comes from God alone, so he will not fail to worship him and trust him.

Every few weeks a paper is produced by Holy Trinity Brompton, the church where the Alpha Course was born. It regularly tells of people whose lives have been radically changed because they have found God’s life in all its fullness, a life that puts everything else they have experienced into the shade. In February they printed the story of Mark Edwards. He had been expelled from school three times and ended up, in his own words, “doing all this mad stuff – selling drugs, fighting and robbing people.” He felt that he had to do these things to find and experience life. They seemed to be the “kicks” that kept him going. However, they never satisfied and he reached the lowest point possible:

Among the mayhem of being psychologically battered by illegal substances I considered ending my life… I remember saying a prayer saying, “Well, God, are you real or are you not, because I want to find out tomorrow if you are.” I was going to end my life. I said the prayer in my own room. Then I lay back on my bed, switched on the TV, and saw a scene of Galilee in the Holy Land. Then I heard a voice saying, “Mark, I do love you.” I thought, “Well, I’m not high and I’m not drunk. So this can’t be that.” But the timing of it was so perfect. I really thought, “Wow! There must be something.”

And that was the start of an amazing journey to a relationship with God and a full time career as a Christian rap artist. He says, “Now Jesus is my whole life. He is the reason I get up in the morning.”

So we have a nation, Israel, at its lowest point recovering hope and we have a person, David, at his lowest point recovering hope. For the nation and for David, repentance, worship and remembering God’s faithful love are keys to that recovery of life. For Mark Edwards it was just crying out to God out of despair.

The invitation to life is available to everyone. Why waste our time on poor value substitutes? If God is offering life, why turn elsewhere?

Well, let’s move on to the gospel reading. God may offer us life, but he looks for fruit from us.

I am useless with growing things. I do not know how to keep them alive. Either I swamp them with too much water or I give them too little. The result is always the same. They tend to die if left in my care. Viv was away leading a retreat for four days last week. When she arrived home, what was the first thing she did? She raced around with one of these little watering cans with long spouts desperately trying to revive the house plants I had totally neglected. She made the passing comment the next morning that the plants all seemed to have perked up. I took the point. You see, she is a life-giver and she expects the plants that she nurtures and tends to flower and bear fruit.

Jesus tells the parable of the fig tree. From the fig tree the owner expects fruit. If it does not produce, it does not fulfil its purpose. A tree that does not fruit is taking up room, feeding off the land and not giving in return. In the parable, the tree is given another chance. It will be dug round and fertilised for another year.

The fig tree in the parable was all promise and no performance. It had its leaves, but it did not produce fruit, and that was its main purpose. It was helped and encouraged to bear fruit, but so far it had not responded.

All things have a purpose – and that includes us. The life-giver, the living God who has come to us in Jesus Christ, is offering us life. He calls us to receive and then to bear fruit. It matters how we live. It matters how we use the life we have been given.

This season of Lent is an opportunity to reflect again on all that we have been given in Christ – his presence with us always, the guidance of his word, his unfailing love, his forgiveness, his peace that passes understanding. And it is an opportunity to repent – to turn from those values and lifestyles and habits that somehow sell us short. And it is a time to respond and to bear fruit through actions that make a difference in God’s world.

The invitation made to the exiled people of Israel is an invitation to us.

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, but wine and milk, without money and without cost.

Later we have the opportunity to receive once again bread and wine, those symbols of Jesus’ life laid down and Jesus’ life offered to us. Let’s eat and drink of him. And, as the final words of the service will say, go in peace to love and serve the Lord. In the name of Christ, Amen.