A sermon by Rev. Dan Calvo
Pittsburgh New Church
September 14th, 2025
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There are currently 2 billion people who lack access to safe drinking water. That is one in four human beings who do not have access to safe water to drink. Over 1 million people die every year from lack of access to safe drinking water, and it is estimated that every two minutes a child dies from an illness due to contaminated water. These are horrifying statistics from the year 2025, after centuries of technological development and sanitation efforts, and it is truly painful to imagine what life would have been like 2000 years ago, in the times when Jesus was ministering to the people of Israel. Dying of thirst or diseases from drinking contaminated water would have been a common experience in the lives of the people of Israel. So when the Lord is telling us to serve the thirsty, at the time when He was saying that He wasn't just referring to someone who is coming home from a hot day and could really use a glass of water. Thirst, both 2000 years ago and in our modern world, was an all too prevalent life-or-death situation.
There are millions of people in the world who can only get water from sources that are hours away from their homes who can only get water once every few days. And even for many of these people who have some access to water when that water is contaminated it can lead to multiple deadly illnesses. Now thankfully we live in a part of the world in which this is not as much of a problem. Most of us have not dealt with extreme thirst nor have we ever dealt with lack of immediate access to safe drinking water but nevertheless this is still a massive problem that is affecting millions of people around the world, and if the Lord is telling us to help the thirsty, how do we help the people who are dealing with these terrible conditions? Fortunately, there are many organizations that provide clean drinking water and water treatment equipment in many affected communities and households around the world, and there are many opportunities for us to donate to those organizations and volunteer to help in making sure that every human being around the world can have access to clean drinking water.
However, in the New Church we not only focus on serving others in a natural way, but we are also called by the Lord to serve others in a spiritual way. Last week we talked about how serving the hungry does not only mean to serve people who are suffering from food insecurity but also serving people who are lacking good and charity in their life. Water provides the other side of that coin. Serving the thirsty in the natural sense means to help provide clean drinking water for people who need it, but in the spiritual sense it means helping those who are struggling to find truth and meaning and hope in their lives.
This is because just as food in the Word is a symbol for good, water in the Word is a symbol for truth. Now these truths aren't just factual knowledge from science and philosophy, but these are deeper spiritual truths that we can find in the Word. These are truths such as that there is a God who created us and who wants us to be happy; that there is goodness within every single one of us; and that there is an eternal life. These are all truths that we can find in the Word, and they can help us fulfill a very important need within ourselves: the need for meaning. Because we all struggle with these universal questions about meaning and faith, like “why are we here? What is our purpose? Is there any hope for the future?” And when we struggle to find answers to these questions there can be a lot of suffering in our hearts. And that's suffering that comes from a lack of truth, which is represented in the Word by thirst.
A passage from the book Secrets of Heaven, which you can find in the back of your pamphlet, explains this idea further, by saying that:
'Thirst' represents a craving and desiring, and it has a reference to truth just as 'hunger' has reference to good; and this from the meaning of 'water' as the truth of faith. (…) When a person enters temptation because of a lack of truth he is gripped by an intense desire for it, and at the same time by despair of eternal salvation on account of this. These feelings are responsible for the grief at that time and for the complaining. (AC 8568)
When we lack truth, we can end up suffering in ways that spiritually can be very similar to the pain that we experience when we don't have access to water. You may have heard this fact before, but while we can survive without eating any food for as long as a month, we cannot survive without drinking water for more than three days. In the same way, when we are going through really hard challenges in our lives, there may be times in which we can make it through those difficult challenges for a longer period of time even when we lack good or kindness around us, if we have some truths to hold on to. But if we do not have truths to hold onto, if we lack meaning, if we lack hope, if we lack faith, our chances of making it through those challenges become much lower.
There is a story from the book “Man's search for meaning” that was written by psychologist Viktor Frankl about his experience as a prisoner in a concentration camp during World War 2. In his book Frankl mentioned that from Christmas time in 1944 to New Years in 1945, the death rate among the prisoners in the concentration camp skyrocketed. And while trying to figure out why this happened, they arrived at the conclusion that the main reason why these victims passed in this time period was not necessarily because the conditions in the camp became harder than they already were, but because they lost hope. These prisoners had been told that they would be out of the concentration camp by Christmas time and when they realized that this was not going to happen, when that hope was taken away from them, they lost their faith, and their will to live. Meanwhile, prisoners who were able to hold on to the hope that they would make it out of that terrible situation were able to survive longer. And when reflecting on these experiences in his book, Viktor Frankl said this:
“Any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. (…) Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why—an aim—for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence.”
In these terrible conditions, where these prisoners were surrounded by hatred, anger, death and violence, all they had to hold on to in order to survive was their faith, and once they lost that faith, they weren't able to make it. This is a horrifying example from a very dark time in history, but it serves to illustrate the idea that we are talking about. When we don’t have truth or faith to hold onto, we may go through a crisis and suffering that can be very difficult to overcome.
Spiritual thirst can take many forms, and chances are that we know people who are struggling with it right now. There may be people in our lives who are struggling with things like low self-esteem, where they aren’t able to see anything good about themselves, or perhaps we know people who are struggling with anxiety about the news, or even people who are struggling to find any hope that there will ever be a good future for them in this world.
Now it is very important to recognize that in the natural level of the problem of lacking access to clean drinking water, one of the most important aspects of that problem it's not only the access to water, but the access to water that is safe and clean to consume. If those who are spiritually thirsty find bad answers to the problems that they are struggling with, it would be like someone who is dying of thirst drinking contaminated water in the hopes of surviving. People in that situation are already struggling so they will drink whatever they have available to them even if it is contaminated and unfortunately that is something that happens a lot when dealing with spiritual thirst in our world. A lot of people who are struggling with these spiritual problems will find answers to their problems in very unhealthy places that will lead them down a path of hatred, ignorance, materialism or selfishness. For example, when someone is struggling with self esteem if they watch a YouTube video that tells them that it’s true, they are worthless and nobody will ever love them, that is a terrible falsity but it is the only idea that a lot of people receive when they are suffering from spiritual thirst, and this happens quite often. So how can we as people of the New Church, who are trying to help others who are struggling with spiritual thirst, provide good clean spiritual water? How can we support these people who are suffering? Thankfully we have access to the original source of endless clean spiritual water: the Word.
The Lord has told us that whoever drinks the water that He provides will never be thirsty again, because the water that He will give us will become a fountain of water springing up to eternal life. This is a very powerful spiritual concept because the Lord is telling us that when we are suffering from spiritual thirst, we can go to the Word to look for the truth. The Lord is telling us where we can find the truth that can satisfy that spiritual thirst. When we are serving people who are suffering from spiritual thirst, we can share with them the ideas and the truths and the doctrines that we learn from the Word and the Writings. That can have a massive impact on someone's life. For example, when someone is struggling with finding worth in themselves, we can tell them that they are a miniature heaven, and that the Lord created them to bring something to the world that is unique and special. When we find someone who is struggling with the question of “why are we here?” we can answer “you are here because the Lord loves you and wanted you to exist so that He could share good and loving things with you.” When someone is wondering “what is the purpose of life?” We can answer the purpose of life is to become an angel and that means acting in such a way that will emulate what an Angel is by treating others with kindness and following the commandments of the Lord. When someone wonders if there is ever going to be a good future, we can answer “yes, the Lord is constantly working to lead all of us to a good result not only on this natural world, but also in the spiritual world, even to eternity.”
There is endless clean spiritual water from the Word that we can share with the people who are struggling in our lives. And while we ourselves as individuals may not be able to completely change that person's perspective or completely satisfy that spiritual thirst maybe we can help at the very least by guiding the people in our lives who are struggling with spiritual thirst towards a good direction. Perhaps we can point them to a story from the Word that may apply to them, or a verse from the book of Psalms that may offer some comfort, or a number from Divine Providence that may bring them some hope. And the Lord will take it from there. So we can minister not only in sharing our own understandings of what the Word has to say to make someone’s life richer and fuller and healthier but more importantly, we can share the original source of those truths with them, and when we go to the original source of that truth which is the Word there will never be any end to the spiritual water and sustenance that we can share with others from it.
Just as we can do with those who are struggling with natural thirst, we can serve the people who are struggling with spiritual thirst by helping to connect them with a source of sustenance. We can connect others with the original source of clean spiritual water and sustenance: the Word. When we do this, we will be serving the thirsty in the way that the Lord wants us to do. Amen.