The Fountain Flows Still | A Sermon on Cracked Cisterns and the Hope of God's Grief
A Sermon by the Reverend Crystal Hardin for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 31, 2025.
Jeremiah 2:4-13; Hebrews 13:1-8; 15-16
There is a sound that echoes through the pages of Jeremiah, and if you listen closely you’ll hear it even now.
It is the sound of heartbreak.
My people have changed their glory
for something that does not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord.
For my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
and dug cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
that can hold no water.
It is not the rage of God we hear, though the prophet does not spare us sharp words. It is the grief of God, a grief so vivid it feels like it crosses the centuries to meet us here today.
This is the grief of a parent who has given everything only to see their children turn away, wander off, and settle for less.
They had a fountain. A spring that never runs dry. Living water. But they turned away and chipped away at the earth to make containers for themselves, cracked ones at that, unable to hold what they most need.
My friends. We know something about this.
We know what it is to chase after things that cannot hold us. That cannot meet our deepest desires and most profound needs.
We know what it is to dig cisterns in the form of careers, possessions, political saviors, the approval of others, as though these could quench our soul-thirst. We know what it is to give ourselves over to habits and hungers that sure feed something . . . but it ain't our souls.
Jeremiah’s grief is as contemporary as the morning news.
I’m sure we are all mindful, as we sit here this morning, of the profound sorrow that rippled across the news this week: a shooting at Annunciation Catholic School during a Mass, where two young children were killed, many others were injured, and lives were changed forever. A lost, broken soul, a child of God, committing unspeakable acts against other children of God.
Fear. Chaos. Violence. Loss of life. In a place of prayer —precisely where living water should flow freely, where safety and sanctuary should be, and were, assumed.
We mourn with those families, and with every community shaken by this violence. We grieve with Jeremiah’s God, who wept over a people turning away from fountains of life.
And yet, even here—in the shadow of such horror—the Word calls us back: not to despair, but to remember that the fountain still flows.
—-
You see, if Jeremiah speaks to the tragedy of our turning away from the one who loves us best, Hebrews sketches out the beauty and the freedom in turning toward.
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured . . . Be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Notice that Hebrews does not urge us to dig our own cisterns. Instead Hebrews points us back to the fountain. And the fountain is Christ himself —constant, unchanging, faithful —and found in the faces of each and every child of God.
Here’s the trouble, though: sometimes, cracked cisterns feel easier.
It can feel easier to buy more than to be content.
Easier to avoid the stranger than to welcome them.
Easier to criticize the imprisoned than to remember them as if we were bound with them.
Easier to protect our resources than to share them.
Easier to value our own freedom at the expense of another human soul.
It’s no wonder God’s heart breaks.
But here is the Gospel, the Good News: God’s heartbreak is not the end of the story.
God’s love is.
And the living water Christ offers from that love is the only thing that can cleanse the wreckage of violence that happened this week at Annunciation. It is the only thing that can embolden a community to stand with broken families, to hold trembling children, to pray in the rubble—and still believe in grace.
—
One of my favorite hymns puts it this way: “Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.”
The fountain is still flowing. Even when we have dug our cracked cisterns, even when we have wandered, the fountain has not run dry. The fount of every blessing still pours out grace.
This is what Jeremiah longed for. This is what Hebrews testifies to. The fountain is Jesus Christ, yesterday and today and forever.
A story comes to mind—about a weary traveler lost in a drought-ridden land. Thirsty, desperate, she stumbles upon a cracked cistern. She lifts the lid only to see it’s bone-dry.
Crestfallen, she sinks to her knees, and in that moment, hears the steady trickle of water. Following the sound, she finds a fountain hidden beneath the dust—fresh, cool, abundant.
That traveler might well be us. Tempted to settle for what's broken, near despairing when our wells go dry. Yet grace—a fountain—waits below the rubble.
—
Jeremiah’s lament at our turning away and Hebrews’ exhortation to us to turn toward converge at the table we are about to approach.
Here is the fountain of living water.
Here is the sacrifice of praise.
Here is the one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
When we gather at this table, we are reminded that God’s grief has been transfigured into grace. God’s heartbreak has become God’s self-offering.
The broken cisterns we have dug are not the final word. The final word is Jesus Christ, pouring himself out for us, filling us with living water, sending us out to love and serve in his name.
—
Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
There is our call. It was our call yesterday. It is our call today. And it will be our call still tomorrow.
To praise.
To do good.
To share.
To love fiercely.
And to remember always that the fountain has not run dry. God has not, will not, desert us.
It is reported that the gunshots at Annunciation Catholic School interrupted a reading of Psalm 139, which begins:
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.
Where can I go then from your Spirit?
where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there;
if I make the grave my bed, you are also there.
—
Friends, the cracked cisterns will tempt us. They always do. But there is living water here. Living water that restores, renews, redeems. Living water that will never leave us comfortless.
So come. Return to the fountain. Drink deeply. Be healed. Then go, carrying living water into a world that desperately thirsts but that is not beyond the hope that is you. The hope that is God.
Amen.
