When is a "Footlong" not a "Footlong". The answer is when it’s a Subway sandwich that is only eleven inches in length. That was the delicacy a teenager named Matt Corby received when he ordered a footlong sub in a Subway in Perth, Australia. But he thought it did it look quite right, so before he bit into it he pulled out a tape measure to confirm that this sandwich was an inch short of the full twelve. He posted a photo of it on Subway Australia's Facebook page and it quickly received over 100,000 "Likes".
Well if you’re Subway how do you respond to this Public Relations disaster? Well, you lightheartedly admit your mistake, poke fun at yourself, and give Matt Corby lots of free sandwiches. You turn it into an opportunity to raise people’s awareness of your excellent restaurant and delicious sandwiches, while also showing that you are humble, have a sense of fun, and a generous heart. What you don’t do is publish this piece of legalese on your Facebook page: "With regards to the size of the bread, 'SUBWAY FOOTLONG' is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub and not intended to be a measurement of length. The length of the bread baked in the restaurant cannot be assured each time as the proofing process may vary slightly each time in the restaurant."
So guess which option Subway Australia chose. But in the world of corporations seeking to snatch from its customers as much as they can get away with, Subway is no match for the manufacturers of printer ink. AI tells me that the average price of printer ink is $9,000 a gallon.” It is probably the most expensive liquid you will ever buy, perhaps even more than your fanciest perfume or cologne. But it’s a bargain when you consider the most expensive drink in the world. That is The Emerald Isle Triple-Distilled Irish Whiskey, at $2.8 Million a bottle and it’s just a regular glass bottle – no diamonds or gold.
Speaking of the cost of drinks, “On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing in the temple, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’’” You know what Jesus had in mind when he said this? Isaiah chapter 55, that’s what. Isaiah says, “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.” Keep your fancy perfumes, Put that Irish whiskey back in the cellar, shelve your extortionary printer ink, and all your costly liquids of every kind, this one’s free. The drinks are on God, and this drink will satisfy you in a way that no earthly substance can.
It’s the Feast of Pentecost, and for a change I thought we’d focus on the Gospel lesson rather than that famous reading from Acts, because we’re going to drink of one of the great biblical metaphors. Water. Living water. Living water that Jesus promises will flow from our hearts. It’s a great reading for the Feast of Pentecost. Because we are born of water and of the Spirit, we have received our hearts’ content. Our lives are full, our souls satisfied, we have all we need. It’s when we think we don’t that we feel thirsty and go chasing after stuff that can’t satisfy. So, each day we come to the fountain and we are filled with refreshing, life-giving, spirit-reviving water. Water is the stuff of life. Nothing lives without it. AI (again) says that the water you drink today is the same as the dinosaurs drank billions of years ago. The water you were baptized with is the water God created at the beginning of this planet. There’s a thought. It rains, the water collects, it’s used, it evaporates, it becomes clouds, it’s purified, it rains, and here we go again. God stopped creating water a very very long time ago. He’s been recycling ever since.
Water gives life to creation. It also changes creation. There are a few experiences in life that you never forget. Visiting the Grand Canyon is one of them. I was blessed to do that ten years ago. Like millions of visitors before me I reached the rim of the Grand Canyon and lost the power to move. Nothing can prepare you for this moment. I stood, paralyzed, staring, unable to take my eyes off this indescribable rift in the earth’s surface. Surely, I thought, a person could die here just from gazing, mesmerized, unaware of the passing of time, until they cease breathing from old age or hunger, and not even feel it. Every few minutes, I walked some steps along the pathway at the rim, and stopped and became transfixed by the same scene but from a slightly different perspective. And that new perspective was like encountering a whole other canyon that demanded more attention. It was a living creature, twisting in response to the shadows cast by moving clouds.
I popped into one of the information huts at the rim of the Canyon and there I learned how it had been formed. And my eyes were opened to a deep truth about, not just this physical world, but about God and humans.
Here’s what I learned on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Water defeats rock. It just does. You may have to wait many years, millions of years even, but water will always defeat rock. Nothing can resist the living water for ever. You see, the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon is the same as it has always been. It’s just water, making its journey from earth to sky and back again. But over millions of years it has eroded the rock over which it flows, and descended inch by inch, down and down, to its present location, 6,093 feet below where it started. That’s the power of living water. Give it enough time, and water will erode miles of rock.
How’s that for a message of Pentecost? The water of the Holy Spirit does not just refresh and revive us, keeping us alive, it also erodes the rocky places. Hearts can become calloused. At their worst, they become encased in a stony, resistant shell. Occasionally you come across someone whose heart is so encrusted that you wouldn’t even know it was there beneath all the granite deposits of pain, failure, and loss. All you can see is the cynicism, the anger, the hate, a life that was once recognizably human, but now appears less so – you can’t quite work it out, but this is not a heart that is fully alive. It’s Pentecost 2026, and how do we need the power of the living water to erode human hardness? If it took millions of years for the Colorado River to erode its riverbed to the depth of 6,000 feet, how long will it take for God’s living water – the Holy Spirit of Pentecost – to erode the hardness of human hearts? English common law has a phrase for it – depraved indifference.
There’s a song by the folk-rock band The Lumineers, in which they sing, “It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all. The opposite of love's indifference.” The opposite of love is indifference. I always thought that hate was the opposite of love, but the Lumineers are right; it is indifference. The ‘can’t be bothered’ attitude that sees human suffering and does nothing about it. It’s the sin of religious leaders hurrying by the victim of muggers in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Maybe we should rename that story. How does the Parable of the Indifferent Religious Folks sound?
I’m glad water defeats rock. I need to hear that. I need it when I look out at a calloused world where human beings made in God’s image are reduced to just resources to be used and disposed of when it’s expedient; and where the world breathes a sigh of boredom at a war or a natural disaster or a grave injustice it deems has been going on too long and flips the channel to find something more entertaining; or where the world shrugs at evil and yawns at depravity, where the unacceptable is accepted and where justice is just ice. And I see the sediment building up, getting harder, creeping over my own heart, and I see that I’m part of the problem. But water defeats rock. It might take years, but God’s Spirit can drip, drip, drip onto the rock, flow, flow flow over the compacted sediment and erode it, freeing the soft, sensitive human heart that still lives beneath the shell.
Once, a few years ago, it was a piece of garbage; and a hazardous piece of garbage at that. It was sharp, dangerous, able to slice through a child’s foot as she paddles in a rockpool, or lacerate the throat of a seabird digging for treats. But over the years, the patient power of the living water has smoothed the sharp edges. The jagged crookedness has been sanded away. The waves have massaged the brokenness and transformed dangerous trash into a jewel that makes children giggle when they find it on the beach. It is, of course, sea glass, and it is a perfect picture of how the water of the Holy Spirit changes us.
Water defeats rock. Water smooths glass. The living water of the Holy Spirit drips and rubs at depraved indifference. Hard hearts can’t resist for too long. The Spirit will drip and wash and flow and disturb, and the rocky heart will erode.
I often want to change. I get angry and intolerant with my selfish impulses. Sometimes I want to change so badly that if I could make a deal with God and somehow purchase a pill that took away my greed, my resentment, my irrational fears, my depraved indifference, there’s nothing I wouldn’t pay for that pill. But pills are prescribed by doctors and dispensed by pharmacists. God’s ways are different – painstakingly, irritatingly, frustratingly different. For God, the way of change is slow, gradual attrition. The Holy Spirit erodes my sharp edges, makes jagged, dangerous aspects of my character smooth. God won’t change you until you’re ready to grow. The Holy Spirit will take time to erode the rock and smooth the edge. Be patient. But decide today, Pentecost 2026 that now is the time to place yourself more and more in the flow of God’s Spirit, and gradually over time you’ll see the changes you thirst for.