River Rising

Hidden Gems

9. “River Rising”

Ezekiel 47:1-12

First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown , New York

The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet

August 21, 2011

The sermon today is about a river. It is about water. In this drought-plagued summer of 2011, the lack of such has started to affect even the patterns and ministries of churches. I’ve heard it is particularly dry in the Plains states, especially so in Kansas . (If you’ve watched Johnny Carson over the years, you know that this is the place where you are supposed to say: “How dry is it?”) It’s so dry in Kansas that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling, the Methodists are using wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are handing out rain-checks, and the Catholics even are praying for the wine to turn back into water.* That’s pretty dry!

But in our passage from Ezekiel, conditions are better. Water is flowing, first as a rivulet from the sanctuary of the temple and out from beneath its threshold and it was ankle-deep, and then as it continued it became a knee-deep brook, and a little farther on a waist-deep stream, and then finally it turned into a full-fledged river that was deep enough in which to swim and so wide it could not be crossed, a great river.

This was a vision that a spirit guide in the form of a man but who was really the Lord was showing Ezekiel and the man said to Ezekiel, “Mortal, have you seen this?” He had, and so the man then led Ezekiel back along the river bank and as he walked Ezekiel saw groves of thriving trees on both sides of the river. The man said to Ezekiel, “This water is flowing east and going down into the Arabah…” The Arabah is a stretch of land between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, one of the lowest points on earth, and it is hot and dry and virtually without rain. Then the man said, “Wending its way through the Arabah, the river enters the sea, ‘the sea of stagnant waters,’ the Dead Sea (which is sometimes called the Salt Sea ), and the water of the sea becomes fresh.”

And then this denouement. The man said, “Wherever the river flows, life will flourish – great schools of fish – because the river is turning the salt sea into fresh water. Where the river flows, life abounds. Fishermen will stand shoulder to shoulder along the shore from En Gedi all the way north to En-eglaim, casting their nets. The sea will teem with fish of all kinds, like the fish of the Great Mediterranean …And the river, on both banks, will grow fruit trees of all kinds. Their leaves won’t wither, the fruit won’t fail. Every month they’ll bear fresh fruit because the river from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing” (Eugene H. Peterson, The Message, Ezekiel 47:9,10,12).

Most prophets were told to write what they heard. Ezekiel, however, was told to write what he saw. Other prophets may have spoken more eloquently. Some may have written more skillfully. But none saw more vividly than Ezekiel. What he saw was God at work where and when it seemed least obvious. When people saw a slum or a tenement, Ezekiel saw God renovating the neighborhood. When people saw despair, Ezekiel saw God offering opportunity and growth. When people saw death and decay, Ezekiel saw God bringing life to dry bones.

The visions given to Ezekiel were salve and balm for ancient Israel whose life and land had been pillaged and plundered by the Babylonians who also carried off many of the Israelites, including Ezekiel, into exile in Babylon . But Ezekiel’s visions are for us as well, for America , and then also for us in our own lives. The visions still hold. In our own dry and dreary times, be they the present economic enervations or the political perils of these days or our own physical, emotional, or spiritual upheavals, the river of God’s word and presence flowing from the sanctuary can make even the most fallow or fetid of lives fecund and fruitful again.

Ezekiel’s message first is for the nation, for Israel , and much of it is pretty stark and dark. A nation that forgets that God loves justice and mercy; a nation that forgets that God cares about the little people and lowly as much or more as the high and lifted up; a nation that forgets that it matters to the Creator that life is lived according to the Owner’s instructions and after the Owner’s heart, that nation is doomed to desolation and despair as indeed has been the case for every empire in history that did not get the message that there is nothing immoral that is wise in the long run. But if the nation allows the word and heart of God to flow into its life, if the nation once again gets “with the flow,” then hope and healing and restoration are possible. If something as barren and lifeless as the Dead Sea can live again, then surely, too, can the nation whose heart gets turned to God, not as a prop to partisan politics but as a prompt toward liberty and justice for all.

But Ezekiel’s vision applies for each of us in our own lives as well. His vision ostensibly was about rebuilding the ruined temple, for the temple was the epi-center of Jewish life and faith. But the vision even was bigger than that. It was about rebuilding the life of the people of God after the catastrophe that had laid waste to it and dispersed them to distant lands. In precisely the conditions that caused the people to feel hopeless, Ezekiel saw hope. In exactly the circumstances that the people experienced as judgment, Ezekiel saw the stirrings of mercy. In just the situations that reeked of death, Ezekiel saw sprigs of new life.

The hymn-writer John Newton channels Ezekiel when he writes

See, the streams of living waters, Springing from eternal love,

Well supply thy sons and daughters And all fear of want remove.

Who can faint while such a river Ever flows their thirst to assuage?

Grace, which like the Lord the giver, Never fails from age to age.

(-John Newton, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,”

The Presbyterian Hymnal, No. 446)

What we are doing here Sunday after Sunday is learning to trust the River of God ’s word and presence flowing from the sanctuary of God, flowing out of worship into our lives, into the week, into the world. Not just getting in ankle-deep or knee-deep or waist-deep, but immersing ourselves in the River. Have you ever gotten into a swimming pool or a lake or an ocean a little bit at a time? The water seems frigid compared to the warm sunshine in which you have been sitting and so you think you want to “get used” to the water. So first you put your feet in, then your legs, then maybe you slip into the water up to your waist. But that way is tortuous. Just get in! It is not until you are “all in” that the water begins to feel refreshing and comfortable, warm, good.

What we are doing here Sunday after Sunday is learning to trust the River of God ’s word and presence flowing from the sanctuary of God, flowing out of worship into our lives, into the week, into the world. Some people have ankle-deep religion in which they acknowledge God. They are the ones who say something like “I believe in God” and think that’s really something. Some make a little more of a commitment – they get in knee-deep – and spend some time in church and worship and appreciating the beauty around them in the world but their faith really is in themselves and their own abilities and accomplishments. Some people get in up to their waist, like good church people who are in many ways the backbones of congregations and are great organizationally but who do not really give their hearts to God in a personal way that allows them to experience the presence, the promises, or the power of God in their lives.

This preacher’s exhortation today is to trust the River. Get in, all of you – with all of yourself. Let the river of God’s word and presence wash over you, hold you up, refresh your life, help you to grow like those trees along the river banks whose leaves do not wither and whose fruit does not fail. A lot of people do not trust the River because their experiences of life do not conform to their expectations of what God should do or be for them. How could a good God let me get sick like this? If there is a God, how could the world be in such a mess? Why do bad things happen to good people?

Well, I like Denise Levertov’s response in her poem entitled “Celebration”:

Celebration

Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.

Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,

deft hands. And every prodigy of green –

whether it's ferns or lichens or needles

or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –

greener than ever before. And the way the conifers

hold new cones to the light for the blessing,

a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind

transcribes for them!

A day that shines in the cold

like a first-prize brass band swinging along

the street

of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds

with the claims of reasonable gloom.

“A day that shines…like a first-prize band swinging along the street of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds with the claims of reasonable gloom.” That is my experience of God, of the River of God ’s word and presence that flows from the sanctuary across a lifetime. We cannot know the intimacies and intricacies of God from the shore but only by swimming in the River. We can learn and know some things about God from the vantage point of the river bank. We can voice our intellectual criticisms and complaints from the dry land. All well and good, perhaps, as a part of our journey into God. But we shall not come to understand the ways and heart of God unless we give ourselves wholly to the River. It is the River that flows with God’s word and presence that brings life to that which is fearful, tired, half-dead, apathetic, waning in hope.

In the New Testament, what Ezekiel means by the River is called living water. In the New Testament, Jesus himself is the temple from whom flows God’s living water. John’s gospel makes clear that the living water offered in Christ is the Holy Spirit who brings life and faith and understanding to us, who ministers God’s heart and presence to us, who, in the words of another Levertov poem, “encompasses, encompasses.” We are encouraged to drink of the living water for those who drink of it, Jesus says, will never be thirsty for love or God or meaning in life. We’ll be like the psalmist who could not make sense of the world or life or even his own circumstances until he went into the sanctuary of God. Then, he said, “I understood.”

But today is Ezekiel’s day and his metaphor is of a river rising with God’s grace and presence and hope and healing, for the river is God. We are invited to swim in it, in this One in whom we live and move and have our being. At such a River you do not want to be standing on the shore and you do not want to be in it only a little bit. You want to be all in, for this is the River of Life .

Amen.

Return to the Sermons and Articles Page

Return to the Sermon Archives Page