Ezekiel 47: 1-12
October 4, 2020
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
If you drive up to Tuttle Creek and look at the area where water was released during the flood of 1993 you’ll see how the rushing water cut away the land beneath it, exposing rocks and fossils that hadn’t seen the light of day for, what? Millions of years?
Water is an incredibly powerful force. A drop of water alone is small, insignificant. But a whole rushing river? Now that’s power.
A few years ago now I read a book by John Barry called Rising Tide, all about the 1927 flooding along the Mississippi River. One of the things I learned from this book was how some of our methods of attempting to control powerful waterways can backfire. For example, when levee systems are built we inadvertently create a bigger and deeper river channel. When we increase the amount of water a river can hold it becomes more powerful and carves out an even deeper channel.
The bigger a body of water is, the harder it is to control. The deeper a river runs, the more powerful it becomes.
This week marks the beginning of our annual stewardship campaign. A time when we are asked to prayerfully consider the ways we can each add our own drop or splash of water to the river of faith that is First Congregational UCC. In pre-pandemic times, when we would pass the offering plates during worship I would invite everyone to touch the plates as they go past as a physical act of remembering that we are all in this together. What we can do together is so much greater than what we can do alone. And whether it’s giving our time, energy, money, or skills….we are all like a river that runs deeper and stronger over time. When we commit ourselves to being a part of this community of faith we amplify our individual offerings, exponentially increasing our impact. [1]
I talked with the kids today about how we are like a mighty river because we are stronger together than we ever could be alone. And whether it’s giving our time, energy, money, or skills….we are all like a river that runs deeper and stronger over time. When we commit ourselves to being a part of this community of faith we amplify our individual offerings, exponentially increasing our impact.
This past year, many of us have come to rely on our faith and this community of faith in new and profound ways. As we do our best to get out of bed each day in the midst of the pandemic, political unrest, systems of oppression and violence….it can be tempting to fall into a state of hopelessness and panic. Our faith in God can be a liferaft in the sea of despair. Desperately we cling to ancient words like the ones we heard from the Psalmist today: “Be still and know that I am God.” We pray with tears, with silence, with sighs too deep for words and, for a moment, we find peace and know that we are enveloped in God’s embrace.
Or….we don’t find peace. And our faith can feel far away or small. We wonder, “Is God with us still? Where is God in this midst of all of this?” And we give thanks for a church where it’s okay to ask those questions. We feel our hearts soothed when we connect with someone from church over the phone, or an outdoor visit, or in a Zoom small group. We share our fears, our doubts, our highs, our lows. Day by day we “bear each other’s burdens and share each other’s joys.” We continue to “pray for each other and serve in the name of Christ.” We continue to “give to this church and its mission and take our stand for justice and peace, confident God’s concern embraces the whole world.”
Thanks be to God for a community of faith that sustains us even when faith feels stagnant. Thanks be to God for rituals that steady us even when we’re full of questions. Thanks be to God for the living water that flows from this congregation.
The prophet Ezekiel knew about the power of water. Now, I’m guessing most of us gathered here today don’t know a whole lot about Ezekiel. If you were to dig really deep into your Bible knowledge you might recall that he’s the guy who has the vision of the valley of dry bones.
Ezekiel lived in the time of the Exile, the 6th century BCE. Israel was conquered in a series of battles and the people were taken away to Babylon. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Several generations of people lived through this terrible national trauma. Many of the Biblical prophets wrote during this time - Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Obadiah, parts of Isaiah. Most of them were left behind in Judah during the Exile, but Ezekiel was taken to Babylon. When he spoke about the pain and anxiety and grief of Exile, he spoke about it as a person with firsthand knowledge.
After 25 long years in Exile….25 years away from his homeland….25 years of living in an in-between time...25 years of worrying and wondering if this would ever end...25 years of feeling unmoored, adrift at sea….after 25 years of this Ezekiel spoke the words Tanya shared today.
Ezekiel shares a vision of hope for the future. He casts a vision of a river flowing from the mount of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. He shares that after 25 years of exile, God spoke to him and lifted him up, carrying him to Jerusalem where he encountered a man whose appearance shone like bronze. This man of bronze showed him the new temple and, from it, a river that flowed for miles and miles.
As Ezekiel and the man traveled down the river, Ezekiel noticed it was becoming deeper and deeper, more powerful with every twist and turn. The river flowed to and through the Arabah, a dry-river-valley that extends from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the Dead Sea in the South. It’s a arid region, not a place you’d expect to find a river overflowing with living water.
Ezekiel’s mighty river flows directly into the Dead Sea, which he describes as having “stagnant waters.” The Dead Sea is an incredibly salty body of water. So salty, in fact that many plants and animals you would normally find in a large body of water can’t live there. But in Ezekiel’s vision, this changes. The massive quantity of fresh water cascading into it shifts the balance. A place that was once unable to sustain life is suddenly teeming with new life. The water becomes fresh, Ezekiel says. Fish are abundant and all kinds of trees grow on the banks and bear good fruit. People come from near and far to cast their nets and give thanks for the sustenance found in this place. “Where the river goes,” Ezekiel says, “everything will live.”
This river that begins as a trickle at the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem….this river that slowly builds in power and might as it flows into the Arabah….this river that brings freshness and living water to the dry and stagnant places....this river transforms the world in ways that seem impossible. This river, which flows from the throne of God, is a river that uses its power for good. It brings healing, hope, new life everywhere it flows.
Ezekiel shared this powerful vision of hope with people who had been living in Exile for 25 years. 25 years.
25 years was not long enough to cause Ezekiel to collapse into despair.
And I have a suspicion that the reason he was still able to find hope is because he was not exiled alone. His community was with him. Writer Ashley Fairbanks recently shared on Facebook that hope and optimism often feel, to her, like carrying a bucket of water. [1] She wrote that water walkers often carry buckets of water for impossibly long distances - and they do this because they don’t work alone. They carry the bucket until it becomes too heavy and then they pass it to the next woman who does the same.Together, they are able accomplish what would be impossible alone. .
Fairbanks says we all have to support and cheer for whoever is carrying the bucket today. When hope feels out of reach we need to look around us for the person who IS tapped into the wellspring of hope that’s always running just beneath us. We can thank them for carrying the bucket of hope today and promise them that we will take our turn once we’re able.
Ezekiel made it through 25 years in exile because he didn’t carry the bucket of hope alone.
And, my friends, we don’t carry our buckets alone either. God is with us and we are in it together.
Thank you, Ezekiel, for carrying the bucket of God’s hope to us here and now in 2020. Thank you for this vision of living water which still brings new life today.
Amen.
NOTES:
[1] The first part of this sermon was shared as a children's sermon and the rest as the sermon.
[2] https://www.facebook.com/ziibiing/posts/10103756381684782
No comments:
Post a Comment