I remember being a young boy and going up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire with my family. On one occasion, we pulled over off to the side of the Kancamagus Highway which connects Lincoln to Conway, NH, and were checking out a river flowing right along the side of the highway. I recall putting my hand in the river water as it flowed past. It was some of the coldest, purest water I had ever seen. I cupped my hands together and drank in (literally and figuratively) this incredible moment. It felt heavenly.
In our first reading today from Ezekiel 47, the prophet is given an angelic vision that is all about water. Ezekiel sees the river of life that was flowing out of the “temple of the God” and is told that “Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live…for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh. Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow; their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail…for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary. Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
Ancient peoples knew the significance of water for life, and so it does not shock me that the heavenly vision would revolve around water and how water sustains everything.
But there’s more than this going on in Ezekiel 47. Rev. Jeff Geary in a sermon related to “watershed discipleship” gives some backstory which I find very helpful. Rev. Geary – citing the words of Daniel Berrigan – says,
Ezekiel had been a priest serving in the Temple in Jerusalem when the Babylonian Empire besieged his city. In the year 598, when the city’s defenses finally collapsed and Jerusalem was captured, the priest Ezekiel, along with nearly 10,000 of ancient Israel’s elite, was carried into exile and re-settled along the Chebar river – nearly 1500 miles from home. It was there, beside that river, ten years later, that Ezekiel received his vision of the final destruction and desecration of God’s Temple in God’s city. And it devastated him…
The book of Ezekiel is made up almost entirely of such visions, all of which carry an unrelenting message: “Our home is lost. It was a mistake for us to put our trust in force of arms, military alliances, or believe in our own national greatness. In doing so we ignored the message of the prophets before us: messages that spoke of justice and peace, the distribution of resources with primary concern for the poor, the widow and the immigrant.”
What I find so compelling about this backstory is the line “our home is lost.” Once the people of Israel had separated themselves from the land under their feet and the waters that gave them life, their “home” was lost. And in that state of being lost, they opted instead to trust in the ‘force of arms,’ military might and national greatness. And as they collectively opted for a system of domination and power over others, we clearly see that this led them to collectively abandon care for the widow, poor and immigrants.
Disconnection from the land/water leads to disconnection from one another.
Fast forward to the gospel from John 5 – another water story. This time it is about the healing waters of the pool of Bethesda. In Jesus’ time, there were likely at least 2 pools that had been constructed by the Romans to gather rainwater that were now used by the Jewish people related to the temple. It had an upper pool and a lower pool. When water moved from the upper to the lower, the waters would get ‘stirred’ and people believed that this water contained the ability to heal them. Archaeological evidence also suggests that this lower pool might have been a ‘mikveh’ – a Jewish pool for ritual purification/baptism. Mikveh were supposed to be constructed near rivers or what the Jews called ‘living water’ which they saw as bringing restoration and life. Moving, living water has always been associated with healing and restoration.
Jesus encounters a man – who had been waiting for 38 years to be dropped in the pool (because he could not move himself there quickly enough) when the waters were stirred. Jesus heals the man – on the Sabbath – and this causes more of a stir than a lame man being healed in the first place!
Healing waters.
Living waters.
Waters that bring restoration and life.
This is the wisdom of the ancients, and our scriptural tradition today shifts our attention to water, our relationship to it and its connection to the divine.
Maybe not unlike the people in Ezekiel’s time, we too have separated ourselves from the very land and waters that sustain us. We have instead opted for a domination system that favors power over, competition, and military might as the most valuable things. This has left us paralyzed like that man in the gospel – unable to find our way to restoration and healing.
Re-establishing a primary relationship with the waters that sustain us is a crucial step in our faith journey. This process helps us think more critically about where our water comes from, where it goes and what is happening to it all around us. It begins to shift us from a “water as resource” mentality to a “water as relationship” mentality (which bring us to very different places).
Many progressive theologians have articulated a turn towards “watershed discipleship” whereby we reclaim a “bioregionally grounded identity in the watersheds that we inhabit.” This requires us to increase “watershed consciousness, literacy and engagement.”
If you live in the Rochester region (the ancestral and unceded land of the Seneca people), you live in the Genesee River Basin Watershed. This is our local ‘river of life’ that sustains this region. This is the water source that restores us and makes us whole. And while it is a “resource,” we might instead ask, “And what is our relationship like with the watershed?” Do we know it well and regard it with great reverence? Do we know what is happening to it or what its state of health is? How connected are we to the many species of non-humans who also rely on it for their lives? And to what degree are we listening to what it needs from us (and what is the peril if we don’t listen)?
For today let your prayer be mindfulness around water. Think about every sip. Every shower. Every flush. Think about the rivers, streams or lakes you pass every day. Think about our rainwater and where it ends up. Give thanks for the water that we have. Pray that your relationship with this bioregion might deepen. Let your heart (and not just the waters) be stirred so that our healing can begin in earnest.
[Note: If you are interested, my dear friend, Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, will be at Spiritus this weekend – preaching at masses and doing a special workshop for parents/caregivers called “This Sweet Earth” which will be about raising chidren in an era of climate collapse and widespread change. Sunday April 6 11am (Nielsen Room). You can register for the event here]
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