What Waters Nourish Us?
After getting four nails in my car tires, I started paying close attention. What nourishes our souls when they feel dry? What gives us hope when life feels like it goes off the rails?
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Transcript
In the name of the father, and of the son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I’m going to redo my sermon from the 8:00. So I thought a lot this past week because of what I’m going to tell you about how that life feels like the wheels have come off right now in so many ways. I have started my phone calls and I’m about 20, 22 in and it was a common, conversation point.
When I would call folks, they would ask, what do you think’s going to happen? What does this mean? How do I make sense of this? So I slowed my phone calls down. I thought they were going to go faster than they were going to go. So this might take us a little while longer, which is fine. But I did notice that I did notice, you know, from some of you who who I called.
And then this last week, for me, it felt like I just wasn’t able to go where I wanted to go. And the reason that that’s true, that it felt like my wheels had come off, is because I spent two days back at the car shop, because for some reason, over the past several months, I now I’m up to four nails in my tires.
I know you’re welcome because I drive around the parking lots and I have taken it on as a service project to pick up all of the nails. So I went back the first round of this, and I had two nails and one tire and they patch them. The patch didn’t work. They’re patched them. That worked fine. And then this week I found myself back in there again.
And when I walked in, you know, you’ve been there too much whenever you walk in. And Amy, who we know each other now, and Joe, who works at the other desk, I walk in and they say, is the construction still not finished at the church? So they patched it. The patch didn’t hold. Which is another metaphor for where we find ourselves right now.
So I ended up having to get a new tire entirely. That tire was late, so I didn’t even know I had a spare. So I have a spare. So they put the spare on the car, and the first thing that came to my mind when I walked out and saw that little tire, it reminded me of being on the junior high football team, because I was that little tire.
I was shrimpy. I was noticeably less muscular, and I struggled to go as fast as the other ones did, and I identified with that little tire and I cheered it on for an entire day. But we’ve all felt that way. It’s just how I felt this past week. Having to go back, not able to go where I wanted to go, having another flat feeling like the wheels are coming off.
How do we make sense of this? And so if you’ll open up your bulletin, I want you to look at the reading from the book of Romans, from Paul’s letter this morning, because that’s how we feel. That’s how we all feel right now when Saint Paul writes them in their struggles and is able to put words in the way that he can put words to how they feel, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the coming of God, for the manifestation of God, the embodiment of God. And then that line we know that the whole creation has been groaning and labor pains until now, and not only yet, but we ourselves. And so I’ve sat with this for the past two weeks to say, yeah, that rings true.
We’re all sharing this. We’re all holding it as best as we can. Hold it around the world, try to make sense of this truly transitional time, this time that feels like it’s so much of upheaval. How do we make sense of it? And so we’ve all felt like that little spare tire from time. Maybe not you, but I have.
Struggling to keep up. Struggling to make our way. And so I’ve noticed. When you have a reading assigned, pay attention to win the readings. Really speak to where we are, how we’re trying to make sense and make meaning in our lives. Part of our struggle with this, living in the Western world that we live in, is that we have objectified creation.
We live in a disenchanted world, and so it’s hard for us to picture that all of life is going through this. To put it that way, all of life is sharing the struggle. All of life is trying to take a step forward in some way. All of life is experiencing the pressure, the tension, the confusion, all of this because we’ve treated, you know, creation at its best as just a backdrop to what we want to do.
That’s at its best. At its worst, we’ve treated it as just a resource pool that we can continually draw from to do what we want to do, to move forward with our own plans. And so here we have Saint Paul challenging them and us to say, it’s not just you. So in those moments when we wake up and in, in, in our impulse moments, check the news, which we’re going to come back to that in a minute.
We’re going to take a pact here in just a little bit to not do that. But when we have that impulse to say, how do I make sense of this, to situate ourselves in a much larger context, to say it’s not just us, all of life is sharing this. All of life is at a point where we’re all trying to make meaning.
So how do we do that? How do we make meaning? Now, I want you to look at the first one from Ezekiel, this wonderful prophet, this challenging text. I do think we need to spend more time with the prophet, and maybe that’s something that we can do this fall to help give us some language on how we make sense.
We’re not the first people to live through struggling times, so how can we go back to these readings, these writings, and help us ground ourselves? So in the midst of his own sense of trying to make meaning with a struggling world, he had the forethought to write these words and offer the image of a river, the image of a river, which is a fascinating thing to kind of reflect on.
So look at what he says. Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. Once these waters reach there, it will become fresh and everything will live where the river goes. What it doesn’t have in here is where the river comes from. That’s the really cool part, to put it that way.
So just prior to where this verse picks up, there’s this image of the origin of the river is in the temple of God. So he lays out this image and says, the river flows from the temple. And leaving the temple, it spreads throughout all the world and everywhere that the river touches. Everywhere that the river goes, life springs up.
And he says, but where it cannot flow. Notice what he said. Where the river cannot flow, where the waters are blocked, it becomes stagnant, becomes brackish, and no life can take root there. And you just leave it and give it time to dry up where you can get the salt. You use it in some way to get something out of it, but you don’t count on it for encouraging life.
So this is where what we are given is to challenge ourselves, to ask ourselves how are we? What flow are we in? How do we see the flow of the spirit in our lives? Where do we anchor ourselves? Where do we ground ourselves? How do we make meaning? Where do we put our trust? What river do we sit by?
What waters do we draw from when we’re thirsty? We can enter into the text this way and ask ourselves. Because it’s easy to say we get caught up in what’s going on around us, right? It’s easy to get caught up in it. It’s easy to wake up. And first thing in the morning. To do what? Turn on the news and listen to the talking heads who are being paid off of our fear and our anxiety.
Tell us what we should be fearful of more. What if we stop that? What if, going into this season we actually acknowledged the struggle, the groaning that we’re all facing, that we’re all feeling, and we put together a rule of life for ourselves and for our children. What if we woke up in the morning and we said, instead of turning on the news, we went outside and we took our shoes off and we walked around in the grass while we can still stand the heat, what if we went outside and we dug in the dirt?
What if we went outside and we cared for a plant or a pet? What if we took a walk? What if we sit in the grass? What if we sit outside on a patio or a porch and listen to the birds sing? What if we ground ourselves, anchor ourselves in that deeper flow that that text offers us to say, this is what’s going to give us life.
This is what’s going to feed our souls. Not being caught up with so many of the flows that swirl around us, but to be anchored in that deep, deep flow of the spirit which continues to spread and offer cool water for us to drink from. So I encourage you to do that, to take it on as a practice, to catch yourself.
I have to catch myself in the morning because I put my phone right there, and my impulse is always to click it open and say, I wonder what went crazy during the night? Guess what? Here. Not to spoil it, a whole lot of stuff went crazy during the night, but if I stop that and go downstairs and put on a pot of coffee and listen to the birds and ground myself to step out and ask myself, how can I embody God’s peace and grace and my little sliver of the world that I have been given to live in?
I wonder how much that that would change. Let us pray. Dear God, we give you thanks. We give you thanks for those moments of clarity, for those moments when we can be honest and say how indeed that we do struggle. How indeed we do find ourselves with all of life groaning and yearning for your dream to come true, for peace.
And we give you thanks for these glimpses of the deep flow of the spirit which anchors our lives and nurtures our souls. Give us strength and courage to turn toward you, to listen to the Spirit’s call, to trust your presence with us, to be brave and say no to those things that we need to say no to in order that we can say yes to life more fully.
And we see all of this through the life of Christ, who gave of himself, and for the blessings of our lives. We give you thanks, and it’s through Christ we pray. Amen, Amen.