The Canopy of Creation

[00:00:00] Speaker A: For our scripture reading this morning, will you please pray with me? Lord, prepare our minds to hear your word, move our hearts to embrace what we hear, and strengthen our will to follow your way. This we pray through Christ our Savior. Amen. This morning's reading is from Ezekiel 47:1 12. Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple. There water was flowing from below the threshold of the temple towards the east, for the temple faced east. And the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me round on the outside to the outer gate that faces towards the east. And the water was coming out of the south side, going on eastwards. With a cord in his hand, the man measured 1,000 cubits and then led me through the water, and it was ankle deep. Again he measured 1000 and led me through the water, and it was knee deep. Again he measured 1000 and led me through the water, and it was up to the waist. Again he measured 1,000. And it was a river that I could not cross, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in a river that could not be crossed. He said to me, mortal, have you seen this? Then he led me back along the bank of the river. As I came back, I saw on the bank on one side, and on the other he said to me, this water flows towards the eastern region and goes down into the Arawah. And when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live. And there will be many fish. Once these waters reach there, it will become fresh and everything will live. Where the river goes, people will stand fishing beside the sea. From Enjedi to En Glim. It will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the great sea. But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh. They are to be left for salt. On the banks on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail. But they will bear fresh fruit every month because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing. This is the word of the Lord. [00:03:01] Speaker B: So I suspect for each one of you here, one of the big reasons you came is the same reason I'm here. Wherever you are in your journey of life and faith, a part of you is yearns for a deeper relationship with the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of all things. Augustine famously put it like this, our hearts are restless, O God, until we find our rest in the A part of you yearns for that rest, doesn't it? Sure, you might have come in part this morning because there are people you care about here and you want to see them. Maybe your kids even dragged you here, or maybe you came to be a part of you part of an event to listen to the music. Or maybe you've even worked it into your schedule such that you do it almost without thinking. But given how many other options there are on a given Sunday morning, you chose to be here. And I feel confident at least one major reason you've chosen to do that is to somehow draw near to the presence, power and purposes of of God. That yearning that brought each one of us through those doors. I wanted to kind of show that, to give sight to that during the COVID 19 pandemic. And so when it wasn't safe to gather in spaces like this, you might remember sometimes at the start of our livestream worship service, I would show this video. I would also show it during our morning prayer time, sort of to give you that feeling of oh, we're coming to the sanctuary, we're entering into the doors. There's a ritual aspect of that that I find really meaningful and likely you do as well. Here we come to attend to God's presence, to listen for God's word. Here the scripture is read and proclaimed, songs are sung, giving thanks to God's work in the world, looking to God for aid, and promised by God salvation in Jesus Christ. Well, back in the days of the prophet Ezekiel, back in the 6th century BCE, over in a region just to the east of the Mediterranean Sea you could call the Jordan river watershed, and not far from where the Jordan river, which flows north to south, flows through the Sea of Galilee, down all the way to the Dead Sea, not far from where the Jordan river finally meets and empties into the Dead Sea. Over a bit to the west was Jerusalem, and there there was a house of Worsh like no other. It was called a house for God. Chapters and chapters of the Bible are dedicated to nothing more than describing the construction of this space, the objects to be placed in this space, the rituals that were to take place in and around this space, and precisely who should lead these various rituals. Originally, this house for God was a movable tent called the Tabernacle. This is a model of that Tabernacle. And even though the People were journeying through the wilderness. They were instructed to build and maintain this place so they could be reminded God is in their midst and have a central place where they could gather for worship. All the sacred vessels and elaborate decorations were kept in this movable tent. And then when the Hebrew people settled in the region of ancient Palestine and made it their home, this tabernacle became a fixed dwelling for God called the Temple. That purse Temple stood for centuries until its destruction by the Babylonian empire. During the time, the prophet Ezekiel, whose words we hear today, was living in exile in Babylon. While the Temple stood there, three major gatherings or festivals would take place around the year that we read about in Scripture. People would gather from all over that region at the Temple in Jerusalem. Why? Because that was the house of God. That was where you went when you wanted to gather to worship and listen for God's call and relish the fact that God is at work in the world. Well, as today's passage begins, Ezekiel has a vision. God shows him a man who serves as a kind of guide. And this guide brings Ezekiel to the very entrance of the temple. And we figure at this point now, he's going to bring Ezekiel inside. He's going to bring Ezekiel inside the temple. Because earlier, just a few chapters previously in Ezekiel, we read that the glory of the God of Israel had come from the east, like the sound of mighty waters, and it had filled the temple with the glory and sense of God's presence. Surely, Ezekiel would be led in this temple. And yet, in today's passage, right as Ezekiel is brought to the entrance, we read of a turn, a kind of a redirection. Rather than the prophet being led inside by this man, he's led outside. It's as if that entrance to the temple was both an entrance, but then also an exit, a gathering invitation, but also ascending invitation out precisely to the east, where the temple is. Was pointing there at the entrance, Ezekiel sees water flowing from a threshold out in the direction of the temple itself. Was pointing out to the east. And like Dorothy following the yellow brick road, Ezekiel then follows a path or trail leading him to what God might have yet to reveal to him. Only the trail is not of yellow bricks. Instead, it's of water. Starts as a stream. But then this man guides Ezekiel a distance of some 1,000 cubits. That's roughly a quarter of a mile. And then the water is ankle deep. Another roughly quarter of a mile. And now the water is knee deep. Another quarter mile, it's all the way up to the waist, and yet another quarter mile, now that we're a good mile or so from the temple along this water course. Now the water is so deep, it's become a river. You can swim in it. And Ezekiel is asked, mortal, have you seen this? Mortal, have you seen this? The guide then leads Ezekiel back along the bank of the river. And Ezekiel sees a great many trees on one side and the other. The guide tells Ezekiel, this water flows east all the way to the Dead Sea. To this day, the Dead Sea is not only the lowest point on Earth, but it's also one of the saltiest bodies of water in all the Earth. And we read that this body of water, known for being so salty, while there will be a space for salt, because salt is needed in that region, at this particular body of water, there will be fresh, flowing, living water. Every living creature that swarms will live where this river goes. The man tells Ezekiel, and there will be many fish filling the waters, and people will fill fish from the banks. I love that image. And on those banks will grow all kinds of trees with fruit for creatures to enjoy. And the leaves of the trees will have medicinal properties that you can use for healing. Ezekiel's journey takes him to the vision of a healthy, thriving watershed. John Wesley Powell once described a watershed like this. It is, he wrote, that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course. And whereas humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community. Back in the Book of Genesis, we read of God creating the first watershed called Eden, with a river flowing out of it that then divides into four branches. Two of those are the Tigris and Ephraim Euphrates, those great ancient rivers. A watershed is a community consisting not just of people who might fish there, but trees and other vegetation that depend on it and animals that look to it for water and to the trees and vegetation for food. There's a whole web of life surrounding and depending on that watercourse and on one another. That's a watershed. Well, this past fall, I became acutely aware of what it means to share a watershed with other creatures. Kevin Schjeldahl, someone many of you know, and I went fishing up in Sequoia national park at this river, the Cahuilla River. You can see how, as in so many river environments, there are trees and particularly lush vegetation growing just along the lines of that river. That's what we read about in this vision of Ezekiel, because that's what a healthy river environment looks like. It's particularly Green and vibrant on the sides. It required a fair bit of hiking to get down to there, and then some bushwhacking to get through all the vegetation and finally make it to the waters. And we got to one particular fishing spot that was great. Kevin went up river a bit, I stayed there. And we didn't see another soul for this whole couple day fishing trip. At least in the river. It was midweek, not a lot of fishing action there, so we were truly on our own. So there's this one particular hole where there are some riffles, some flowing water right before a set of trees. And it was a great spot. I finally caught my first fish on a dry fly. Before then, I was using nymphs, which fish under the water. This was right on the surface where you see the fish jump up, grab it, nabbed him, brought him all the way in, was able to pull out the hook, let this fish go generally unharmed. And then I was just getting ready to cast again when from behind those two trees, this big furry mass emerges first. It's one of those things that happens so suddenly. At first I didn't even know what I was seeing. It was like seeing a dog. You know, this is just as far me as maybe the pulpit is, and yet it's this mass of brown fur. What I later learned was in fact a black bear. But let me tell you, this sucker was brown. And before I had the chance to like, raise my arms and do this or pull out my phone to take a picture so I don't have a photo of it, I'm sorry, but I don't. Before any of that, this bear did exactly what you want a bear to do. This bear saw me and said, I want nothing to do with him. And this bear turned right around, raced off from exactly back to where it had come. Seconds this happened, maybe less than seconds, that this huge beast appears in front of me and then is gone. And then I'm sitting there thinking, what in the world? On one hand, I'm thrilled that I'm still alive. On the other, I felt like I'd received this profound gift. I had glimpsed a creature that since I was little, I had longed to see in the wild. You know, I'd loved bears since I was little. My wife always gives me a hard time about this. But I've long loved bears, and I've seen them in zoos, and I've seen them in various forms of confinement. Never in the wild that close to me. And thank heaven I got that visitation. I got to see that bear I got to see God's marvelous, terrifying and glorious work in the world right before my eyes. I felt like I was being asked, like Ezekiel was mortal. Mortal. Do you see? Do you see God's work in the watershed right in front of you, of you now? One of the ways Christians have long articulated precisely how we see God's glory, God's work, God's wonder at work in precisely a bear or a rainbow trout that seems to capture the whole rainbow when the sun shines on it, or glimpsing the beauty of the broader watershed we share with those bears and fish, is God's work as creator, right? We often speak of God's glory evident in what God has made. There's that great quote from the first chapter of Romans where Paul writes this. Ever since the creation of the world, God's eternal power, God's eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made. And back as we read of the first watershed in the Book of Genesis, the images of God handcrafting this, creating an environment where animals and fish and human beings and vegetation all is in this series of mutually dependent relationships. And God's hand made it all, just as God formed the first human from the dust of the earth. I don't know about you, but glimpsing creation often makes me think, or the natural makes me think of God as creator. But today's passage from the Book of Ezekiel invites us to see God's work in the watershed in yet another way. We're invited to open our eyes and see God's work as savior. God's work as savior in the earth in the watershed you see, today's passage from Ezekiel is part of the third and final section of the broader Book of Ezekiel, when God finally acts to save. The first section of Ezekiel is hard words of prophetic judgment for sin and misdeeds that are leveled against Judah and Jerusalem. The second section of Ezekiel is hard words of judgment for sin and evil leveled against other foreign nations. Finally, we get to this third section and by this point we're imagining in the Book of Ezekiel as in Ezekiel's life himself. He has been there, lived through this period of time where he got word while he was in exile in Babylon, that Jerusalem as a city and the Gospel, great temple, the house of God had fallen to the Babylonian empire. He had been there when there was trauma and tragedy and where he himself had known exile and loss. But in the wake of all that, Ezekiel, we read, sees a vision in the third and final section of the book that bears his name sees a vision of a new world, a new future, a place of renewal and restoration. Last fall we looked at the Book of Ezra, as many of you will recall. And we looked in particular at a time where the people of God who had been in exile in Babylon, where many returned under King Cyrus, a new Persian king, to rebuild the temple of God, to rebuild the city walls of Jerusalem. It was this time of return and physical rebuilding. But in today's passage, after the trauma of that loss that occurred, we think around 586 BCE after that, in a time of return, we read of God's salvific work in the watershed rebuilding here not simply buildings and walls, but a whole environment, a whole habitat, a whole mutually dependent system where people and other creatures can thrive. Yes, we read in Ezra about God's powerful work in a house of worship, rebuilding that houses of worship are crucial. But Ezekiel reminds us, don't just look for God's salvific restorative work in the temple. In places where people go to gather and pray and read scripture, also look for that work outside the doors, out along the river watersheds. It looks not just like destruction and rebuilding of physical churches, of physical homes and even of businesses. It also God's salvation, we read in Ezekiel, looks like a watershed ravaged by destruction, clear cutting of trees damaged already and yet more deeply threatened by pollution, extraction, climate change. That watershed gets cared for, it even gets restored by God's power at work in a people and in that whole interconnected community we call the watershed. Well, up and out the Dina. I've not yet seen a bear up close, though many others have. And I've even been sent pictures from some of you who have seen bears tearing apart your trash cans for one. Marguerite Schuster, a former pastor of this church, finally moved from her home to Sierra Madre to live at Monte Vista Grove. She's currently at the health center in her final, we suspect, hours. And she made that move, a move so important as she's now receiving such vital care. She made that move because one day she heard scratching and a whole commotion at her door. Wisely, she didn't go to the door to see what it was she thought safest to stay inside. But later she saw the tail. Telltale signs. A bear had come to her door in Sierra Madre and she'd been given a wreath with apples on it for Christmas. This bear had made a huge lunch out of that wreath. That and then a run in with a rattlesnake made her say she's got a strong confidence in God's providence. God is telling me something. It's time to move from the place of bears and snakes to Monte Vista Grove. And praise God she's there today. I've not had a bear come to my door, but almost every other day I walk my dog. These days I see one, two, maybe three coyotes. They, like we are dependent on a thriving watershed. And when that watershed is damaged by drought or fire or pollution or other forms of natural and human made disaster, it hits us all, doesn't it? And we see it when the coyotes or the bears come near. As Mona and the San Gabriel band of Mission Indians reminded us at a third Wednesday gathering last year, we are community with other creatures of this land, something the Gabriele Ntongva people have long recognized. Those other creatures are our sisters and brothers. We share a fate, like it or not. Praise God that the work of salvation as we see it in scripture is not just on the human heart, though it is there. It's there precisely in the work of Jesus Christ, bringing transformation and new life and forgiveness of sins and rich relationship with God to these hearts of ours, these lives of ours. Christ is the answer to that longing of our souls. And praise God. We've got spaces like this one and Scripture proclaiming that Savior Christ is living water to the thirsty soul. And here we celebrate God's work in the waters of baptism at that baptismal font. But we read in Scripture Christ, the one who we believe has a love that touches us in baptism, also said this to his disciples. Consider the lilies of the field. Consider the birds of the air. Attend to the flora and fauna for God's gracious providential salvific care for you and them and all creation. And when you look for God's salvific work yet to come in the form of the Holy Spirit unleashed on the earth. You know what it looks like, our Savior said in John's gospel. You know what it looks like? It looks like a river of living, flowing, clear water that emerges in the heart. That's a portrait of a living, vibrant river that nourishes a whole watershed. Well, last Wednesday marked Earth Day, a day when we recall this precious gift of creation. May we as Christians listen. Look for God's hand at work here in our sanctuaries and in one another and in our hearts. But as we go out those doors, as you exit to the east, to the west, to the north and to the south, may we attend to God's salvific work God's hand to save in the watershed. As people called to love God and love our neighbor, let's work to rebuild the life and health and vibrancy of watersheds like this one. The largest Angeles river watershed in which we are placed so our neighbors, human and non human, can thrive. Let's be together. Watershed Disciples. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.