Gihon, The River of God's Deepening Presence
Hespeler, 13 November, 2016 ©
Scott McAndless
John 7:37-39, Psalm 137, Ezekiel
47:1-12
T
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here is a river, called the
Gihon, that flows to this day in the city of Jerusalem. It is a small stream,
but a vital one, flowing, as it does, in a part of the world where water is
scarce and a reliable source can mean the difference between life and death. It
is also an unusual river because it is fed by a spring, the Gihon Spring, that
is unlike most every other spring in the world. It doesn’t flow steadily, you
see. It is an intermittent spring. At regular intervals it surges up and then
it stops.
The importance
and uniqueness of this river probably had a lot to do with the beliefs that
developed about it. And it seems that there were many such beliefs. The ancient
Israelites almost certainly saw it as a holy place. This was not necessarily
official doctrine, but it was a popular belief. It is, as I explained last
week, identified as one of the four rivers that flowed from the original
paradise. It was the place where they anointed their kings and a sign that God
was with them. And there is even a story in the Gospel of John that indicates
that they believed that, when the spring did periodically surge forth and fill
a pool that had been constructed, the waters of the Gihon had healing power.
The evidence
seems to indicate, anyways, that this river (together with the nearby temple of
Solomon) was one of the key
places where these people experienced the presence of their God in some
powerful ways. And we all have such places, don’t we? I know that our official
theology states that the God who we believe in is not limited by time or by
space. And one thing that that means is that there isn’t any particular spot on
this earth, or even in the vast universe, where God is not. But that is not
necessarily how it works in our experience.
The truth is
that those who have had significant experiences of God have generally found
that such experiences are much easier to find (or to be surprised by) in
particular places and at certain times. That is not to suggest that everyone
has experiences of God in all the same places. For some, a beautiful church
building such as this one where we find ourselves is the place where they have
most consistently found God, but churches don’t necessarily work the same for
everyone. I know many who would say that they are much more likely to encounter
God walking in the woods or along a beach than in a church. But that does not
change the fact that, for most of us, there will always be certain places in
our world where God just seems to be closer.
Well, one of
those places for many ancient Israelites was the Gihon River in Jerusalem – a
holy place that was maybe second only to the nearby temple of the Lord. And, as
I say, it is wonderful to have places like that in your life. But there is also
a risk that comes with that. What happens when you lose such places? Does that
mean that you lose your God?
This was not
just a theoretical question for them. The time came when the City of Jerusalem
was attacked and besieged by the armies of the king of Babylon and, despite the
presence of the River Gihon within the strong walls of the city, the city could
not hold out against the invaders. Jerusalem fell. It was sacked by the
invaders and then reduced to rubble. Even the holy temple of the Lord, the home
of Yahweh, was left as nothing but a pile of stones. And then the Babylonians
did something worse, they took the people of the city and the surrounding
countryside and forced them to march off to exile in Babylon which was like a
world away.
Of course this
was a disaster on so many levels – devastation and loss that might feel
familiar to modern day citizens of Syrian cities like Aleppo. But one
particularly terrible aspect of this was the loss of those places where they
had experienced their God. When you lose such places and especially when you
are forcibly removed from the entire vicinity, does that mean that you lose
your God too?
This was an
especially urgent question in ancient times because people tended to think of
their gods in very simple ways. Most ancient gods were seen as being tied to
particular places. The gods of Egypt, for example, were the gods of Egypt. It was just assumed that they
had no power once you left the Nile Valley. And as far as the people of Israel
knew, their God was the same – after all, the question of whether the God of
Israel could be present in other lands had simply never come up before. So, as
far as they knew, when they left Mount Zion and the Gihon River, they would not
be cut off from their God forever.
In fact, they
did find their God in Babylon when they got there which was probably a big
surprise. It led them to rethink everything they knew about God and was an
important step towards the understanding we have of a God who is not limited by
time and space. But they didn’t know that when they left. As far as they knew,
when they left the Gihon, they were leaving their God.
One of the
people who lived through that dramatic experience was a man named Ezekiel. He
was a prophet and he saw the disaster coming and that there was nothing that
could stop it. And Ezekiel was very concerned about what it meant that the
people might lose their God. He even had a vision where he saw a great cloud of
glory, which represented the presence of God, depart from the temple, seemingly
forever. (Ezekiel 11:22)
But, though
God gave Ezekiel a heads up about what was coming, he also sent other messages
his way – messages of hope and of new beginnings. Ezekiel had many visions
during this difficult time but one of them has proved the most enduring and
meaningful. Even as the temple was being threated and destroyed (or perhaps had
already been destroyed – it is hard to establish exactly when he had his
visions) Ezekiel received a vision of a new temple that included, as we read
this morning, a renewed Gihon River.
It is his
glorious vision of the river that particularly interests me today. The river he
sees is a little different from the actual Gihon River. As Ezekiel sees it, it
no longer flows from near the temple
mount but from the very threshold of the temple itself, but that is clearly a
symbolic change and we may recognize it as the Gihon.
I believe that,
if you want to understand what this vision meant to Ezekiel, you have to enter
into his frame of mind. What did the loss of the temple mount and of the river
– these places where he and his people had met with God – mean to him? We can’t
know exactly what it felt like to him, of course, but I think that we can find
some ways to sympathize. I know that many of us have felt a similar sense of
loss in and through the life of the church in recent decades.
You see, one
of the realities that we cannot simply avoid dealing with in the church these
days is change. Across the board, churches are changing and adapting their
worship and their programs and activities. Many don’t like it, I realize, but
it seems to be inevitable for a number of reasons. Some churches do resist all
change, of course. They’d rather die than change, they say in word and in deed.
They often get what they wish for and die all the quicker as unchanged as
possible, but, of course, death is a kind of change too so it really does seem
that change is inescapable these days.
The fear of
change has become so powerful that it is driving political change. I don’t know
how to explain the events that took place in the United States this past week
without understanding it in terms of huge numbers of people voting as a block
to turn back the clock on change that has been taking place in society. But
even such a desperate reaction and backlash will not slow the pace of change.
It will overtake us all. The Babylonian army that is bringing the change of
everything is outside the gate and I don’t care how high Trump builds his wall,
he won’t be able to keep it out.
The big problem
we have with change is the same problem that Ezekiel and his friends were
dealing with. We, like they, have learned to know God in certain places and at
certain times. And, of course, churches on Sunday mornings and at other key
moments have traditionally been one of these places where we have encountered
God. The church has been our River Gihon and Holy Temple Mount. But the pace of
change means that these holy places have become strange to us and we may even
have lost some of them. The natural fear is that the loss of these places will
mean that we have lost God.
But Ezekiel’s
vision of the Gihon, as I say, is a comfort. So what does his vision say that might be helpful to
us in times of such change? Well first of all, Ezekiel’s vision of a new Gihon
springs, “from below the threshold of
the temple.” It is a promise of God’s ongoing presence with the people.
They may destroy the temple, it might be razed to the ground, and the course of
the river may be fouled, but the spring will pour forth its water again.
And notice
that the river, as Ezekiel sees it, no longer has that intermittent flow that he and all the people of
Jerusalem would have been used to. Now it flows steadily and without
interruption. This is surely a
sign to us of God’s constancy for us during times of change. Everything else
may change but God remains the same.
But it is not enough for Ezekiel, or for
us, that the river merely continues to exist. The more important question is,
how we will continue to find God in times of change. This Ezekiel is able to
discover by exploring the river. First he is taken to a place one thousand
cubits from the city. (That is about a half a kilometer or this distance from
here to Harvey St.) Here, Ezekiel discovers, the water of the Gihon is now
flowing about ankle deep. You know, just perfect for splashing around in –
refreshing, pleasant and cool.
This represents how we find God again after
times of great change. Our first experience of God may be ankle deep. We may be
splashing around and refreshing ourselves in the water of God’s presence with
us, but, in the initial stages of dealing with change, we may not find that
there is a great deal of depth to our new understandings of God.
That is okay though, because Ezekiel’s
vision is not finished. And what he finds is that as he moves farther down the
stream and away from the familiar places and ways that he experienced God,
something surprising happens – the river flows deeper and deeper until soon its
flow becomes overwhelming. God is not merely promising to be with us in times
of great change here, he is promising to bring us to new depths in our
understanding and meaning. If we are willing to engage with God in this journey
of change with openness, God is promising to reveal himself to us in new and
powerful ways.
And there is an even more exciting promise
than that, for we learn that as the Gihon River flows on from there, it becomes
a power that is able to transform the world. So sweet and fresh is its water,
we are told, that is it able to make even the toxic waters of the Dead Sea (which
Ezekiel calls the Arabah) fresh and able to support huge schools of fish. Here
the promise is not only that God will be with us to refresh us but that also
God will flow through us to renew the whole world.
I know change is hard for all of us. It is
especially hard when we see change in an institution like the church where we
have so many past experiences of the presence of God. You can resist against
all that change. You can fight to keep everything the same or to put everything
back the way that it was. You can even vote for Trump. You can try but, given
the realities we are living with today, I don’t think that you will succeed.
But if you can find a way to move with the
current of change – to embrace it and let it flow through you – I think that
you might find that Ezekiel’s vision has a lot of truth in it and the further
you go, the deeper and more powerful your experience of God will be.
140CharacterSermon
Change is hard. We’re afraid to lose God. Ezekiel’s vision of Gihon says
relationships with God can deepen in such times.
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