“How Deep?”Rev. Kerri Parker, McFarland UCC Creation 4: River Sunday (September 25, 2011)Ezekiel 47:1-12 Remember the water at the beginning: “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,when no plant of the field was yet in the earth,and no herb of the field had yet sprung up –for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth,and there was no one to till the ground: but a stream would rise from the earthand water the whole face of the ground – then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east,and there he put the man whom he had formed.Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every treethat is pleasant to the sight, and good for food,the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.A river flows out of Eden to water the garden…“ (Genesis 2:4b-19a) There was a river at the beginning, my friends. Water flowing through and around and overeverything. Before it rained, before the trees, before humankind, there was water, by thegrace of God, a stream from the earth, watering the whole face of the ground. I was reminded this week that among all the stuff that makes up the human body, two-thirdsis water. We come to this life surrounded by water, and we cannot continue to live without water. Water is life. It is all around us and within us, from the very beginning. And yet sometimes, we feel parched. We feel as if the Spirit and the source of life have left us,and we are wandering through a dry and thirsty land. As if those waters that once coveredthe earth, once bathed us in love, once soothed and nourished us, have trickled away into rockycrevices. As if we must hoard every last precious drop because it may never rain again. The prophets of the Bible describe the dark days of the Children of Israel in terms of dryness.They speak of times when the rains failed, before it was time for the harvest. When mightyrivers are a shadow of their powerful selves, and streams slow to a mere trickle. The dry times,when it got so bad, the people wandered from town to town in search of drinking water. Whenthere was only mud at the bottom of a cistern, so dry that you could use an empty well as aprison, rather than a source of life. And in our own dry times, perhaps, if we are not wandering in a parched desert, we may live atthe bottom of a dried-up well like the prophet Jeremiah, wallowing in sticky mud with neitherblessed rain nor clean water, nor even a hint of sunshine making it down to the bottom tocheer us. We cry out from the bottom of that pit, from our mucky prison, “My God, My God,why have you forsaken me?” Sometimes we feel as if we are wandering, alone, through a dry and thirsty land. But, in the beginning and in the end, and in all places between, there are the waters. Remember the gift of the waters: Water signifies birth, and death, and rebirth. The sacramentthat makes us Christian – baptism – takes place in the water. The waters of baptism, and theblessings and promises that go with them, mean new life. We die in the water, and we arebrought into new life, born of water and the Spirit. Water at the beginning, and at each new beginning. The presence of God around us, within us,ready to sustain and refresh us. Deep waters. Like our prophet this morning, we are each invited to test out the deep water. Remember this:See the stream that springs forth and waters a dry and thirsty land. It starts as a trickle, at thecenter of all things, and spreads outward. You go a little ways off, and it is ankle deep. Thenknee-deep, then waist-deep. Deeper than you are tall. So deep that you cannot wade acrosson your own two feet. You edge out into the stream. Ankle-deep, and knee-deep. Waist-deep. Finally, there’snothing to do but swim. To immerse yourself in the river of God’s love, flowing forth from thecenter of all things, and trus