Being in the Flow
Dear church,
Our theme, our readings, are a little bit different this morning, different from the official Lectionary, different from the Second Sunday after Pentecost, different from what people in other churches will hear, but you know we have the freedom to be different in the Lutheran Church. We can go off the beaten path from time to time. And so, we are taking a field trip today. The youth will literally take a field trip to the Lehigh River this afternoon to go Whitewater rafting. Everybody else? We are using the raft of inner mobility that God has given us to enjoy. It’s called imagination. We too are going on a field trip, to honor the rivers of life, creation’s magnificent streams.
One of my most favorite get-away spots in the area is located on the upper Delaware, but I won’t tell you where – it’s a secret. It’s a place of peace and restoration that I visit a few times a year. Over time, I have taken pictures of the river up there. I like one photo particularly. It was taken in the early dawn hours with the first rays of sunshine reflected in the slow-moving water. It doesn’t matter what the news are saying the week when I’m visiting there; it doesn’t matter how much is wrong with our world, and there is usually a lot wrong with our world… the presence of the river which has been there since time primordial, calms me, comforts me, soothes me. It is a divine gift. It’s a healing grace. It flows into my soul.
I could sit there in the presence of that flowing body of water and listen to the birds for hours. I guess, that’s why people go fishing. It’s one of the best kept secrets: most people go fishing not to catch fish but to catch a break from the traffic of life: cars, schedules, deadlines, phone calls, ads, texts, screaming children, the next project… there is so much noise and traffic in life. The river just flows and flows… every day, every morning, every night, through sunshine and rain. No matter what happens, the river flows. What did the Greek philosopher Heraclit say? “You cannot step in the same river twice.” The water is constantly in a flow, constantly renewed. That too is part of a river’s mystique… It seems to be the same and yet it’s not. It never gets stale. May our faith be like a river! May it be the same in many ways as the faith our ancestors and yet fresh, new, and refreshing to those around us!
There are several passages in Scripture that use the river as a spiritual metaphor for healing and for life. We heard one such passage earlier from the last book of the Bible, the mysterious Book of Revelation. I have sometimes wondered why it’s called “Revelation,” because the writing in that final book of the Bible hides as much as it reveals, maybe it hides more than it reveals. It certainly challenges us to stretch our imagination.
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb… On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” The Book of Revelation is full of symbolism, - not easy to interpret. But the gist of it is this: the twelve different fruits that grow from the trees of life stand for completeness, for the fullness of life. Maybe they are also a reference to the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve apostles. One thing is surely communicated here: the stream that flows from the throne of God will bring life to us, and in its flow we will prosper.
I mentioned in one of the messages last week that the river is also a corrective symbol for the many times in life when we get stuck, - stuck in strained relationships, stuck in our thinking, stuck in unhealthy patterns that keep us from flourishing as human beings, stuck in grief, stuck in resentments, stuck in the past... We need to get back into the flow. It’s even true in the biology of our own bodies.
In recent decades, we have opened our minds to Chinese medicine. Acupuncture is based on the belief that the energy in our bodies sometimes gets stuck and doesn’t flow anymore, making us sick, causing pain. Acupuncture, they say, unlocks the points where energy gets bottled up and unleashes the self-healing properties of the body. These types of treatments, which used to be unorthodox but are more common these days, have helped many people to get better, to get back into in the flow, literally. In the same way, we sometimes need to open the closed-up beliefs that keep us from true faith, the lack of imagination that keeps us from God’s vision for the church and for this world. The spirit of God begs us to enter into the flow of God’s own being, to be truly free, to truly love, to truly BE. We are meant to be part of the river of life. We are part of the river of life, flowing from God’s throne. See it in your mind and believe it - and flow! Amen.
