Mash ups are songs made by taking take one part of a song, like the vocal track, and adding it to parts
of another song to make something new.
The word Narraphor is a mash up. It’s a mash up of words, of metaphor
and narrative: word image and story. Narraphors are not new, Jesus was the master of narraphor, he blended story
and metaphor to speak to us. His Parables take everyday images and weave them
into a story which we interact with, that opens us to an ongoing reflection,
conversation transformation and relationship.
I’m not a master of
narraphor, I’m just learning, in fact this is sort of an experiment...But over the next few weeks I want to invite us
to look at the four elements that the mediaeval world though everything was
made of… water, earth, air (or wind) and fire and use them as narraphors for our
spiritual life. They are actually motifs that run through scripture, they keep
popping up, and they carry meaning and significance, and deal with things that
are elemental to our life in Christ. They are elemental narraphors… so let’s
dive into the first one… which fortunately is water.
We passed out glasses of water this morning and I’m going to
invite you to hold it in your hand and look at it.
It’s water…and Water, or H20 is essential for all
life. It’s essential for human life, apparently by weight the average human is
made up of between 60-65% of water. To remain healthy we need to drink about
2.4 L of water a day that is to simply to replace the water we lose… through
respiration, perspiration and in other ways. Water is so abundant in our
country that we forget how valuable it is. Futurists predict that by the end of
this century major wars will be fought over access to clean water like we have
in our hand this morning. Even in our nation the quality of the water in our
rivers and our taps and how we are to aid draught prone areas are election
issues.
At a very basic level our faith is water based…A good way to
explain that is to look at the difference between farming in New Zealand and
in the outback of Australia. In New Zealand we tend to use fences to keep our stock where we want
them. We manage them by moving them from one paddock to another. In the dryer
areas of Australia where farms are bigger fences are not practical. They keep
their stock together by using a well, the animals soon learn to stay by the
well where there is water, and food and therefore life… if they wander off
then… they dehydrate and die.
People sometimes think that Christianity is about fences.
Rules and regulations, does and don’t that somehow keep us part of the flock.
But our faith comes from a place more like Australia, a desert land; much of
the action in scripture takes place round wells and water sources. Both
passages we had read out to us today tell us that at the centre of our faith is
a reliable source of life giving water, the presence of God with us.
The passage in Ezekiel comes at the end of a series of
visions that relate to the restoration of Jerusalem after the exile. It is a vision of a river. It starts as a
trickle from the sanctuary in the temple, where Ezekiel had seen God come back to
dwell with his people. It flows out past
the altar into the courtyard, out into the city and the land of Judah. Miraculously
that trickle very quickly, in the space of about 2km, becomes a mighty river,
that what all the measuring and talk of cubits is about it is supposed to show
us the miraculous nature of this river, a river that turns desert into
productive land that makes forests grow, that can even flush out the dense salt
of the dead sea and make it teem with life. That makes fruit grow and healing
possible.
In John on the last day of the festival in Jerusalem Jesus
stands up, maybe even at the very place Ezekiel saw that river flowing out of
the temple. And Jesus says “if you are
thirsty, come to me and drink, and out of your heart streams of life giving
water will flow.” John interprets that as the sending of the Holy Spirit, the
means by which we can know God’s presence in our lives. That God no longer
dwells in the temple but within us.
I just want to share very quickly this morning some ways
that I believe God wants us to connect with these passages with the life giving
water of the presence of God.
Each has an action and a reflection.
The image of Ezekiel’s vision of a forest growing along the
banks of the river is reminiscent of the metaphor Psalm 1 uses for someone who
finds delight and joy in the word of God, they are a tree planted by the
waterside. They have put their roots down deep into the word of God to know God.
And I just want to encourage you by sharing a way I have found it life giving
for me this week.. One of the e100 Essential Jesus readings this week was Mark
4:35-41 Jesus calming the storm… And it spoke to me… I sat down and I wrote all
the forces arrayed against me at the moment, things pushing in like they were
about to swamp the boat I wrote them in a storm pattern, then in the middle
like the calm eye of the storm I wrote psalm 46:10,’ Be still and Know that I
am God’ someone had shared with me last Sunday for encouragement. I felt the
presence of Jesus with me and as I wrote them down and was able to leave that
paper in the prayer room here it felt like their weight had been lifted off my
shoulders. They are still raging but I found life in God’s presence with me. I
made up a sheet that is in the service sheet today for you to give it a whirl
sometime this week.
Drink deeply and you will find that life giving water of the
presence of God flow into your life.
The second thing I
want you to do is pour a little water into your hand… Don’t worry if you spill
some on the carpet. Then I want you to wash your hands. I’m sorry I don’t have
any towels, but can you feel the fresh water on your hands. Can you feel that
they are clean.
In Ezekiel’s vision the water flowed on the south side of
the altar. It connects this living water with the altar where sacrifices we
made by which the people of Israel could acknowledge and ask forgiveness for
the things they had done wrong things which were a barrier to them knowing the
life giving presence of the holy and righteous God.
In the New Testament it is Jesus who invites us to come and
drink of him, Jesus who gave up his own life who by his blood paid the price
for what we have done wrong and enables us to come into that life giving relationship
with God. It’s symbolised for us by the
waters of baptism that speak of the old being washed away forgiveness, new
birth and new life,. This morning I want
you to hear afresh the life giving story of the cross in your life… you are forgiven…the slate is wiped clean… you are accepted… you are beloved.
A few months ago a van got stuck in the grass down the
driveway by the church. I went round to help get it out. We stuck some boards
in front of the back wheels and went round to push and you guessed it I ended
up splattered with mud. This morning I felt it was important to acknowledge
that the life giving water of Jesus also cleans off the much and dirt that
other fling at us. The Dead Sea is the lowest point below sea level on the
earth’s surface. Water and salt and minerals flow into the Dead Sea and they
have nowhere to go. Because it is hot the water evaporates and leaves the salt
and minerals behind and they build up. Over the millennia the Dead Sea has
become about 35 % salt and nothing can live there. Ezekiel’s vision sees the
life giving water of God’s presence able to transform even that, to be teeming
with life so much so that it provides food for other people. God’s living water
can bring his cleansing, healing and transformation even to the lowest point,
and the most toxic.
Finally his morning I want you look at the water you have
left in your cup.
In Ezekiel’s vision
the end result of the presence of God was not simply a transformed land, but
rather one that could provide sustenance and food for other people. It finishes
by talking about fruit trees that produced fruit all year round, more than that
whose leaves had healing property and this is picked up in the book of
Revelation as being leaves that could bring healing to the nations. In the
passage we had in John it talked of streams of living water flowing out from
us.
AS you contemplate the water you have can I invite you to
have as a prayer for the rest of the week how am I going to be bring this life
giving water to the people around me at work, at home, at school. Maybe it’s as
simple as mark 9:41 giving a glass of water in Christ’s name, a random act of
kindness.
One of the critiques I read on how people use the vision in
Ezekiel is it can be over spiritualised. And yes we’ve done that… WE can just
focus on the inner journey and we can miss the fact that the source of living
water in the vision actually has an impact on the environment. It actually
brings transformation in the desert. The living water that flows from a
restored relationship with Jesus flows out into the whole of creation. I’ve
said it often but the Hebrew understanding of peace and wholeness is a matrix
of right relationships with God, God’s word, with each other, both Christians
and non-Christians, with our possessions with the spiritual realm and with
creation. The PCANZ has as its mission statement ‘working with others to make
Christ known’ and we talk of expressing that in terms of the five faces of
mission and one of those is care of creation. AS you look at that water today
can I invite you to think of a way you can in act that this week in a small way
in your life to care for creation.
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