Readings:
Ezekiel 47:1-12; Psalm 46; John 5:1-16

[Ezekiel’s vision of the water flowing from the Temple] ‘The man went to the east holding his measuring line and measured off a thousand cubits; he then made me wade across the stream; the water reached my ankles… He measured off another thousand and made me wade across again; the water reached my waist. He measured off another thousand; it was now a river which I could not cross; the stream had swollen and was now deep water, a river impossible to cross… He took me further, then brought me back to the bank of the river… He said, ‘This water flows east down to the Arabah and to the sea; and flowing into the sea it makes its waters wholesome. Wherever the river flows, all living creatures teeming in it will live. Fish will be very plentiful, for wherever the water goes it brings health, and life teems wherever the river flows… The marshes and lagoons, however, will not become wholesome, but will remain salt. Along the river, on either bank, will grow every kind of fruit tree with leaves that never wither and fruit that never fails.
Ezekiel 47:3, 5-9, 11, 12

Jesus said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’ ‘Sir,’ replied the sick man, ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed…’ Jesus said, ‘Get up, pick up your sleeping mat and walk.’ The man was cured at once.
John 5:7-9

Imagination is a much neglected faculty. Images are much more likely to move us than words. For example, I can read Ezekiel’s vision of the river flowing from the Temple with my mind, or with my imagination, and the effect on me will be very different. With my mind, I may remember all the details, find them interesting, may even look up a Biblical commentary and try to locate the river on a map, but my feelings are not engaged by the imagery which does not linger in my consciousness, nor does it affect my mood or behaviour in any noticeable way during the day. If I read the vision with my imagination, the effect can be very different, as you can test for yourself.

Wade across the stream the first time, as in the vision, and feel the water flow over your ankles. This water that you feel is the life of God. Early baptism fonts were sunk into the ground, so that those to be baptized felt themselves entering into the death and life of Christ. ‘You have been taught that when we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death; in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life’ (Romans 6:3-4).

Baptism is a Greek word meaning ‘to plunge into’, so by imagining you are wading across the water flowing from the Temple, you are, in fact, getting in touch with your own reality, your own baptism, your own being plunged into the life of God.

As you wade across the stream a second time up to your knees, and a third time up to your waist, surrender each part of your body to God as the waters envelop you, offering, too, each of your senses, your inner moods and feelings, your mental attitudes and ways of thinking, your memories, to the cleansing, purifying and energizing power of God’s life.

As you step deeper into the water, you lose your footing and you are carried by the stream. Feel the flow of it, and you moving with it, the healing waters enlivening you and bringing life wherever they flow. As you are carried along in the stream, look back at the marshes and lagoons, salty and dead, because cut off from the river’s flow. Then pray to know the reality of these images in your own life, the times when you can let God be God in you and through you, and the enlivening effect this has on you. Pray to know, too, the times when you resist the living stream, preferring the salt marshes and the lagoons, and note the effect this has on you and on those around you.

Through the circumstances of our lives God is nudging and beckoning us to live in the stream of his life, not in the lagoons and marshes of our own kingdoms.

Prayer
God, source of all life and goodness, free us from false images of ourselves and of you, from every form of self-preoccupation, whether of self-praise or self-blame, so that our lives may flow in the stream of your life. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.