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9/13/2026 0 Comments Sept 13, 2026: Living WaterOld Testament Reading Ezekiel 47:9-12
Gospel Reading: John 7: 37-39 I want to begin with a guided meditation. If you are comfortable, close your eyes. Picture a beautiful body of water. It could be a lake, river, ocean or brook. Feel the warmth of the sun on your back as you stand at the edge of that water gazing at its beauty. Now step into the water feeling the refreshing coolness on your ankles and maybe, if you are brave enough, take another step deeper so the water cools you up to your knees. Now hold still and look down into the water. Watch the swim bugs racing across the top or maybe the minnows or crabs moving below. Maybe some of those small minnows even tickle your feet as you stand there. Feel and see the life in this living water. If you like, imagine yourself stepping into a boat, kayak, or paddle board and floating on this living water as it holds you as you continue to look at the life within it from the fish, to the lilies or the seaweed. Imagine taking a sample of this water and putting it under a microscope. You would see wiggly microorganisms, including bacteria, protozoa, and algae: all different forms of life. Now open your eyes and look at the cover of your bulletin. This is the symbol of this year’s Season of Creation. It is a focus on the living water. In his passage the Prophet Ezekiel is envisioning not just the restoration of the Temple and Jerusalem after the people’s time of exile, but from that Temple comes a river of life sustaining water where “every living creature that swarms will live”. There will be plentiful fish to sustain life and “ On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food.” And the trees will not just bear fruit seasonally but “they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary.” And not only will the tree produce fruit for food but also “their leaves for healing”. Some people see this vision as a metaphor for the end times or for Heaven, when we are truly restored to God and creation and it is partially that. But if we really think about it, this is the way God created the earth: where all life is in balance and there is enough fresh, life giving water and food for all. And think about it, our local fruit trees may not give us fruit each month and our local lake or ocean may not give us fish each month, but can’t we get fruit and fish at the grocery store all year round as it is brought in from different parts of God’s creation? And there are at least 25 different trees that have healing properties that we use in various medicines. Aren’t we lucky that we live in places where we have access to fresh water daily and there are stores that have all those foods we need and want and most of us have the money to buy them? But not everyone on this planet does and part of the vision of restoration is our work in accomplishing the justice of living water that supports all. We are called to be co-workers with the Creator in caring for this planet and all who are on it. It is out of this spirit that the World Council of Churches created the Ecumenical Water Network that “promotes the preservation, responsible management and equitable distribution of water for all, based on the understanding that water is a gift from God, a common good and a fundamental human right.” They “promote and coordinate international advocacy for the human right to water and sanitation.” Their work is needed because, “According to the UN News, 1.7 billion people lack basic hygiene services at home, and 2.1 billion people still lack access to safe drinking water - that is 1 in 4 people on the globe!” It is easy for those of us for whom fresh water is just a turn of a faucet handle away to forget how far water is from others. According to Oxfam, on average women and children in some developing countries like Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Yemen walk up to 3.7 miles a day carrying 5 gallons of water back to their families. Imagine walking even a mile carrying five gallons of water! And yet we know the value of water to life. We have all seen how quickly a brown lawn or plant greens up when the rains finally come. But what if the water that is available for a community to drink or water its crops and animals is polluted by chemicals released from factories or taken up by the exorbitant amount of water needed to cool off and produce electricity for data centers for artificial intelligence? According to a September 9, 2026 Forbes article “ The Hidden Data Center Water Risk that Demands more Attention”, in the “seven states that are home to nearly half of U.S. data centers: Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona…(the data centers) depend on about 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater annually for electricity, making up the majority of the data centers' overall water use. That's roughly 12 times the annual water use of Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington D.C. combined.” While it is nice to have the information at our fingertips that AI offers, is it as necessary as fresh water to all living things? Maybe AI can help us investigate and solve some of our fresh water problems around the world. We will see… Somewhere in there is a balance that we as stewards of God’s creation are called to work for so that all of creation has access to God’s living water. We, as creation, are thirsty for living water - both the literal kind and the hope and motivation that our creator is still working with us and in us to make a difference in our lives and for the planet. Jesus said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me” and aren’t we all thirsty for hope and reassurance? Jesus offers us that. “Let the one who believes in me drink.” In drinking in belief, we join with God as a part of the human community of living water: a water that supports, sustains, feeds and grows. When we become part of that community, we support each other and the planet. Our believing hearts and efforts combine together one droplet of water at a time to create the rivers of living water that, with God’s support and guidance, can nourish the whole planet. Never doubt that your droplet of belief, of living water, is too small because, like a rising tide, it combines with other droplets of belief to fill the bay. And even when the tide goes out and you feel weighed down by the challenges of the world, remember that in 12 hours, that tide is going to come back to fill you up again. We in the United Church of Ludlow are just a few of the droplets in the ecumenical community of faith around the world who are listening to the cry of creation and praying for God’s living water during this Season of Creation. But our droplets join with the Catholics, the Episcopals, the Lutherans, the Orthodox, the World Council of Churches and so many others to make a tidal shift in this world. Let’s follow the advice of all of our partners in this season of creation: “Let us overcome our fear and step into the water of God’s love - to be part of the River of Transformation for the world, to see the literal healing and renewal of creation and the blessing of the Earth.” Amen. Pastor Michelle Fountain
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The Gospel: John 14: 1-14
“Do not let your hearts be troubled” Jesus said to the disciples and he also says this to us. But our hearts are troubled, aren’t they? They are troubled by health issues, money worries, concerns for our families, our country, our planet, and all the creatures on it. Yet we were told not to fear but instead to believe in both God and Jesus. We are essentially told that faith is the anecdote to fear or at minimum, an antibiotic that helps us deal with our fears with the knowledge that God is with us. Jesus adds the reassurance that he is preparing a place for us, and at some point, he will come and get us: a reminder that we will never be alone. We pastors like to use that portion of the scripture around celebrations of life as we visualize Jesus welcoming our loved ones home with a place all prepared for them. It is a beautiful image. But, like Bec Cranford shares in the living psalm, we are worried about today, about life on earth, “I am running into you again God, I know you will save me”. And what do we need to be saved from? “Reacting and retaliating” in kind to all the negativity and violence that we see around us, trying to trap us, to make us stumble, to make us hurt others as we see people being hurt or to go for an “eye for an eye” Old Testament style. Except that is not what the Exodus scripture actually meant. Exodus 21: 23-25 says, “If any harm follows then you shall give a life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” While this sounds like the eye for an eye system of continuing violence, the next verse goes on to explain that we are not to take this scripture literally. “When a slave owner strikes the eye of a male or female slave, destroying it, the owner shall let the slave go: a free person, to compensate for the eye” - that is not violence but justice. Verse 33 says, “If someone leaves a pit open, or digs a pit and does not cover it and an ox or donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall make restitution.” That, too, is justice. In 22:1 it says “When someone steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, the thief shall pay five oxen for an ox or four sheep for a sheep.” That is justice that also seeks to discourage recidivism. And the list goes on. While some of the Old Testament does seem a bit more extreme 22:18 “You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live”, most of it is about just compensation for a wrong and for room to learn a lesson from it. That is justice. The bible asks for justice, not vengeance, and Jesus reminds us in saying “Do not let your hearts be troubled” and “I go to prepare a place for you” that these present challenges will pass and we must stay the course of living into our faith. We must as Psalmist Cranford says, “rest in God’s hands” in “the Love that is ever present.” This, however, does not mean that we ignore the troubles of this world to fully concentrate on the place that Jesus is preparing for us. We just use the knowledge that our faith gives us a place of calm where we can lean into God’s loving hands, to pause before we act or react and to consider and try to follow the model that Jesus set for us. The disciples wanted proof; they wanted to know where Jesus was going and they wanted to see the Father. Honestly, that is understandable, it was a lot to take in. And the reality is, they did not get it until Christ rose from the dead. I can just imagine a few of their dinners as the disciples sat around after the resurrection and they went back over all that he had taught them. There must have been a lot of “Oh…now I get it” and “Oh my Gosh, that’s what he meant!” It would have been like getting the final puzzle pieces or decoding the secret message although it probably took years to remember and to put it all together. I like to think about the discussion they would have had looking back on the scripture recorded in John 14:11 “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not (because he knew they were still going to struggle), then believe me because of the works themselves.” Believe me because of the works themselves… they would have pondered and then considered what were Jesus’ w0rks? Healing the sick, raising several people from the dead, curing the blind and the lame, forgiving those who made mistakes and even those who attacked him, welcoming and teaching all, especially those whom society excluded. Jesus told them and us to connect his actions to God. Jesus could not have healed the sick, raised the dead, cured the blind and lame, or forgiven those who are hard to forgive, thus inspiring them to live better lives, if he was not of God, if he was not God. If the disciples did not get it in the moment that Jesus told them this, which it seems clear that they did not, they finally got that Jesus and God were one at the resurrection, even if Thomas needed to put his hand in the nail holes to really believe. But believing, faith, while it feels good, comforting, and reassuring, especially knowing that Jesus has reserved a place for each of us, is just the beginning. Jesus goes on to say in John 14:12 “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” Jesus is telling the disciples, you need to not only pick up where I left off healing and helping, forgiving and inspiring, but you need to do even more of it because I am not going to be here in human form doing it with you. I can see the disciples reflecting on this and feeling really overwhelmed, maybe even discussing, “Ok, we get it now, Jesus is in God and God is in Jesus so he could heal and cure and forgive, but us???? How are we supposed to do that? But Jesus had the answer for that too - “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father will be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it” (John 14:13-14). At face value, this sounds like winning the lottery - if the disciples ask for something in Jesus’ name and if we ask for something in Jesus’ name, we get it - he said anything…. Right? No. Jesus reminded us time and time again through his telling of parables and through the whole tradition of the Bible that much of this is not meant to be literal. Instead, we need to look for the message in the story or at the model that Jesus set in his life to see what works we should do and what help we need to ask for in doing it. Jesus never once called for God to make him or his disciples glorious in battle nor did he ever ask God to physically destroy his enemies. It is clear that we should never ask for that in Jesus’ name either. Anyone who calls for the destruction of anyone else, enemies included, is not following Jesus’ model and it is not a prayer that God is going to answer. Remember, Jesus told us in Luke 6:27-28, “But to those of you who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” So faith, belief in God and Jesus, are the first step and the action of that faith is the work that we do. We can not just rest on the noun of faith as if it is a pillow for us to nap on. We need to turn faith into a verb, action, through loving, peaceful work, just as Jesus would do. How do we do that? Prayer is an action - praying for peace, praying for the healing of the sick, praying for violence to end, praying that we can open our hearts to folks who are different from us, praying that we can love even those who hate us, praying for people and animals to have homes and security - that is putting our faith into action. We can more actively work our faith as well, following Jesus’ model as we each feel called to do. Some of us have the skills to actually heal people, others have the ability to lend a listening ear and a wise word or two that provide comfort. Still others can share their gift of time through a smile, or a helping hand feeding and supporting others. We cannot all perform big miracles, but kindness in a world that is not always kind, is a miraculous work in and of itself. It is what Jesus did. Remember, the fuel for your good works is faith. When it is hard to be kind to someone who is not kind to you, ask Jesus to give you the ability to do that. When you do not have the strength to do something that needs to be done, ask Jesus for the strength to do that. When you are not sure how you feel about, let alone how to support those who have been marginalized or to fight against injustice, ask Jesus for help with that. Jesus’ human life is our model, it is what inspires our faith and moves us to continue God’s work in the world. Stay positive as Jesus was and remember that when you need it, you can always ask for help in Jesus’ name. Hope in challenging times is a radical act of resistance and we can all have radical hope that God’s creatures will all eventually learn to respect one another and work together and we can all do our small works to help make that happen with Jesus’ help. Amen. Pastor Michelle Fountain |
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