Free the Waters!

Sermon: “Free the Waters!”
Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2011
Deut. 8:7-18
The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen
Trinity Church, Staunton, VA


“The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters.”


In today’s reading from Deuteronomy, the Israelites, God’s covenant people, have been in the wilderness for quite a while. This time of wandering has been a time of formation, formation as the people of God. Times have been fraught with difficulty and yet God has provided for them. At times, they have been tested, they’ve been thirsty, hungry, frustrated, angry, and faithless, and yet, through it all God has not forgotten them and has given them what they needed. Now God tells them this time of wandering in the desert is about to end; life is about to change.


God’s aim is to give them a good land, a land filled with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters. The Israelites will be entering a new place soon, a place of abundance, a place with sustenance, “a land of wheat and barley, of vines and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where (they) may eat bread without scarcity, where (they) will lack nothing.”


Today we celebrate Thanksgiving Day- a day of feasting, food, family, and friends, a day when we give thanks for what God has given us. To say the word “thanksgiving” brings up for many of us images of cornucopias of fruit and vegetables, big, fat turkeys with stuffing and gravy, cranberries and apple pie. And today we consider God’s role in the feast that is seen and unseen, God’s role in the abundance, God’s role in the tryptophan induced nap some of will concede to later this afternoon. The lush images that are presented in our reading – flowing water, fig trees, olive trees, wheat and barley, as well as lush images on our altar today and perhaps on our dining room tables are beautiful and inviting and point to a deeper reality of the abundance God is eager to give us if we are only willing to receive his gifts.


Early on in our marriage, my husband Steve and I visited Harper’s Ferry, WV, and waded in the Shenandoah River. There were lots of rocks in the river and lots of places in the river where twigs, leaves and logs had jammed up the flow of the water. I noticed after a while Steve unjamming places, removing those sticks and bunched up leaves, letting the water flow freely, and then he would happily move from one jam to the next having a great time. After a while I asked, “What are you doing?” He yelled, “Free the waters! Free the waters!” Decades later we still laugh when one of us unjams a spot in a stream or a river, yelling out, “Free the waters!”


I wonder if in a sense that is what God’s abundance and our response to it is all about: freeing the waters, freeing up that which blocks our receiving God’s grace, unclogging that which keeps us from the flowing outpouring of God’s love, that which attemps to keep God at bay. If God is bringing us into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters, how do we enter that land successfully? What keeps us from fully receiving God’s ever-flowing love?


If our blockage is

resentment or anger, we can draw on the freeing power of forgiveness.

If our blockage is
the need to control, we can draw on the freeing power of surrender.
If our blockage is
guilt, we can draw on the freeing power of making things right and just, as much

as it depends on us.

If our blockage is

our own unworthiness we draw on the freeing power of God’s Word: we and all

others are worthy of God’s love

If our blockage is pride
we can draw on the freeing power of humility.
If our blockage is

self-absorption, we can draw on the freeing power of doing for others.

If our blockage is

hatred, or irritation or judging others, we can draw on the freeing power of love.

If we spend time with any ourselves or any other people today, we will have ample opportunity to practice this drawing on God’s abundance.


So as we feast today, as we consider the visible, tangible abundance before us, can we also consider the depths of God’s abundance that are not always so visible? Can we ask God to show us what it is that will help us allow his ever-flowing love full access to our minds, our hearts, our souls?


Poet Mary Oliver’s words come to mind, “Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” Inhale all the way! And exhale all the way, too. God wants us to live- fully! Abundantly! And God offers us all that we need to make that possible. We just need to tap into God’s power. We just need to let God free the waters!


Amen.