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“Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes.” (Ezekiel 47.9) Symbols are necessary and also inspire joy and happiness. Our mind is not only analytical and rational; it is also creative and poetic. There are four very well-known symbols of the Holy Spirit: water, fire, wind and the dove. But when contemplating these symbols, we are at risk of objectifying the Holy Spirit. So it is necessary to pay attention to the dynamics of those symbols, to their movement and their active and transforming force. The Holy Spirit is a subject, an activity and a relationship. The symbols representing the spirit are not static either. Water runs; fire burns and illuminates; wind blows; and doves fly and descend. For this reflection, I am using the symbol water. Water produces harmony and disharmonyWater is an element very much needed and almost miraculous. It is the mother of life. Our daughters and sons were in the water of our wombs. Ya se rompió la fuente” (“The waters have broken”) is the phrase that we use in Latin America to announce that a baby is ready to be born. The water from our wombs is a sign of the life that is coming. Water is also linked with images of freshness and newness of life. Saint Francis of Assisi called water la humilde hermana. Our “humble sister” restores, refreshes and purifies our lives at the end of a heavy day’s labour. Water is the sign of life that flows from the divine providence, a providence that doesn’t immunize human beings from adversity or death. In Hebrew, heaven is called shamain, meaning “the water from below.” Water is a little of heaven on earth, an image of God’s grace that comes from above, secures life, then returns to heaven after bearing fruit. Nevertheless, balance and harmony are needed with every blessing we receive. If there is no water, there is drought, death, grief; but if water flows abundantly, it can cause destruction and disharmony in God’s creation. So water can produce joy as well as suffering, life and death. The World Water Day, established by the United Nations on 22 March 1992, marks the break of spring or the season of heavy rain. It leads us to commit ourselves to preserving the small resources of global water that Leonardo da Vinci called “the blood of nature.” Polluted water is the cause of 80 per cent of diseases and a third of deaths. Aggression toward the environment in the past decades has substantially decreased the global volume of usable water. The causes of this disaster lie, according to the experts, in the ever increasing pollution of rivers and in deforestation. The factors are many and they are intensifying even more: the intensive use of water by industries, inefficient methods of irrigation, desertification, global warming effects and chemical and organic pollution. All these factors cause shortage of water and disharmony in the universe. A day of war is more expensive than taking water to populations that don’t have access to it, affirmed the head of the Cameroon delegation, Georges Dubier, at an International Congress on Water that gathered 2,500 experts from 80 countries in Berlin. According to Dubier’s figures, around 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, or half of the population, don’t have access to drinkable water and 400 million are excluded from the health network. So 80 per cent of diseases that strike the planet are related to this liquid element. Globally, the number of people who don’t have access to drinkable water must be around 1.4 million. Water has created a new division between the rich and poor countries and in time it will become an even more valuable asset than petroleum, a statement affirmed by Wolfgang Markel, former president of the German Association of Gas and Hydraulic Resources. A sign of lifeIt is in Ezekiel that we find the most appropriate text for water as a sign of life. The whole prophecy of Ezekiel is marked by visions and symbolic actions. It is evident that the book of Ezekiel perceives the conception of water as an origin of life. In the Old Testament a fundamental distinction is made between stagnant water that dirties and is not drinkable and living water that is drinkable and flows freely. Sea water is also conceived sometimes as “living water,” the great maternal breast where all the germs move and sprout all forms. Not only the earth but also the sea symbolizes the maternal breast. What a prophet Ezekiel was! Even though he came from the priestly line, he broke all the parameters and canons of priestly theology to enter with great enthusiasm in the theology of exile, with new categories of the glory and presence of God proclaiming a viva voz (“in a loud voice”) that God was present, not only in the temple and in Jerusalem but in the midst of suffering people in their land of exile. The Old Testament never restricted the action of God, of Yahweh, to the confines of Israel. All lands and all people are inside the will of the Creator. But for people in the days of Ezekiel to be exiled was synonymous with being abandoned by their God. In foreign and impure lands, Yahweh was concealed and undetected because the glory of Yahweh always glowed in Jerusalem, in the temple. Isaiah saw it there. But Ezekiel saw God’s glory in another place, not in Jerusalem. The vision of Ezekiel was given in exile, next to the river of Chebar (Ezekiel 1.3). Yes, he saw God’s glory in the Mesopotamian valleys and not in the mountains of Zion. “So I rose up and went out in the valley; and the glory of the Lord stood there, like the glory that I had seen by the river Chebar; and I fell on my face.” (Ezekiel 3.23) Ezekiel identified the presence of Yahweh in the difficult moments. Yahweh is there among the oppressed and enslaved people, in solidarity with the poor and next to the exiles. This provided comfort and spirit to those that looked toward the north with sadness and despair; from there, from that direction, the Babylonians had brought them to the river Chebar. What a relief! Their ways had not been forgotten by God. How in solidarity was their God. To provide comfort and to make the exiles reborn to a new life was the main reason for the vision of Ezekiel. The water would be spilled on them as a blessing. “I will sparkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you. “ (Ezekiel 36.25-27) The vision of the purified waterIn Israel, God is traditionally conceived as living water (e.g. Ezekiel 47.1-12). “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2.13). So Ezekiel thinks of “the living water” as a spring that runs and flows in the form of a river or torrent. It is important to see that the water of Ezekiel flows out of the temple that is its source. The dominant element is the spring of the temple: that is, the union of water with the sacred before the water is transformed into the river that brings fertility wherever it flows. The force of the living water overcomes the infertility of putrid water, populating it with living beings. It is healing water. For Ezekiel, God can produce that current of living water that will sprout in an explosive victory, giving rise to vegetable, animal and human life. The power of the “living water” overcomes the infertility of foul waters, bringing life to these waters. A stream of living water will flow out. It will spring triumphantly as an outburst of vegetal, animal and human life. A theology of life claims a victory over anything that is hostile to life: the foul salty waters will be fresh and clean; the barren ground will become a wonderful land of fruit trees; and all diseases will be cured. Ezekiel doesn’t make any comments about his symbol: he doesn’t ruin it or limit it. We are totally free to interpret it. The text of the Gospel of John (John 7.37-38) is also significant: “On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out: Let anyone who is thirsty, come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now he said this about the spirit that believers in him were to receive.” The water sprouts from Jesus like living water to give life to those who are thirsty and need it. In the same way, the text on the water and the spirit of Ezekiel recalls the evangelical dialogue with Nicodemus about birth and rebirth. No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew. And this happens in the “heart” impregnated by the spirit. From water and spirit, the new life, the new creature, is born. Yes, the water of life is running, growing, invading, communicating. It communicates with plants, producing a wonderful park; it communicates with animals, making the Dead Sea swarm with living beings; it communicates with human beings in the form of food and medicine. The prophet Ezekiel walks on that water. The prophet must feel in his body the power of water. The word “water” is mentioned 14 times and dominates the whole fragment that we have read (Ezekiel 47.1-12). The spirit as the water of life drives us maternally to the apocalyptic vision: “Then the angel showed me the clean river of the water of life radiant as glass that flows out from the throne of God and the Lamb. It runs through the city producing fruits on one side and the other side of the river, giving fruits every month, and the leaves of the tree are for the sanity of the nations.” (Revelation 22.1-2) Let us symbolically be filled now with the “water of life” in the spirit of the prophet Ezekiel. May the spirit of God allow us to drink from the “fountain of life” to take sanity to the city. This refreshing water confirms our being, recognizing us and welcoming us. The water should continue flowing out of our own being, opening up new roads, cleaning, healing, uniting, feeding the roots of our dreams. Because the promise is there: “That water will never dry out.” The Reverend Dr. Ofelia Ortega is President Emeritus of the Ecumenical Seminary in Mantanzas, Cuba; one of the six presidents of the World Council of Churches; and one of the vice-presidents of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. This article appears in Water – God’s Gift for Life, © 2006 by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. It is used by permission.
Copyright Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). All Rights Reserved.
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