Audio of the sermon is here:

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is supposed to have said, “A man cannot step in the same river twice. It is not the same river, and he is not the same man.” We kind of instinctively know what that means. The river is flowing, like time, and so even if it’s in the same place, there is different water, erosion happens, etc. And, every second, you are someone different, at least in small ways. We even say things like this: I was a different person then. Or, as Bob Dylan put it, “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now” (“My Back Pages”). I have changed; I realize how much I thought I knew back then, but now I realize how little I know. You can’t step in the same river because both the river and you are different.

            There is a river that flows through the Scriptures as well. It is the same river throughout, but the people, the circumstances, and the places are different. It begins in a good place for beginnings, right at the start, in Genesis, in the Garden. I kind of glossed over these verses in chapter 2 for so long. What’s so important about these rivers? But I had missed the very important thing in verse 10: out of Eden, where the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were, flowed a river. When I drive by a river, I often do not think about its source. But every river begins somewhere, and this river begins here, in Eden. It divides and becomes four other rivers as it waters the Garden, but here is its beginning, in the center, where God is with His life. And it is away from the center, away from the Tree of Life, away from the river’s source, that Adam and Eve go. And we’ve been going away from there ever since, trying to find our own life, our own sustenance, our own source in ourselves, turned away from the center toward the edges, into the wilderness.

            And the river goes underground. The flood remakes creation in judgment and hope through Noah and his family; undoing the Garden and the Tree and the River. But it shows up again in the wilderness, where God has brought His people, out of their slavery to Pharaoh and to their own judgments about what is good and right. In the wilderness, where they are hungering and thirsting and grumbling and complaining against their source, God stands on a rock, and tells Moses to strike it. As Psalm 105 says, “[God] broke open the rock and water gushed out, and it flowed through the desert like a river” (105:41). But Paul says that rock, which followed them through the wilderness, was Christ, and it was from Him they drank (1 Corinthians 10:4). He is life and living water and the source of their life. But it was not enough for them, as Paul immediately says. They wanted life from themselves, and made their own gods, like broken wells that hold no water.

            The river went underground. But it showed up again, flowing through the prophets. Ezekiel saw it, when he and the people were in exile in Babylon, cut off from the land, from the temple, from the apparent source of their life. He saw the river when the messenger of God showed him the new, eternal temple, and the new, eternal city. At first, it was just a trickle of water, underneath the threshold of the temple’s entrance. But as the messenger measured the enormous city, 500 yards at a time, the river grew and grew and grew until it was too deep to cross. And Ezekiel saw trees on either side of this river, and they never lose their leaves and their fruit is new every single month, because they are fed by the river from the holy place. And their fruit is for food and their leaves are for the healing of the nations, and wherever that river goes, everything—plants, animals, people, all creation—everything lives (Ezekiel 47:1-12).

            And in the vision of the prophet Zechariah of the day of Yahweh, he sees the Mount of Olives split in half, and water flowing out from Jerusalem, half to the west, to the Mediterranean, and half to the east, to the Dead Sea. This is the water of the Reign and Rule of God, which is from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:10). This is the knowledge of God that will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). So the river runs from Eden and its source through the wilderness to the end of this world and this age.

            But the river doesn’t end with the prophets. It flows through to the fulfillment of the prophets. Jesus shows up first in a river filled with sin and sinners, to fulfill all righteousness. And then He goes into the wilderness, and living water flows. So He says to the woman at the well, hungering and thirsting at the edges, in Samaria: If you knew Him who asks you for water, you would ask Him and He would give you living water, and you would never thirst anymore. The obscure source of this river in Eden is revealed to be this man. And the river continues to flow. On the last and great day of one of the feasts, in Jerusalem, near the spring of Siloam, Jesus cries out with a loud voice: If anyone is thirsting and believes in Me, let him come to Me and drink. Because, as the Scripture says, out of His belly will flow springs of living water. It is like a womb, a belly filled with water, where life is conceived and takes shape. He spoke, John says, of the Spirit, whom He was about to give, but He had not yet been glorified.

            So when He is glorified on the cross, and dies, He hands over the Spirit; He is pierced in His side, and from His belly flows out blood and water, and John says, I saw it with my own eyes. The river of life flows, and from His side is made a new Eve, to inhabit a new Garden, in eternal life with Him. And so John sees it in the Revelation: a new Jerusalem, where God and His people live together forever, adorned like a bride for her husband. And in this new, eternal Jerusalem there is no temple except God and the Lamb, and it is from their throne that river of the living water flows out, through the street of the city. And notice, there is no more Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There is only Good here, only God. And only Life, and the single Tree that grows on either side of the river, with fruit for food and leaves for healing. This is the river, flowing from Garden to Wilderness to City, and people keep stepping into it to drink and live and be healed. And it flows here, and you are in this river, no matter where you are. From His side flows living water that you drink, and you eat the life-giving fruit from that cross-shaped tree, body and blood. And it is for the healing of all the nations, and wherever it flows, everything lives, like you live.

Wherever you have tried to find life, and food, and peace, and healing, you will not find it as long as it is not in the center of all creation, in Jesus Himself. Come to Me, you believers, and drink. Drink this Spirit, poured out for all flesh, the washing of rebirth and regeneration in the Holy Spirit, from God our Savior, in Jesus Christ. And the Spirit is the fountain welling up in you to eternity, overflowing to your neighbor in fruit and words and life.

People say that if you’re lost, you should find a river and follow it. So this river flows, from God Himself and it is for the lost, and the found, and the living and the dying; the sick, and the grieving, and the suffering; it is for you, and it is for everyone else too, for the healing of all the nations. Make disciples of all the nations, Jesus says to His Church, by baptizing them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and letting My words continually flow, like rivers in the desert. And all those nations will come into the City, and gather around the throne of God and of the Lamb, an uncountable number of every nation, of every tribe, and people, and language. If you’re lost, find the river. If you ever get lost, find this river. Walk in it, as you change, as life goes on, as time moves on into the future. As someone put it, there is a River north of the future (Ivan Illich), and it flows inexhaustible into eternity.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 5/30/25