“Up to Our Ankles, Over Our Heads”
Ezekiel 47:1–12
Preached at Hamilton Chapel, Memphis Theological Seminary, September 2025
Water Flowing from the Temple
47 Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple; there water was flowing from below the entryway of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east), and the water was flowing down from below the south side of the temple, south of the altar. 2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east,[a] and the water was trickling out on the south side.
3 Going on eastward with a cord in his hand, the man measured one thousand cubits and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. 4 Again he measured one thousand and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured one thousand and led me through the water, and it was up to the waist. 5 Again he measured one thousand, and it was a river that I could not cross, for the water had risen; it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be crossed. 6 He said to me, “Mortal, have you seen this?”
Then he led me back along the bank of the river. 7 As I came back, I saw on the bank of the river a great many trees on the one side and on the other. 8 He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. 9 Wherever the river goes,[b] 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. 10 People will stand fishing beside the sea[c] from en-GEH-dee to en-eg-LAH-eem.”; it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. 11 But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. 12 On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.”
Introduction
Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers moved forward with the Hatchie-Loosahatchie Ecosystem Restoration Project. It’s a $63.7 million effort to bring life back to more than 6,000 acres of habitat along a 39-mile stretch of the Lower Mississippi from the Hatchie River down to the Wolf River, right on the edge of downtown Memphis. This is happening in the wetlands and riverbanks that shape the life of the area we call home.
The work includes reconnecting secondary channels, reforesting floodplain hardwoods, and cultivating wetlands. It’s a vision decades in the making. But it will take time: this river has been dredged, straightened, and walled in for generations. negotiating private land, securing funding, designing restoration that may unfold over years, even decades, before the full renewal can be seen.
And yet, you can’t ever fully constrain a river.
Geologists tell us that the Mississippi once ran as far west as Crowley’s Ridge in Arkansas, which is about 90 miles over yonder. That’s a reminder: rivers wander. They resist our fences. They carve their own path. They carry life, and they can also bring destruction.
I have a friend who used to live down on the River. The pics of the river and bridge are mine from being down there. Every time I’d go visit him, I wanted to go out on his balcony so that I could see the water level. It’s fascinating to watch the ebb and flow and make meaning of what the water level may portend about the coming days.
We have rain catchers, rain gauges, and water levels need to be checked on the regular, don’t you know?
Water is never just one thing. It nourishes, but it can overwhelm. It sustains, but it can sweep away. It is gift and danger all at once.
And that’s why Scripture comes back to water again and again. From the waters at creation to the flood, from the Red Sea to Galilee, to Jesus rising from the waters of baptism, water bears the weight of both death and life. Ezekiel 47 gives us that image again: out of the rubble of exile, a river begins to flow.
Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers moved forward with the Hatchie-Loosahatchie Ecosystem Restoration Project. It’s a $63.7 million effort to bring life back to more than 6,000 acres of habitat along a 39-mile stretch of the Lower Mississippi from the Hatchie River down to the Wolf River, right on the edge of downtown Memphis. This is happening in the wetlands and riverbanks that shape the life of the area we call home.
The work includes reconnecting secondary channels, reforesting floodplain hardwoods, and cultivating wetlands. It’s a vision decades in the making. But it will take time: this river has been dredged, straightened, and walled in for generations. negotiating private land, securing funding, designing restoration that may unfold over years, even decades, before the full renewal can be seen.
And yet, you can’t ever fully constrain a river.
Geologists tell us that the Mississippi once ran as far west as Crowley’s Ridge in Arkansas, which is about 90 miles over yonder. That’s a reminder: rivers wander. They resist our fences. They carve their own path. They carry life, and they can also bring destruction.
I have a friend who used to live down on the River. The pics of the river and bridge are mine from being down there. Every time I’d go visit him, I wanted to go out on his balcony so that I could see the water level. It’s fascinating to watch the ebb and flow and make meaning of what the water level may portend about the coming days.
We have rain catchers, rain gauges, and water levels need to be checked on the regular, don’t you know?
Water is never just one thing. It nourishes, but it can overwhelm. It sustains, but it can sweep away. It is gift and danger all at once.
And that’s why Scripture comes back to water again and again. From the waters at creation to the flood, from the Red Sea to Galilee, to Jesus rising from the waters of baptism, water bears the weight of both death and life. Ezekiel 47 gives us that image again: out of the rubble of exile, a river begins to flow.
Ezekiel’s Place
Ezekiel, the priest turned prophet, speaks from Babylon after Jerusalem fell in 587 BCE. His world collapsed, and yet, his visions insist: God is not confined to holy ground. God is with us in exile.
Womanist theologian, Wil Gafney, puts it this way: “[Ezekiel] believed that the God of Israel was not confined to Israel, that his God had not been defeated when Judah was defeated and their temple was destroyed. … Ezekiel claimed that God followed God’s people into exile and was even now accompanying them in their sorrow.”
That’s the heart of Ezekiel’s message: judgment was real, exile was devastating, and yet God’s presence was not bound to Jerusalem’s walls. God was with them even in Babylon, carrying them in the current of a new vision. His book holds together judgment and hope, holiness and nearness.
By the time we reach chapter 47, the mood has shifted. We’ve moved from despair to restoration. Out of the temple ruins, water begins to flow. What was lost is being renewed. What was barren begins to live again.
Have you been to the Dead Sea? Floated in it? I have. It’s hard to imagine how life flourishes there.
But that’s the point, and it’s one too easy to forget and too important not to remember, that God’s Spirit flows into the very places we’ve written off. Into the parts of our lives we call barren. Into the communities declared beyond repair.
And let’s be honest, placing people into exile is as real today as it’s ever been. For some of us that’s literal displacement. Yet exile has other natures, as well. From relationships, from our church that we didn’t leave, it left us, from ways of being as a community, a country, that no seems so long ago and so far away.
We know what some of our Dead Seas look like.
It looks like agencies that hound the immigrant and tear families apart, weaponizing fear through ICE raids instead of offering welcome to the stranger.
It looks like laws and policies that chip away at free speech, and the complicity of corporations that appease so that their mergers proceed by silencing truth-tellers and rewarding propaganda.
It looks like those who co-opt the name of Christ to bless racism, who ignore the witness of history, who glorify nationalism as though it were gospel.
It looks like leaders who sneer at peer-reviewed science, dismantle vaccine protocols, threaten the safety of children, and shrug as preventable diseases return.
It looks like a government eager to shred social safety nets, while gilded tax breaks rain down on those already drowning in gold.
It looks like the pervasive spirit of meanness, principalities, and powers that make cruelty sound normal and compassion sound weak.
These are the Dead Seas of our time: bitter, barren, lifeless.
And yet Ezekiel dares to see a river flowing even there. The water heals what was dead. The Spirit makes fresh what we thought would always be bitter. This is not naïve optimism; it is prophetic imagination. It is God saying: My river will not be dammed up by your walls of fear and greed. My current will find a way.
Fruit on the Banks
On the banks, Ezekiel sees trees that never wither, whose leaves bring healing, whose fruit never fails. Every month they bear new fruit.
I’m mindful of how The Revelation to John echoes it: the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God, nourishing the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
So what does that fruit look like in our day?
It looks like communities that choose mercy over meanness, hospitality over hostility, empathy over antipathy.
It looks like churches that welcome the other, not regardless of who they are, but precisely because that’s how God made them.
It looks like leaders who tell the truth about our history, about our racism, about our wounds, who seek to be healers of the breach rather than opening historic traumatic wounds, leaving them to fester.
It looks like teachers, scientists, and parents protecting children’s health, defending vaccine protocols, and trusting knowledge that preserves life rather than dismantling it.
It looks like citizens who resist the idolatry of nationalism, who remember that our first allegiance is to the Realm of God and the way of Jesus.
It looks like communities of faith that speak truth to principalities and powers, refusing to let cruelty have the last word.
It looks like people of every age and station planting trees, stewarding soil, protecting rivers, because creation itself is part of God’s healing.
That is the fruit Ezekiel dares us to imagine: not just survival, but flourishing. Not just bearing enough for ourselves, but bearing enough to feed, to heal, to bless the nations.
Where Do We Stand?
This river Ezekiel sees is more than geography; it’s imagination, it’s vision, it’s a new way of seeing. Walter Brueggemann reminds us that “the task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.’
When God’s Spirit carries us over our heads, it isn’t just about deeper water — it’s about a different way of seeing. Seeing God. Seeing ourselves. Seeing the world. It’s about stepping into the alternative that God is already bringing to life.
Ezekiel’s people were in exile, far from home, wondering if God’s promises still held. His vision gave them hope. It still gives us hope. Because exile isn’t just history — we know what it feels like to be cut off, dried out, worn down. And yet the promise holds: there is a river.
So when this river flows, perhaps God is not only calling us to deeper faith, but also into new ways of seeing our lives, our world, our neighbors, ways our dominant narratives cannot imagine because their hearts are hardened.
So where are you standing today?
Ankle-deep — safe, cautious, in control?
Knee or waist-deep — feeling the tug, but still calling the shots?
Or over your head — carried by the Spirit, swept into God’s renewing stream?
Some of us are splashing at the edges, content to stay safe. Some of us feel the tug and resist. And some of us don’t want to fight the current anymore; we’re ready to surrender and let it take us where it will.
Wherever you are, jump in, the water’s fine. Get ready for God to do something unexpected and use us to bring life into places long forsaken.
Amen.
End Notes:
Wil Gafney, “Hearing Voices and Seeing Visions,” sermon on Ezekiel (September 4, 2011), wilgafney.com.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), p. 3.
Ezekiel, the priest turned prophet, speaks from Babylon after Jerusalem fell in 587 BCE. His world collapsed, and yet, his visions insist: God is not confined to holy ground. God is with us in exile.
Womanist theologian, Wil Gafney, puts it this way: “[Ezekiel] believed that the God of Israel was not confined to Israel, that his God had not been defeated when Judah was defeated and their temple was destroyed. … Ezekiel claimed that God followed God’s people into exile and was even now accompanying them in their sorrow.”
That’s the heart of Ezekiel’s message: judgment was real, exile was devastating, and yet God’s presence was not bound to Jerusalem’s walls. God was with them even in Babylon, carrying them in the current of a new vision. His book holds together judgment and hope, holiness and nearness.
By the time we reach chapter 47, the mood has shifted. We’ve moved from despair to restoration. Out of the temple ruins, water begins to flow. What was lost is being renewed. What was barren begins to live again.
Up to Our Ankles, Over Our Heads
At first, it’s just a trickle. The Hebrew word is mayim (מים, MAH-yeem), water. Easy to miss. Step into it and you’re ankle-deep. Manageable. Safe.
But then knee-deep. Waist-deep. You begin to feel the pull. You can still move where you want, but it’s harder now. Finally, Ezekiel sees a river “that could not be crossed.” Over his head. Too deep to manage.
And that’s the point. At the ankles, we’re in control. We like ankle-deep faith. Dip a toe in. Splash a little. Enough to say we’ve gotten wet, but not enough to lose balance.
But get up to the knees, to the waist, now the water tugs, and you can feel the push and pull of the current. We can still muscle our way through, but it takes effort. And some of us stop there. Safe enough to feel the Spirit, but not enough to be swept away.
But over our heads? That’s surrender. That’s when the current carries us. That’s where trust begins. No more walking where we choose. We’re being carried by the Spirit’s stream.
Faith has that same movement, doesn’t it? You know, from manageable religion we control, to risky trust where the Spirit carries us. From wading to surrender. From the illusion that we’re in control to being swept up in God’s current?
Healing the Dead Seas
Ezekiel talks about the river flowing east, down into the Arabah, into the Dead Sea. Nothing lives there — it’s too salty, too barren. And yet Ezekiel hears: “When the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh.” The word is rapha ( רָפָא rah-FAH) — to heal. Even the Dead Sea becomes fresh?
At first, it’s just a trickle. The Hebrew word is mayim (מים, MAH-yeem), water. Easy to miss. Step into it and you’re ankle-deep. Manageable. Safe.
But then knee-deep. Waist-deep. You begin to feel the pull. You can still move where you want, but it’s harder now. Finally, Ezekiel sees a river “that could not be crossed.” Over his head. Too deep to manage.
And that’s the point. At the ankles, we’re in control. We like ankle-deep faith. Dip a toe in. Splash a little. Enough to say we’ve gotten wet, but not enough to lose balance.
But get up to the knees, to the waist, now the water tugs, and you can feel the push and pull of the current. We can still muscle our way through, but it takes effort. And some of us stop there. Safe enough to feel the Spirit, but not enough to be swept away.
But over our heads? That’s surrender. That’s when the current carries us. That’s where trust begins. No more walking where we choose. We’re being carried by the Spirit’s stream.
Faith has that same movement, doesn’t it? You know, from manageable religion we control, to risky trust where the Spirit carries us. From wading to surrender. From the illusion that we’re in control to being swept up in God’s current?
Healing the Dead Seas
Ezekiel talks about the river flowing east, down into the Arabah, into the Dead Sea. Nothing lives there — it’s too salty, too barren. And yet Ezekiel hears: “When the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh.” The word is rapha ( רָפָא rah-FAH) — to heal. Even the Dead Sea becomes fresh?
Have you been to the Dead Sea? Floated in it? I have. It’s hard to imagine how life flourishes there.
But that’s the point, and it’s one too easy to forget and too important not to remember, that God’s Spirit flows into the very places we’ve written off. Into the parts of our lives we call barren. Into the communities declared beyond repair.
And let’s be honest, placing people into exile is as real today as it’s ever been. For some of us that’s literal displacement. Yet exile has other natures, as well. From relationships, from our church that we didn’t leave, it left us, from ways of being as a community, a country, that no seems so long ago and so far away.
We know what some of our Dead Seas look like.
It looks like agencies that hound the immigrant and tear families apart, weaponizing fear through ICE raids instead of offering welcome to the stranger.
It looks like laws and policies that chip away at free speech, and the complicity of corporations that appease so that their mergers proceed by silencing truth-tellers and rewarding propaganda.
It looks like those who co-opt the name of Christ to bless racism, who ignore the witness of history, who glorify nationalism as though it were gospel.
It looks like leaders who sneer at peer-reviewed science, dismantle vaccine protocols, threaten the safety of children, and shrug as preventable diseases return.
It looks like a government eager to shred social safety nets, while gilded tax breaks rain down on those already drowning in gold.
It looks like the pervasive spirit of meanness, principalities, and powers that make cruelty sound normal and compassion sound weak.
These are the Dead Seas of our time: bitter, barren, lifeless.
And yet Ezekiel dares to see a river flowing even there. The water heals what was dead. The Spirit makes fresh what we thought would always be bitter. This is not naïve optimism; it is prophetic imagination. It is God saying: My river will not be dammed up by your walls of fear and greed. My current will find a way.
Fruit on the Banks
On the banks, Ezekiel sees trees that never wither, whose leaves bring healing, whose fruit never fails. Every month they bear new fruit.
I’m mindful of how The Revelation to John echoes it: the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God, nourishing the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
So what does that fruit look like in our day?
It looks like communities that choose mercy over meanness, hospitality over hostility, empathy over antipathy.
It looks like churches that welcome the other, not regardless of who they are, but precisely because that’s how God made them.
It looks like leaders who tell the truth about our history, about our racism, about our wounds, who seek to be healers of the breach rather than opening historic traumatic wounds, leaving them to fester.
It looks like teachers, scientists, and parents protecting children’s health, defending vaccine protocols, and trusting knowledge that preserves life rather than dismantling it.
It looks like citizens who resist the idolatry of nationalism, who remember that our first allegiance is to the Realm of God and the way of Jesus.
It looks like communities of faith that speak truth to principalities and powers, refusing to let cruelty have the last word.
It looks like people of every age and station planting trees, stewarding soil, protecting rivers, because creation itself is part of God’s healing.
That is the fruit Ezekiel dares us to imagine: not just survival, but flourishing. Not just bearing enough for ourselves, but bearing enough to feed, to heal, to bless the nations.
Where Do We Stand?
This river Ezekiel sees is more than geography; it’s imagination, it’s vision, it’s a new way of seeing. Walter Brueggemann reminds us that “the task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.’
When God’s Spirit carries us over our heads, it isn’t just about deeper water — it’s about a different way of seeing. Seeing God. Seeing ourselves. Seeing the world. It’s about stepping into the alternative that God is already bringing to life.
Ezekiel’s people were in exile, far from home, wondering if God’s promises still held. His vision gave them hope. It still gives us hope. Because exile isn’t just history — we know what it feels like to be cut off, dried out, worn down. And yet the promise holds: there is a river.
So when this river flows, perhaps God is not only calling us to deeper faith, but also into new ways of seeing our lives, our world, our neighbors, ways our dominant narratives cannot imagine because their hearts are hardened.
So where are you standing today?
Ankle-deep — safe, cautious, in control?
Knee or waist-deep — feeling the tug, but still calling the shots?
Or over your head — carried by the Spirit, swept into God’s renewing stream?
Some of us are splashing at the edges, content to stay safe. Some of us feel the tug and resist. And some of us don’t want to fight the current anymore; we’re ready to surrender and let it take us where it will.
Wherever you are, jump in, the water’s fine. Get ready for God to do something unexpected and use us to bring life into places long forsaken.
Amen.
End Notes:
Wil Gafney, “Hearing Voices and Seeing Visions,” sermon on Ezekiel (September 4, 2011), wilgafney.com.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), p. 3.
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