Sermon given by Revd Dr Elizabeth Welch, September 5th, 2026

Readings – suggested for this Season.

Ezekiel 47:9-12, Psalm 65: 5-13, Acts 17:22a, 24-28, John 1:1-5 and 7:37-39

Ten days ago, I came back from my 8-day retreat in North Wales. I’ve been going on these retreats on and off for about 40 years!

One of the joys of the place I go to, is that it’s in a retreat centre set in large grounds full of trees and fields and surrounded by the countryside with lovely views of the hills and the sea.

The retreat was silent, apart from half an hour each day with the retreat guide, and we were encouraged to pray during the day, both indoors in the different chapels, and outdoors as we walked through the countryside.

I do love this sense of walking and praying, for it brings home to me God the Creator, and the gifts of God’s created world, as I walk, and look, and think, and pray.

I remember when we moved to Ealing, being so happy with all the Ealing parks. On several days during each week Peter and I walk round Hanger Hill and Pitshanger Park. I’m also impressed by how many trees there are in the streets around where we live.

The scriptures today point to the work of God in creation, and have a particular focus on and the joys of water.

I’m aware that there are serious issues about water today, in this country and across the world. The floods in Nepal and the lives that have been lost, are so sad. Then in this country there’s been the oddity of the heatwaves and the lack of water, leading to a ban on hosepipes by Thames North Water. I’ve felt so sad to see our garden going more brown, and flowers dying off. And it’s not the easiest thing to go round with a watering can rather than a hosepipe! I discovered that I only had the capacity to carry half a watering can of water. And then there was the issue of how much longer it takes to water the garden without the hosepipe!

There’s so much about the water utilities and are they actually doing the right things about such areas as the availability of water and the increasing predominance of sewage

What’s interesting about today’s readings is that they’re positive about God’s gift of creation and about water. But when look into the wider context in which they’ve been written, we see some of the difficult circumstances that the people, even in those times so long ago, had been facing.

The Season of Creation booklet reminds us ‘The book of Ezekiel is set during the Babylonian exile (Ezekiel 1.1) after the fall of Jerusalem at the beginning of the sixth century BCE. Ezekiel, a priest, is among those exiled and is commissioned by God as a prophet. There’s the familiar song ‘By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept, as we remembered Zion’.

The people thought that God had written them off. But Ezekiel then writes reminding them about who God actually is and what God lets happen in creation – rich rivers, and fruitful trees. There is hope before them, even when they are in exile. This one God will be looking after them, in their time of exile. (for further details I can recommend looking online for the booklet: Season of Creation, Celebration Guide, 2026: Living Water)

There can be a temptation to just hold on to the Bible and read one particular text – but we need to go beyond that, to read the variety of texts that there are in scriptures, and to see how we interpret these today in our lives and in God’s world.

In Acts we read about ‘The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he servced by human hands…he gives to all mortals life and breath and all things… he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.’

The Acts passage is an interesting one, not necessarily familiar to us today in terms of its setting.

The description is given of the way in which Paul had an experience of being in Athens and seeing a range of statues of Greek gods. Each of these statues stood for a different aspect of God.

He spoke out about this and was summonsed to debate with the Greek philosophers about what he said. This discussion took place in the Areopagus, the court of the Elders where public debate took place.

Paul takes the Athenians beyond their familiar images of God, to look at God in a new way.

In his teaching he goes through an interesting sequence. He doesn’t start negatively by telling them how bad and mistaken they are for believing in false gods. He starts from their experience and understanding and roots his preaching in language that would speak to them. 

Paul begins with the altar to the unknown God which he has seen among their many altars. He goes on positively to teach about the God he knows, making a number of points:

• This God is the creator of all things. As this God is creator, he doesn’t live in a shrine made by human hands.
• Living in a shrine made by human hands would be to get the relationship upside down – it’s God who gives people existence, not people who give God existence. 
• He makes the point that as God is the creator, he can’t be contained in material things such as gold or silver or stone.
• He culminates his teaching by pointing to Jesus, although, at this point, he does not actually refer to Jesus by name. He’s laying the foundation for what he yet has to say.

Paul takes the Athenians from where they are in what they believe about their gods and expands their horizon.

God’s reign is universal, not just of one country or group of countries. God has brought into being the whole of creation. God offers equal inclusion for all peoples. God takes us beyond politics and earthly rule, to more universal values, of love and hope and care, and even of joy.

I’m struck by the way in which some people today are like the Athenians, in seeing a number of gods. Today it’s not so much about physical images, which people worship in specific different places. It’s more in terms of those things which have great significance for people:

• ‘What can I get for myself?’, rather than ‘what can I give to others?’.
• How far can I use this earthly world for myself, rather than seeing it as God’s gift of creation to be cherished for all people?
• ‘gods’ today can be the things that people put first in their lives; the things that people give primary attention to for themselves; the things that people can’t do without.

And yet our role as Christians is not actually to start with condemnation, but to begin where people are, and take them on beyond where they are to a deeper knowledge of God – to a knowledge of the Creator from whom all created things come.

We start with ourselves in terms of deepening our knowledge of God, and then let this knowledge flow into all the world. It’s like letting the living water of God’s love both enter each of our lives, then flow out of us into other people’s lives and into all the issues we face in this troubled world.

And I want to move on by turning to the two sets of words we heard from John’s Gospel, which link together the historical sense of the beginning of time, and God being present from the start. Jesus teaches about people who are thirsty coming to him. He say, ‘let the one who believes in me drink…Out of the believers heart shall flow rivers of living water.’

I always remember when I read the start of these words from John’s Gospel, that when I was at college, we were taught to read the scriptures in their original language. So I remember the opening words of John’s Gospel as ‘en arkhe ain ho logos, ho logos tou theou’ In the beginning was the word and the word was God’. (I have to confess that I don’t remember all that much of the original Greek I studied!) 

It’s helpful to constantly deepen our understanding of what scripture is actually saying and what it means for us today.

It’s good today that we’re receiving a new member into the life of this church. It’s a reminder about what membership of the church is. It’s about belonging to God and letting God’s life flow within us and through us, like the living water of creation. It’s not actually about organisation and structure and management, important though these areas are. It’s not about us all conforming to be the same. It’s about celebrating that in all our diversity, God is with us, filling us with the life of hope and joy and peace, like the running water God has given creation so that new life may go on emerging.

Let us give thanks to God for the gifts of creation, and for the living water we receive and experience, both physically and spiritually, in our lives.