This Tuesday is our final discussion of Ezekiel. We are reading through Ezekiel 43, 44:1-8, and 47:1-12. I anticipate that dinner will be longer this week and the discussion shorter. Please make a special effort to bring a friend or a neighbor with you, or if you haven’t joined us in a while, please come.
One of the ways of reading Scripture is that of the Fall of Humanity and its Restoration. In Romans 5, Paul has a series of contrasts between Adam and Christ: the former brought death and condemnation and the latter brought grace and acquittal. In Revelation 21:1, John speaks of a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. When we began Ezekiel, the prophet is in exile sitting by the River Chebar and had a vision of the Glory of God leaving the Temple in Jerusalem. The readings this week open with the vision of a rebuilt and restored Temple and the return of the Glory of God to the Temple, filling it. Living water flows out of this new Temple making a paradise from what was once a desolate wilderness, for Eden and the true worship of God have been restored.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is beer and jambalaya. Our group is open to anyone, so please bring a friend or a spouse. I have attached Origen’s homily (14) and the relevant excerpts from the Holman commentary.
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.
John 7:37-39a