Luke : People's hopes began to rise, and they began to wonder whether John perhaps might be the Messiah. So John said to all of them, “I baptize you with water, but someone is coming who is much greater than I am. I am not good enough even to untie his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. In many different ways John preached the Good News to the people and urged them to change their ways. After all the people had been baptized, Jesus also was baptized. While he was praying, the clouds parted, and the Holy Spirit came down upon in bodily form like a dove. And he heard a voice, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you.”
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Far into the imaginary future of this universe, there is a desert planet called Dune. With the exception of giant desert sandworms, it is believed there is nothing else on Dune, except a handful of a small group of people who call themselves Fremen. It is believed there is no water on Dune. The only commodity on this planet is an addictive spice which is mined from the sand. But there is water on Dune - hidden in large underground reservoirs, slowly and painstakingly collected by desert dwellers called Fremen. This dry, desert planet was once green and fertile, till people destroyed it with their desire to use its resources for their own wealth. The Fremen are saving up enough water to begin replanting and re-greening their home. Water and life are one and the same thing.
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Here on this earth, in this lifetime, water brings both life and death. In the river flowing through the new creation, the water is life itself. In the river flowing through Bangkok, human waste, food waste and industrial garbage flow to the sea, and in the rainy season, cholera, typhoid and parasites are prevalent. In this same water, people bathe and wash their clothes; and do their cooking. They are well aware that the water which gives life for some, gives death to others. There is no choice. The water of life is also the water of death.
In Ethiopia and Eritrea, trees have been so consistently cut down for homes and fuel, that the desert has taken over - water is a rare commodity. For years, rain has barely fallen at all. When the water does come, disease is a very real problem. People die without rain, they die with rain. A child’s life expectancy is about five years, if even that.
Recently, water in all its forms has been the source of much death. A tsunami resulting from a Point 9.5 earthquake killed thousands and destroyed much that was once green. Nuclear power plants depend on water for cooling the core, but once the reaction becomes critical, the very water itself becomes poison. Levees broke in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, killing and washing away most of a city, with the poorest of the poor suffering the most. Those levees threaten to break again, if another such storm comes through.
All around Ontario, there are communities which have no clean water. Early in ministry, a town quite near me suffered several deaths from water which had not been properly monitored and treated. Here in Newfoundland, the water supplies in nearby towns can contain enough bacteria that boil water orders are issued. We are outraged when people die from poor water - shouldn’t happen here, we say. Yet where is our outrage when people in our aboriginal communities have no clean water? Where is our outrage when children die around the world for lack of clean water?
Michigan State University sits on top of one of the four largest dump sites in the United States. The water in student housing is said to be safe and drinkable, yet baby formula will not mix properly, and boiling the water produces an oily slick on the surface, which adheres to the cup. Toronto’s garbage is being shipped to Michigan, because we’d rather pollute someone else’s drinking water than our own.
Water in the Christian faith is used as the symbol of new life. We use water, either in a font, or in immersion, in a river or the ocean - to symbolise the death of the old person - going beneath the water as Jesus did, and rising a new person. In this age of infant baptism, the whole symbolism of dying and rising is lost. Baptism has become about doing something - we get the baby “done”, not because it’s important in a religious way, but because family puts pressure. Part of me wonders how baptising a child can be symbolic of dying with Jesus and rising out of the waters of life a new person.
- and yet baptism is not about what we do, but about what God does. As Jesus rose out of the waters of the river, he heard a voice - “You are my son and I am proud of you.” - and it’s interesting that
up to this point, Jesus hasn’t really done anything for God to be proud. He’s been born to Mary at a really inconvenient time, forcing her to go into labor while spending the night in a pretty awful place. He caused his parents worry when he was twelve by wandering off during a trip to Jerusalem and staying lost for three days. He did what hundreds, if not thousands of people were doing in the Jordan river, a baptism in the river - a mikvah, a cleansing.
In the Isaiah reading God says to the people, “I have called you by name, you are mine. I will be with you when you pass through the waters, and you will not be overwhelmed;” Significant, I think, that water comes in here - Jesus “passes through” the waters, and is called by name.
Baptism is a statement about identity. We are all children of God, whether baptised by water, or by Spirit. - and I think it is really significant took that while Jesus goes down, and is immersed in the Jordan to be baptised, the Spirit is also there. Child of God, you are beloved and I am proud of you. All of God’s children, whether baptised with the water of life, or with the spirit of life.
I think that is why water is so important in this identity: it’s something we encounter every day in one form or another, and is absolutely necessary for maintaining and sustaining our lives. And every time we encounter it, whether we’re brushing our teeth or making our coffee or washing our hands or even shoveling some of this unbelievable Newfoundland snow, we can remember that we are children of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So as you walk through life, remember how important water is - not just for our physical life, but also our spiritual life. Baptism is not something we do once and forget about.....it should be something we carry with us, as close as water - the symbol of our naming and our identity. May it be so.
Sources:
1. “The Water of Life”, a sermon by Rev. Fran Ota January 2006.
2. “Dune”, science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, 1965
3. Baptism and Christian Identity, by Rev. Frank Schaefer
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