Water of Life

Water of Life   

Matthew 3:13-17                                                       

Perched on a high, sun-warmed rock, looking down at sharp planes of stone rising straight out of deep, clear water, I screwed up my courage to jump.  My brother and I and our friends had biked on a summer’s day and then hiked to a huge trap-rock quarry, now a reservoir.  They were now lined up on high cliff above, yelling at me to take the plunge in the water 30 feet below.   When my hesitation finally became too pathetic to bear, I leaped out, sailing into the summer sky and falling an impossibly long time, until the water exploded with a slap on my whole body.   Down, down, I shot, into the cold and dark, far from the sparkle of sun above.  For a terrible moment I wondered whether I had breath enough to get back up.  Then pushing with frantic strokes, kicking and churning, I finally broke the surface, gulping air, and feeling the relief of returning to life and the beauty of a summer’s day.   

We can have terrible moments in our lives, when we fall into the unknown, and then wonder for hellish moments, whether we will ever be able to get back up to the surface again.   Things fall apart and we tumble and splash into cold water –  a chronic illness, losing a job, a relationships that sours and breaks, leaving us lost and alone.   Furiously we kick and stroke to get back into the light, and worry that we might not surface.   But somehow, most often, we make it back up; we recover and renew our lives, and find a way to return to comfort and calm.  

Baptism is like this.   We are immersed into the water of chaos, into the possibility of drowning and death, and then we re-emerge out into new life, into a fresh new reality and a new self.   We leave behind shameful sins and unhealthy habits, grinding fears and acidic doubts, and emerge as new persons, children of God, cleansed, blessed and loved.   Water is a symbol of a portal into both abundance and death.   Water is at the heart of baptism.  We are to dive into it, and find blessing there, holy abundance, God’s love, truth and beauty.  

For the first centuries of the church, baptisms were only held once a year – at midnight on Easter vigil in baptisteries used only on that one day.  After studying for three years, catechumenates would be immersed completely.  They would be held down three times by the bishop until almost drowned.  This was to signify the experience of death – and then resurrection; joining with Christ in death, and then uniting with Christ in resurrection and new life as the bishop pulls them out.  Those baptized would be given a white robes and candles, showing that they are new creations.

Like someone baptized by an ancient bishop, we can feel something or someone holding us down and almost drowning us, pushed down by the weight of debt, financial or emotional, by anxiety or depression or grief or regret.   So many things pull us down into dark waters of death, so many things weigh us down.   But, the wonder of baptism is that these waters can be transformed by faith into water that fertilizes and heals and renews. Like water in a mother’s womb, baptismal water contains the mystery and wonder of life itself and new birth.

The prophet Ezekiel writes of a river of water that flows from the holy of holies, from the presence of God in the Temple in Jerusalem:  "Wherever the river goes, 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.   People will stand fishing beside the sea; 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.  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.”

This morning we celebrate Jesus’ baptism and the meaning of this experience of being changed and reborn.    In baptism we descend into the waters of chaos, into a watery death so that we can be lifted up into a wholly new way of living and being.  We are changed by God’s blessing and love.   We hear this in commentary from Seasons of Spirit:  “The word for repent – metanoia in the Greek – means to change, to be transformed. This is what happens in baptism.  Rather than just meaning “feeling sorry for doing bad things,” or regret, or confession, metanoia means “go beyond the mind” or “go into the larger mind.” Scholar Cynthia Bourgeault writes that this “‘high teaching’ was Jesus’ central message: the Kingdom of Heaven means reaching beyond black-and-white dualities, into the larger heart and mind of God.”

 Rather than “Change your bad ways!” we now hear “Look! Look! God is inviting you to a new way of seeing! Come into the larger mind, see how God sees!” To “go beyond the mind” or “go into the larger mind” is no easy task.”

We could hardly want for a more perfect, physical symbol for metanoia, the “larger mind,” than the opening of the heavens and the descending of God’s Spirit like a dove….Through the universal symbol of water, Jesus models his invitation for all to move from unconsciousness (for which water is an archetype) to consciousness – a deeper awareness of just how deeply loved we are by a good and gracious God.”

         Baptism is not simply a cleansing of sin, or a rite of passage, it is an opening of our consciousness to a new way of seeing, a wider, deeper awareness of God’s love and presence.   Jesus models this for us, showing us through his baptism, a way to live in faith.  After all, why would Jesus need to be baptized?  He was already God’s presence and without sin.   He wouldn’t need to repent or to be cleansed.  So, he teaches us how to live in faith.

         Jesus shows us what it means to let go.  He humbles himself, allowing himself to be completely immersed in the waters of the Jordan.   He holds nothing back.   By doing this, he models the Christian life.  He teaches us not to consider ourselves special or above-it-all.  We are to let go and to give our all, in the way he gave it all upon the cross, letting go of his own self, his small self, to rise again into his full self in God. He surrenders to God’s will completely, and by doing so, lets go of all he is holding.  He becomes his true self, radiant and alive.

So we are meant to give ourselves completely, to let ourselves go, and to trust God as we experience this life.   Like jumping off a cliff into deep water, we immerse ourselves fully into the wonder of this world.   God calls us to throw ourselves whole-heartedly into God’s arms, to hold nothing back, to immerse ourselves completely in the waters of faith.   When we do this, we feel that God wants us to dive in head-first, to give ourselves completely, to love fully. 

Clarence Jordan writes this in his book, Cotton Patch Parables:  “God doesn't go by the kind of arithmetic that you and I go by. God has never learned to deal in fractions. God didn't get that far in school. I think he's like my father who had ten children, and many a time I thought, "Well, my goodness, with a family this big, Daddy can't love me very much. I can only claim one tenth of his love." But my father loved me with all of his love. It's just that way with love. There is no fraction in it. You can't break it up into pieces. And God wants the whole human race. He just can't deal in fractions.

And so Jesus is saying to these people who were griping and mumbling and grumbling about the fact that he was taking in all kinds of people, bums and drunks and the poor folks and everybody, he was saying, "Well, I just can't help it. God just has a sentimental attachment for his people. And, whether you like it or not, God loves 'em, and it does seem to me that if they're precious in God's sight, they ought to be precious in yours, too.”

Jesus wants us to live and love like this, not fractionally, but with our whole being.  Jesus tells us to take up our cross every day and follow him.  That means he calls us to die every day – to let go – to trust God as Jesus did as he allowed himself to be lifted up on the cross.   We are to trust God with all of ourselves, and if we do, then we find fullness of life – a wider vision of living, a sense of wonder and purpose and inner peace and strength.   We rise up out of waters of death into the sunlight of eternal living. 

The problem is that most often we don’t trust life or God enough to do this.  We get caught up in our fears and doubts and judgments, labeling everything around us with signs that distort their reality.    Truthfully, we often have difficulties with ourselves, and accepting who we are.  We hear this from C.S. Lewis who wrote:  “There is someone I love, even though I don't approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is me.
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Our journey of faith is learning to accept and forgive not only other people, but ourselves.   One of the most difficult learnings in our faith is learning to accept that God loves us.  We make the mistake of believing we have to be perfect to be loveable.   Mistakes happen.  We can regret our mistakes, find forgiveness, and then return to our true selves, our experience of being enough.  That is what baptism is about; communion, confession - forgiveness: it returns us to balance, to ourselves, so that we can move on.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a California physician, describes how master psychologist Carl Rogers would approach a therapeutic encounter:  "There is something I do before I start a session. I let myself know that I am enough.  Not perfect.  Perfect wouldn't be enough.  But that I am human, and that is enough.  There is nothing this person can say or do or feel that I can't feel in myself.  I can be with him or her.  I am enough."

         Dr. Remen adds, "I was stunned by this. It felt as if some old wound in me, some fear of not being good enough, had come to an end.  I knew inside myself that what he said was absolutely true.  I am not perfect, but I am enough.  Knowing that...allows healing to happen."

         This is the message we get from our scripture today.  We hear of Jesus' baptism and how God's voice called down:  “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”   This is an essential message of our faith:  we are children of God, created in God's image.  We are enough, worthy of God’s love.  Just as God created all things and declared them good, so we also are essentially good enough, just as we are.   This is the blessing we receive in baptism, that God loves us as a parent loves a child, without reservation or restraint or fractions.

         This is water we are called to dive into.   This is the liquid love that we are immersed in at baptism, the water of life.  Even if we were baptized as an infant and don’t remember it at all, it is not too late to jump wholeheartedly into the deep water of God’s grace, to allow it to heal and renew us, to allow us to become new creations, like rising from the dead.    Amen.