H Two O, a sermon given by Ron Fournier at St. Mark on January 8, 2012, on MK 1:4-11
When I was a little boy, in the dog days of summer, I liked to lay on my back in the fields of tall grass behind my house and look up in the sky at those big puffy white, fair weather cumulus clouds, that usually formed in the early afternoon. I’m sure all of you have done that as well and part of the fun while looking up at the clouds was using your imagination to see what the cloud shapes could be, maybe a bird like a dove, or a dragon, a big dog, or perhaps a castle. Part of the wonder for me was also how the clouds got up there. Water floating in the sky seemed like magic to me.
I love water. I like being around water. A beach and a book is my perfect vacation. I like the fact that water is everywhere. My only condition is that it stays out of my house and out of my shoes.
In many ways water is God’s gift to us, but for the most part we take it for granted, some might say it gets no respect. But water is everywhere, it covers nearly 71% of the earth’s surface. Water is found underground, in small streams, creeks, rivers, lakes, and almost 97% of the earth’s water is found in the oceans. Only a very tiny fraction less than 1/1000th of 1% of all the earth’s water is in the air as vapor or as those puffy white clouds I mentioned earlier. But despite all this water nearly a billion people in our world today still do not have access to safe drinking water.
Water is constantly moving around. It is always in motion through a continuous cycle of evaporation, transpiration from the leaves of plants, condensation in the sky which forms the clouds, and then these water droplets in the clouds come together and fall back to earth as precipitation which then runs off the ground to replenish the streams, rivers, lakes and the oceans. The fact that water is always flowing through and around the world in which we live means that we all drink the same water. Water is something we all share and is a visible sign of our solidarity as a people.
Water is truly a fascinating substance, it is also one of the simplest of all the chemicals that we know of consisting of just two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen in each molecule, yet it has some incredible physical properties that we have all seen. If it did not have these properties we would not be sitting here today.
In the temperature conditions in which we live water can be a solid, a liquid, or a gas; three ways of being the same thing. Because of this we often use water to explain the Holy Trinity, one substance existing in three different ways just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different Persons but each is God whole and entire.
Pure water is also tasteless and odorless and even transparent which allows sunlight to reach through the water to aquatic plants. Water molecules as a liquid also have very strong attractions to other water molecules. It’s as if they like to hold hands and dance around together. Because of this property water can absorb or give up heat with very little change in its temperature. This property of water helps to control the earth’s climate and maintains a relatively stable global temperature.
This attraction between water molecules also leads to a property called surface tension which allows bugs to walk on water and also means that water can rise to incredible heights in very small diameter tubes allowing water to even flow up the trunks of trees to reach those top most branches, as well as percolate into the soil to reach the roots.
Water also has the strange property of becoming less dense when it is cooled to form ice and this is why ice cubes float in our pop and is why we have icebergs. And how about those snow flakes that fall in the winter, no two are ever alike, but they all have a 6 sided symmetry to them.
All forms of life on the earth depend on water for their existence. Water is the solvent of life and readily dissolves the nutrients and gases like oxygen that we need in our body. The bottom line is we cannot live without water. You can live for months without food. But at 90 degrees you would only last a week in the shade without water, at 60 degrees you might make it 10 days. This is because a significant fraction of our bodies consists of water.
Nearly 60% of our body weight comes from water. So if you weigh about 50 lbs you would have 3.5 of these gallon jugs of water as part of your body. If you weigh 100 lbs you would have 7 of these gallon jugs of water, or if you weigh about 150 lbs then you would have about 11 of these gallon jugs of water, and at 200 lbs you have 14 of these gallon jugs. If you lose just 2.5 % of your body’s water, about a quart, you are in big trouble.
Water is such an important chemical it is even mentioned by name in the second verse of the Creation account given in our Old Testament reading for today from the first chapter of the book of Genesis. It’s the 37th word, the only chemical mentioned. Let me read these first two verses that start Genesis that tell of Creation: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
The opening verse says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Bible which is God’s revealed Word is telling us that He alone is solely responsible for the creation of the world, of everything that exists. Creation did not happen by chance but there is an intelligent cause and that is God.
We read in this first verse that there was a beginning when God created matter, space, and time so we should not believe that the world never had a beginning. This is what is meant in the first verse of the Bible when it says that “God created.” It does not say “God worked” or “God formed” the heavens and the earth.
If “God worked” or “God formed” these words would mean that the world co-existed from all eternity with God, that matter like this water created itself or somehow existed on its own, at best God would then be a co-creator and this would lessen God’s power and contribution to Creation.
By saying God created the heavens and the earth this means that God made our world and the universe out of nothing, He alone brought everything into existence including this water and this means that God’s Creation has a purpose and that it is intelligible, that there are laws that are discoverable through science that explain why things are the way they are, why water behaves the way it does, why snowflakes have six sides and not eight, and why we have rainbows.
In the next verse it says that “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” This describes the initial state of the earth soon after Creation and means that the earth lacked the underlying structure and orderliness that would be needed in order to produce life. This initial state was then transformed by the wind from God moving over the waters of the earth which is the creative power of the Holy Spirit of God preparing the nature of these waters to produce living beings.
It is as if God through His Holy Spirit was tweaking those physical properties of water that we talked about earlier in such a way so as to give a power or a potential in water to produce living things, to allow water to flow to the tops of trees, to cycle endlessly through our environment, to let bugs walk on water, to make those clouds that paint our sky, and to make 6 sided snowflakes.
These opening words from Genesis about Creation show us that water is a very special and an amazing substance. God designed water to be the source of life and water is behind the fruitfulness of the world. Without water there would be no life on earth.
But there is more to water than just what we learn from these opening verses to the Bible. God was not finished. God had something else He wanted to do with this simple molecule. Not only will water bring forth and sustain life on earth it will also give us eternal life.
As we continue to read the Old Testament we see God preparing us so that we can see and understand the saving power of water and its role in our salvation. We first see this in Noah’s ark where the floodwaters washed away a sinful world and eight people were saved through water. Next we have the Israelites escaping slavery in Egypt by passing through the waters of the Red Sea to a new life of freedom. This was then followed by the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land.
When the Israelites are in exile the prophet Ezekiel says that God promises not only to return the Israelites to this land from their exile, but He will also transform them, by sprinkling them with clean water to cleanse them of their impurities and their idol worship. This will not only be an outward cleansing but God through these cleansing waters promises to give them a new heart, and a new spirit, which is an inward transformation that will make them servants of God who follow His will.
All of these Old Testament signs about the saving power of water find their fulfillment in today’s gospel reading when Jesus goes down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. In our Gospel reading for today we learn that John was preparing the way by calling people to repent, to turn away from sin, and to turn back to God. Through a baptism with water John was giving them a sign that their sins were forgiven and that they have truly repented. But John also knew that there was another person coming more powerful than himself who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus the Son of God and the eternal Word who is without sin, who has no need to repent, begins His public ministry by being baptized by John. In this way Jesus gives his blessing to John’s ministry of repentance and forgiveness through the sign of baptism and identifies Himself with all those sinners who He now comes to save. Christ enters the waters of the Jordan River to sanctify the waters, to bring His Word to the waters, and to wash away the sins of the world, and John lays his hands on Jesus not to forgive Him, but to receive His forgiveness.
So when Christ who is the Word made flesh humbled Himself and stepped into the waters of the Jordan to be baptized by John we see that the same Spirit that swept over the face of the waters at the moment of Creation now descends from the heavens like a dove on Christ. Recall that a dove also announced to Noah that the floodwaters were gone and now a dove is announcing that a shipwrecked world will no longer be subject to sin and death. Christ at the moment of His baptism receives the Holy Spirit, not for Himself, but rather for all of us as a gift that we receive through Him and the waters of our own baptism.
Through Christ’s baptism by John in the Jordan both Word and Spirit is added to the nature of water giving through baptism the gift of eternal life to all who believe.
We learn from Jesus Himself that baptism is necessary for our salvation and that these are the waters of eternal life when He tells Nicodemus in John 3:5 that “very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Jesus teaches us about the importance of baptism and our mission as Christians to reach out to everyone and share this good news when He says at the end of Matthew’s gospel “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Augustine says that through baptism “The Word is brought to the material element, and it becomes a sacrament.” Water + Word is the sacrament of Baptism. Baptism as a sacrament is then a visible sign given to us by God to which is connected a promise for the one who comes in faith.
Martin Luther teaches us in his Small Catechism that this sacramental promise given by baptism “brings about forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe it, as the words and promise of God declare.”
Martin Luther says that, “Christ puts salvation into baptism… that baptism is water and God’s Word comprehended in one” and this is explained further in his Small Catechism when he says that, “clearly the water does not do it, but the Word of God, which is with and alongside the water, and faith, which trusts this Word of God in the water. For without the Word of God the water is plain water and not a baptism, but with the Word of God it is a baptism, that is, a grace-filled water of life and a ‘bath of the new birth in the Holy Spirit.’” Baptism saves us because Jesus at His baptism put the Word of God in the water.
Martin Luther explains that baptism with water “signifies that the old person in us with all our sins and evil desires is to be drowned through daily sorrow for sin and through repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity for ever.”
Baptism is not a human act but is God’s act performed in His name by His human representative who acts as an instrument for God. It is not something we do for or to ourselves, so when you are baptized the minister acts on God’s behalf and it is just the same as if the Lord Himself had performed the baptism. This all means that baptism is not a sign of my response to God, it is a sign and a seal of what God has already done for me through His Son Jesus Christ.
Our Baptism therefore never needs to be repeated since being an act of God it never loses its effectiveness. This means that our Baptism is always with us and is meant to be an ongoing event in our lives, it is not a onetime sign of conversion, just something that may have happened a long time ago. But our baptism is something we reenact everyday of our lives when we repent and die to our old sinful life and rise again to walk in a new life in Christ.
All that is required is that we believe, that we say yes, and receive through faith the promise that comes with baptism. Saying yes is like these two glasses of water I have over here. In one of them we drop a sealed packet of Alka-Seltzer and in the other an unsealed packet. Both glasses now have the Alka-Seltzer, just as all Christians have received the Holy Spirit through Baptism. But as you can see for the Alka-Seltzer to work the packet has to be opened. In the same way if we want the Holy Spirit to work within us, and bring us to eternal life through Christ, then each day we also have to open that packet, that gift we received at our own Baptism, and say yes and believe, then we can let the presence and power of the Holy Spirit bubble up and fill us from within. When we do that others will see the fruits of this gift in the joy we have in a new life with Christ. And then we will hear in our hearts the same voice that Jesus heard at His Baptism, “you are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” (Ronald L. Fournier © 2012)
