Texts: Genesis 6: 1-21; Matthew 3: 1-17
At first I didn't know what they were – they looked like large black plastic buckets sitting on roofs – if you could call them that – pieces of flat metal corrugated sheets was more like it. Then I saw the logo on the unseemly containers “MSF” --- Medicin san frontiers – doctors without borders. In 2002 I was in Soacha, a poor suburb of Bogota filled with the internal displaced from the Colombian countryside due to the war that was still going on at that time between various guerrilla and paramilitaries with Army presence from time to time, Even though the violence in Soacha has diminished, the overwhelming poverty has not; among the small brick shacks people still live in structures constructed of scrap wood and large garbage bags. Were it not for MSF, clean water would be as scarce as it is in the Sudan.
Here in America we tend to take water for granted, that is if you don’t live in Jackson, Mississippi, or Flint, Michigan, or a number of other towns and cities affected by polluted water. We think, how is it possible that people who live in urban areas do not have access to clean water?
We tell ourselves that we’re really not a third world country but the lack of safe drinking water in our cities and towns tell us something different. Moreover, those kinds of problems almost pale next to chemical spills, pollution caused by fracking, and the residue from superfund sites leaching into our drinking water.
Water is indeed the source of life. In the very beginning of Genesis we are told that breath of God swept over the face of the waters. It can also be the source of death, as in the primeval stories of the deluge that covered the earth possibly as a result of deep and ancient memory of the melting of the ice age, as some scholars believe. The huge waves of a tsunami or a hurricane can cause enormous damage, even death, as we saw with the 2004 South Asian tsunami, and our own hurricanes, Katrina, Sandy, and Ida to name just a few.
Water is a purifying agent, not just in the folk tales that ascribe the floods to God's desire to rid the world of evil, but also as a symbol of washing away disease, as in the story of Naaman the general who is told to wash his leprosy away in the River Jordan, and, of course, symbolically, as in baptism. Water is precious; without it, we would die, literally die.
Just like there are many kinds of death, there are many kinds of life. There is the life that many of us would consider the life not worth living, a life of mechanical machines and tubes, of prolonged suffering. Sometimes those of us on the outside have little sense of what it must be like to be on the inside.
In the Danish film Helium, a young boy named Alfred, who is dying, is befriended by the hospital's eccentric janitor who brings Alfred into a world where he is released from his daily trauma of dying, easing Alfred’s fears as he struggles with his desperate situation. As Alfred dies, he loses his fears and is released into the fantasy world the janitor has created for him.
Desperate situations – we often feel so helpless in these situations. And we do not like to feel helpless. It's perhaps one of the reasons we avert our eyes from news stories of overwhelming tragedy, why the ongoing violence in areas far from us such as Sudan or Ukraine or even close to us such as Newark or Asbury Park, are shoved to the back of our minds. We read or listen to the stories and then go on with the lives where we at least have the illusion of being able to control.
A group of social scientists asked why is it that a charity like “Make A Wish,” which was created to help dying children, have their final wishes come true gets such support while the equivalent amount of money spent on malaria nets or medical supplies for the Third World would save hundreds, if not more, receive minimal support.
The study concluded that it was the face of a child that made a difference, but I think there is something more essential here. I think it's because that kind of charity supports the important illusion that we are not helpless in the face of death whereas simply sending money to MSF doesn't create the same feeling. It's the same kind of thinking that supports health kits over money. People feel that they are actually doing something and thus feel they are not helpless.
Myths and stories arise out of our need to explain events which otherwise make no sense. Consider those created by our ancestors in the face of the deluges they must have faced with the thaw of the ice age. Without a scientific understanding of climate cycles, warmth and cold, such events to the earliest humans must have been terrifying. Some scientists have actually argued that the ice age was the result of the darkness that settled on the earth with the possible hit by an asteroid creating a cloud that blocked out the sun.
Be that as it may, people create stories and explanations to help them have some sense of control themselves or an idea that something or someone is in control. What is most fascinating about all the stories of the massive deluge that flooded the earth is that all the stories, whether in the ancient Near East or Mesoamerica, speak of the deluge as a punishment from the Divine for human sin and wickedness.
Water has always been a symbol of cleansing and purity beyond merely washing one's hands before eating. The ancient Babylonians believed in the magical purifying power of water; ancient Egyptians believed that baptizing babies cleansed them of impurities acquired in the womb. Greek mystery religions and cults also used baptism to provide to the initiate a form of immortality while even in this world. Judaism also used water to purify, the most notable being the mikvah for women seven days after the completion of the menstrual cycle and ritual immersion baptism for men who had converted to Judaism.
Water, then, is for us both a literal and a symbolic source of life. Clearly a source of life in that not only it is the first element in Genesis, science tells us that all life on earth emerged from the sea. It is also a symbolic source of life in that baptism signifies our dying to our old selves and rising to a new self in Christ Jesus.
The question for us as Christians is how we take off the old and put on the new, as Paul states in his letters. This is a somewhat foreign concept for those of us raised in the faith because the demands made on us as Christians sound familiar; however, it is precisely because they sound so familiar that they are difficult to do.
We need to let the symbolic water wash us of our previously held assumptions of how we are called to live. How we create those symbols states our future.
Let us pray: Eternal One, Source of all our lives be with us as we seek to know your will for us and the world. In the name of the One who points the way, even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.