sermon excerpts: "The Universal Body of Water"

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The focus on Jesus’ baptism is not on the cleansing away of sin, it is about the expression of love and acceptance by God. The heavens rip open and the Spirit descends upon him like a dove. The words of every proud parent echo over the crowd and throughout the land: “this is my child with whom I am well pleased.” Baptism is acceptance and celebration of the gift of life, of committing this life to God’s purpose, to joining a greater and wider community of faith that stretches across continents and over centuries.

It was the beginning of the end. Death to death, hope and renewal would ever persist; for a downtrodden people of faith, Jesus as Messiah represented an end to their suffering, a return to glory. It is to this hope that we ourselves cling, the guiding vision for our faith is the kingdom of God, as revealed and lived out by Christ will save us from ourselves.
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All the water in the world is connected to itself. I remember Camp Menesetung on the shores of Lake Huron north of Goderich, scavenger hunt that needed water from Lake Superior. We ended up getting water from the tap which came from the lake and putting it in a jar with an Superman “s” on it to make it super. It was a bit of a stretch and we didn’t get marks for it. The right answer, or the answer they were looking for, was the explanation that water from Lake Superior flows out to the ocean, through Lake Huron, onto Ontario and Erie and the St. Lawrence. So some of the water we got from Lake Huron did indeed come from Superior.

Water doesn’t go away when it slips down the drain. It cannot be created or destroyed, it cycles through and is formed again as snow, clouds, icebergs, groundwater. Water condenses in our breath, evaporates in our sweat, raises humidity in our atmosphere, but it never goes away.

In that way it’s kind of humbling to think the same water that Jesus was baptized with could be the same water that we use for our own baptisms (or washing our clothes or cooling our drinks or shovelling off our cars). I present this not to be disrespectful, but to remind us that the presence of the Holy One is everywhere within our creation and within our lives.

Some more nature lessons: water takes on the shape of its container. What if we modelled church after that? What if we understood ministry taking the form of its immediate surroundings? Then our container, our building, won’t matter as much as what is contained inside.

It flows downhill, it flows to join other water as it journeys to the oceans, a great and wide collection, or community(?), of water. What if we modelled church after that? What if our efforts flow out to join others in a journey to the great ocean that is God’s desire for us to leave in peace and equality?

John the Baptist offered a ministry based on water in the middle of a desert environment and culture. Jesus offers a ministry based on love and service in the middle of a society and a world that embraces power and wealth. As we struggle and strive to find faithful way of expressing our ministry here, let us again look to the ordinary and everyday to find that God is already there.

Water flows to itself, I could offer a scientific explanation of the dipolar nature of the molecule, how ionic attraction binds water molecules together, allowing for movement and flow upward against gravity through plant stems and leaves, but I think I’ve lost you already. So I’ll just leave it as simple as this: water sticks together.

These lessons of nature are vital for us to hold onto in our human efforts. We stick together, keeping in mind the permanence of water and its presence in many forms, and know that we will survive and adapt and thrive when our purposes are in line with each other and flowing onward to the great ocean of love that is God’s grace. Superior or not, our water is the same. And so are we all: beloved children of God.