1-7-15 - Water

Today we continue our examination of the sacrament of baptism. There’s a fancy name for teaching about sacraments: mystagogy, the study of the sacred mysteries. Mystagogy flourished in the fourth century, when Constantine’s declaring Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire caused a flood of would-be converts seeking baptism. A few bishops – Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem and Theodore of Mopsuestia (say that three times fast!) offered instruction about the sacraments to catechumens before they were baptized.

They attempted to explain what the rites were all about. I’d like to focus on the elements involved – and begin with water, the most fundamental of fluids for life, and for baptism. Sometimes I think we belong in the water – we begin life and we end it in a sealed, watery place. We spend our first nine months of life floating in a sack of amniotic fluid, with embryonic arms like flippers. And then we’re born – which looks like freedom, but it also means we’re fish out of water. Some people spend their whole life trying to get back to that warm enclosed place – to live in the water.

Do you like a nice, hot bath after a hard day? Easing yourself into slowly because it’s just a little too hot, letting the water close over your tired feet, your aching muscles, letting your back settle in, enclosed in warm water.... Or are you a shower person, standing for minutes on end in the flow, letting it wash over your face, your shoulders and neck….Or let’s go bigger: walking into a cool lake on a hot day, the smooth, gentle water enveloping you… When I swim in the ocean I feel the most freedom of all. It’s bracing, it’s huge, you can dive down and float on the waves, it’s vast and refreshing. Sometimes I think we belong in the water.

The Bible is full of water, from Creation to the Ark to the Red Sea to the Jordan River. And there, symbolically, is where we all begin our life in Christ, going with him down into the water, letting the merely human person in us die and be reborn as the new creation that emerges with Christ from the depths. That’s why water, lots of it, is so important in the sacrament of baptism – it is symbolically enough water to drown in, and enough to birth us into new life. The baptismal water is where our eternal life truly begins. Once with water and the three-fold name of God, it’s accomplished. It’s done.

And whether you were sprinkled, toe-dipped, dunked or half-drowned, you got the whole thing. You went down and were laid in the watery tomb with Christ. You got up and were raised to life eternal with Christ. You were baptized in the waters of life for ever and ever! Amen!

If we want to feel more alive as Christ followers, we might practice remembering our baptism every day. We are surrounded with reminders – the water we drink, bathe in, wash dishes with. What if we cultivate the habit of remembering our baptism every time we feel water on our skin? Remind ourselves that we were washed and cleansed and reclaimed and reborn in water? Maybe we’d remember how beloved we are, which might make us more loving.

We begin Life in the water. And according to the book of Revelation, there’s water of life waiting for us at the end of days too, in that heavenly city, the new Jerusalem. And guess what? A river runs through it.


My one lake baptism!