1-2-18 - Water Life

Exploring Jesus’ baptism this week gives us an opportunity to examine 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 to seek 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.

Our mystagogy this week will be simple – we’ll just focus on the elements involved in baptism. We begin with water, the most fundamental of fluids for life, and for God-Life.

Sometimes I think we belong in the water – our life starts in a sealed, watery place, nine months floating in a sack of amniotic fluid, with embryonic arms like flippers. And then we’re born – which is freedom, but also makes us 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 in because it’s just a little too hot, letting the water close over your tired feet, 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…  Swimming in the ocean can feel the most freeing 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 significant 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 themerely 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 also 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!

One way to feel more alive as Christ followers is to 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.

I just listened to the new album by one of my favorite bands, The Lone Bellow - the lead song says it. Let's all go Deeper in the Water.

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