1-9-19 - The Water

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

There’s a fancy name for teaching about sacraments: mystagogy, the study of the sacred mysteries. Mystagogy flourished in the fourth century, when the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, causing 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. They tried 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 baptism - and for life.

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 sac 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 when you’re tired? Easing in 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….
We can go bigger: walking into a cool lake on a hot day, the smooth, gentle water enveloping you… And when I swim in the ocean I feel the most freedom of all. It’s bracing, it’s vast and refreshing, you can dive down and float on the waves... Sometimes I think we belong in the water.

The Bible is full of water, from Creation to Ark, 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 a new creation who 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. That’s why some early baptistries were built to look like wombs or tombs or both.The baptismal water is where our eternal life truly begins.

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 waiting for us at the end of days too, in that heavenly city, the new Jerusalem. And guess what? A river runs through it.To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Sunday’s readings are here.