For the past several years, we have used a ritual of light and flame: “We light a light in the name of God who creates life, the Son who loves life, and the Spirit who is the fire of life. Thanks be to God, who unites us in our hope, faith, and life.” Life is full of symbols and rituals, things on the surface that point beyond themselves to deeper realities. Light is one such symbol. Fire is another. So also is water.
We are introducing a water ritual today. If you’re uncomfortable with “ritual”, call it a repeated practice that reminds us what is true. There is no magic in repeating actions: Power lies in our relationship with God, who gives us life. Nonetheless, ritual is helpful. It reminds us to look beneath the surface of life and remember who made us and who sustains us in this life.
This morning then, I note several Scripture passages that use the image of water to symbolize something about who we are as God’s people. I won’t try to synthesize these into one coherent picture; instead, we have layers of meaning that we hold within the symbol. I follow the Scripture passages with three stories about water, so that you could subtitle the sermon, “stories of water”.
Some Scriptures
Psalm 93: We read Psalm 93 earlier. You note that in this Psalm, water points to God. A flood, roaring down a canyon, is impressive in its power; God is even more impressive. The tide rolling in from another continent awes us; God is even more awesome.
Genesis 7: The greatest flood of all is recorded in Genesis 7, a flood that covered the earth. You know the story, and it reminds us that water can be destructive. Behind the destruction of the Great Flood lay God’s judgment on human sin. When we think of water, there are also uncomfortable memories and messages. We are reminded that God has given us our very lives in trust, and we are to live our lives for God alone.
Exodus 17: In Exodus 17, we have the first time that Moses struck a rock with his staff at God’s command, bringing forth water. The deeper point of the story is to make clear that the Children of Israel depended on God for life as they travelled through the wilderness in search of the Promised Land. At a simpler level, we are reminded that water is life. The Israelites could not continue travelling if they had no water. They needed water to live.
Isaiah 55: Isaiah 55 begins with a well-known and simple verse: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” “Come to the waters.” The call is an invitation to life, and water here represents life. This passage sets up the gospel reading for this morning.
John 4: This story is one we know well. Jesus and his disciples are travelling from Judea to Galilee. Samaria lay between the two. Commentators differ on the significance of verse 4: “He had to go through Samaria.” C.K. Barrett says that this was the natural route and that there is no theological significance in these words. Raymond Brown notes that the phrase “had to do this” sometimes means that this is God’s doing. Since the whole story appears to be God at work, it makes sense to see this compulsion as God at work. We can say that God sent Jesus and his disciples through Samaria for a purpose.
In Samaria there is a village, Sychar. Sychar was close to Shechem, a centre of early Jewish spirituality, and to Mount Gerizim. Stopping there, Jesus and his disciples were close to the heart of the Samaritan identity. Samaritans were close cousins to the Jews. In Israel today, there is still a small Samaritan community. Jews see them as part of Judaism – even if a bit odd, and Samaritans see themselves as representing the true faith that never went into exile.
It is not an exact analogy, but you might think of Samaritans as being to Jews something like Jehovah’s Witnesses are to Christians. Many JWs would say they are the true Christians, and many Christians would say that JWs are not Christian at all. There by a well, Jesus waited outside the village while the disciples went to buy food. When a woman comes out to fetch water from the well, Jesus asks her for a drink of water. Given the tensions between Jews and Samaritans and given her own status as a woman who was marginalized in her community, she was surprised at his request.
Then comes the verses that illuminate our theme of water, verses 13-15:
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
The water of life! In other Scriptures, water symbolizes everything from God’s judgment to God’s care, but here the image is clear: Jesus is life. Knowing Jesus is essential to spiritual life, just as water is essential to physical life.
A Story
In 2003, our family learned how essential water is to our physical lives. Lois and I were on sabbatical in South Africa, with our sons, Vaughn and Nevin. We spent two months in South Africa, two months in Zimbabwe, and one month in Namibia, with a brief side trip to Zambia.
We spent the month of October in Namibia, and my story concerns the drive from Johannesburg to Windhoek – about 1400 kilometres. We planned to take two days, seven hours to a rest stop on Kang, in the middle of the Kalahari Desert, and seven more hours to Windhoek in Namibia. About two hours before Kang, we had two flat tires. A passing motorist gave us a ride to the rest stop, where we ordered a tire to be sent up the next day from Gaborone on a country bus. On the third day, with our new tire on, we continued on our way to Windhoek.
An hour out of Kang, I stopped to check our tires. They were fine, but when I got back in the car and turned the key, there was nothing. General electrical failure. [This car looked wonderful, a 1988 white Mercedes Benz, but it was a real lemon. Worst car ever, but it did mean that we had lots of opportunities to experience God’s presence through the help of strangers.] A passing motorist again took me back to Kang.
The owner of the rest stop saw me come in and asked, “What are you doing here?!” He knew I was trouble. He rounded up an electrician in the nearby village of Kang and loaned us his own vehicle to go back to our car. There the electrician found that four fuses were burned out. He showed me what kind to get when we reached a place with auto supplies again, and then he bridged the burned-out fuses with copper wire.
While I was headed for help, Lois and the boys waited in the hot sun in the middle of the desert. They had no shade, so they spread all our sleeping bags on top of the car to create some shade. The people who took me back to Kang had left all their water with Lois and Vaughn and Nevin. They spent about three hours baking in the sun until I got back. Once the car was running again, we drove on our way, stopping just inside the Namibian border at another rest stop.
We had used up all our water by the time we got to our rest stop, where we could fill up again. We need the help of passing motorists to survive in the desert. That night, as we sat around a fire at the rest stop, cooking some meat over the fire, Nevin commented, “You know, when Jesus said, ‘I am the water of life,’ I think I understand better now what he meant.” Water is life. Without water, we die. Without Jesus, we die.
Another Story
This was not the first time we had experienced the shortage of water in Africa. In 1992, we were the host family at the Brethren in Christ Youngways Guest House in Bulawayo. That year there was a drought that culminated 10 years of low rainfall in Zimbabwe. We were placed under severe water restrictions to keep the city from running out of water.
I remember how we took showers. I would step into the shower and turn the water on just long enough to get wet. Then I would lather up. Then I turned the shower on again just long enough to rinse the soap off, and I was done! The shortage was so bad that the city turned off the water for anyone who used over their monthly allotment before the month was over. One hotel was shut down on the 20th day of the month and only allowed to reopen on the first day of the next month.
Living with such water shortages made it very clear to us that water is life. Those of us who have lived in semi-arid countries know this truth from personal experience. This is a basic reason that Jesus used this image in John 4, and that we use water as a symbol of life for the coming year.
One Last Scripture: Romans 6
In Romans 6, Paul uses baptism as an image of the way we die to self and live for Christ: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
We use water in baptism, following the example of Jesus’ baptism. Water baptism symbolized repentance in the New Testament. Adding a specifically Christian dimension means that water now symbolizes both repentance and the filling of the Holy Spirit. I could have read from Matthew 3 to make this same point. For now, it is enough to remind us that water is a symbol of physical and spiritual life, filled with God’s Spirit.
One More Story
I thought of this use of water partly because of my own baptism. I was baptized into the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe in 1964. We (the BICs) use a form of immersion in which the candidate kneels in the water and the minister pushes him/her forward, under the water three times. In my case, my father was the baptizing minister, and the service was held on a Saturday afternoon in the Mpopoma BIC Church. I had a problem as we anticipated that baptismal service. I am afraid of water. Not just a bit, but a lot afraid. So Dad took me to the church on Thursday evening. The baptistry had already been filled, and we went there to practise. I got in the water and kneeled down. Dad put one hand behind my head and the other on my chest, and pushed me forward into the water. I immediately stood up! Then we tried again. This time, I went under twice before standing up. We tried a third time, and I managed to stay down until the third immersion and then stood up again.
My Dad said, “That’s enough for now. But on Saturday, if you try to stand up, I’ll just lean on you and hold you still. I’ll have all the leverage. I’ve done it before, and I will do it again.” He meant of course that at six-foot-tall and 200 pounds, he could stop me from standing up just by leaning on me. He wasn’t threatening to hold me under the water!
Saturday came, and I was baptized without any trouble. Dad told me later that I was shining as I came out of the water. In truth, I had been baptised into the death of Christ so that I could rise with the life of Christ. We finished the baptismal service with the church members standing around the outside wall of the church and the newly baptised members walking past as the members shook our hands and welcomed us into the church. It was a profoundly moving experience.
Closing Thoughts
Water is a symbol that carries many meanings – from a sign of physical life to a sign of spiritual life, from a sign of our choice to follow Jesus to the life of Christ living within us. There are many more levels that I have not mentioned this morning. I close with two thoughts.
One, there is no power in the water itself. Even as an image of baptism, the power is in Christ and the cross, not in the water. That is why the form of baptism varies so much – whether it is by immersion, or by sprinkling or pouring, or (like the Salvation Army) a dry baptism with no water at all. The important think is our choice to follow Jesus, just as the woman at the well followed Jesus. We use water this year to remind us that Jesus is essential, not the water itself.
Two, we will use this symbol throughout the church’s year during what we call “ordinary time”. Some times of the year already have their own special symbols – such as advent and Christmas, or Lent and Easter. In between, we use water to remind ourselves that we follow Jesus, our source of life, the one without whom we have nothing. We follow Jesus, always.
I’ve asked for a song to say this: “I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me; makes the lame to walk and the blind to see; opens prison doors, set the captives free. I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me.” [Sing together]
Texts: Psalm 93 and John 4:1-15 (NRSV)
Psalm 93
The Majesty of God’s Rule
1 The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed, he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved; 2 your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting.
3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring. 4 More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters, more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord!
5 Your decrees are very sure; holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore.
John 4:1-15
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
4 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
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