Water, Water Everywhere!

Text: Galatians 4:4-7
Theme: “Water, Water Everywhere!”
1st Sunday after the Epiphany/The Baptism of the Lord
January 8, 2012
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with[e] water, but he will baptize you with[f] the Holy Spirit.”
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Water, water everywhere! It is likely you have already made use of water – H20 – for any one of a number of reasons already this morning! One study suggests that drinking sixteen ounces of it to begin your day is a good thing. (It’s certainly better than coffee, and that, unfortunately, is a lesson I haven’t learned yet!) And that’s not even to speak of its use for bath, shower, or the brushing of one’s pearly whites. Along with your detergent of choice, it does help to clean the dried spaghetti sauce off last night’s dinner plates too. Over two thirds of the earth is covered with the stuff. Only 2.5% is fresh water. At the Rotary club, I learned that Rotarians are sending water purifiers to Guatemala. The Google report on water asserted that, by 2025, we may face a world-wide shortage of fresh water.

Water, water everywhere! It’s splashed all over this Sunday’s readings. The Old Testament selection for today, Genesis 1:1-5, declares: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Only two verses into the Bible itself, and we’re all wet; we read of water. The earliest philosophers, the Pre-Socratics (as they were called) claimed that the basic elements were earth, air, fire, and, last but not least, water. And you thought water was just the stuff of science! The truth is it mixes well with philosophy and, of course, theology.

Then we flip over to the Psalm appointed for this day, Psalm 29:1-11. Lo and behold, water is there. Verse three offers this: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory the Lord, over mighty waters.” And don’t neglect verse 10: “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood.” You can’t have a flood if you don’t have any water.

Don’t sell the New Testament reading short either. There is mention of baptism, and you can’t have baptism without water. Baptizo, the Greek term for Baptism, simply means to apply water by sprinkling, pouring, or immersing.

Finally, we arrive at today’s Gospel reading, our text. A month or so ago, we heard the same lesson in the Advent season which includes the account of John the Baptist doing his thing with water out at the Jordan River. What are rivers if not to hold water! Here we are now, two days into the Epiphany season, and we’re back out at the Jordan River again. But this time, the focus is not on the mass of people that showed up but on just one man. “In those days,” says our text, “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

He came up “out of the water.” You almost have this mental image of a fish playfully flying up and diving back in. Yesterday, on the Golf Channel, they showed a blue whale frolicking up out of the water and then back into it around the Hawaiian islands. Then there’s the view of the Spirit, in the form of a dove, swooping down to Jesus as He comes up and out of the water.
In the early 1800s in Vienna, Austria, Ludwig Van Beethoven wrote a symphony that was to be dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte. Already, the composer was known to play fast and loose with the rules of symphonic composition. But only those who know the rules can play fast and loose with them. And, on that count, his Third Symphony in E-flat major is a classic example that does not disappoint. Keen listeners observed that in the course of the piece Beethoven got far away from the original E-flat key. He finally got back to it. He did so, as one biographer described, “after a long, ecstatic suspension that was the musical equivalent of a waterfowl’s speeding weightlessness just before it returns to aqua firma. The ecstasy came from a sense of aerodynamic momentum, unforced by any hurry.”

I like this as a description of the Christian life: “…aerodynamic momentum unforced by any hurry.” It’s like that with the fishes and the birds. Does the fish soar to find the ocean, the eagle plunge to find the air? Water is the element in which the fish lives – and only there. Air is the element in which the bird lives. Without air, it dies. Interestingly, one of the first Christian symbols was that of a fish. You see it every Sunday when you walk out the front door of our church and glance at the church sign. Greek for “fish” is icthus. Icthus is an acrostic: Jesus (Jesus), Christos (Christ), Theos (God’s), Uios (Son), Soter (Savior).

The early church writer Tertullian, in his most famous treatise, De Baptismo, focuses on all of the Lord’s water connections in Holy Scripture. Ultimately he directs our attention to Jesus as sort of a big fish. We, the disciples of Jesus, are like little fish with Jesus being our big fish. We had best stay close to the water! Water, water everywhere! That’s what you saw when you stood out on the balcony of your stateroom on the Carnival Cruise: water, water everywhere! It’s what you observed as you lay on the beach at Galveston looking South by Southeast: water, water everywhere! It’s what you see bottled and packaged at certain aisles at Sam’s Club: water, water everywhere!

Water. It is the element to be found in that piece of liturgical furniture over there. It’s called the baptismal font. Font, from the Latin fontes, means the source.

There’s no better day than today, the Sunday when the church recalls the baptism of the Lord, to get back to the source. I really should be delivering this sermon at the baptismal font.
The Heidelberg Catechism, one of our Presbyterian confessions, asks the right question: “How are you assured by Holy Baptism that the one sacrifice of Christ upon the cross is of real advantage to you?” Allow me to elaborate a bit. I think many Christians take some comfort from the teaching that God loves the whole world with all the people in it. I know that I do.

While they may not be as effusive as Tim Tebow, they would agree – and fervently believe – that Christ died for all. They think the grace of God is generalized. But the question is: when does it get specific – that is, specific to you and you alone? When does the grace that Christ died and rose to bring come to assure you specifically? When does the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ become advantageous not to Tom, Dick, Harry, Jill, Jane, Sally, or Tim Tebow, but to me?

Here is the answer The Heidelberg Catechism gives: “Christ appointed this external washing with water, adding this promise, that I am as certainly washed by His blood and Spirit from all the pollution of my soul, that is, from all my sins, as I am washed externally with water, by which the filthiness of the body is commonly washed away.” The Great Commission of Jesus is then brought in to support the answer: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Next up is Acts 2:38 where the apostle Peter says: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” In Mark 16:16, Christ Himself says: “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” The apostle Paul, in Romans 6, puts it as follows: “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.” If those who haven’t been baptized really knew what the Sacrament of Baptism means, they’d be lining up for it!

The first epiphany of Jesus came by way of a star in the East. The magi followed it and found who they were looking for. The second epiphany of Jesus came at His baptism when the voice from declared our Lord to be God’s beloved Son.

Your baptism is the epiphany – the manifestation, the disclosure! – of Jesus for you. When everything in your mind, and in your heart, and in your soul, and in the world around you is screaming out that you are a nothing; when you’re young and you can’t find your place; when you’re old and wonder how much time you have left; when the powers that be try to convince you that you are little more than the sum total of your Social Security number and credit rating; when your life itself – with its past, present, and future – is something you can’t be sure of, then exercise the freedom Christ won for you. You can cry out with Martin Luther as he did in his Large Catechism: “Nevertheless, I am baptized.” Let hell itself send its worst at you! You can send it all packing with “Nevertheless, I am baptized.”

Thanks be to God for water, water everywhere! Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ! Thanks be to God for the baptism that brings the two together – for you, for me, for us all. We had best stay close to the water!

Amen.