"A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT"
Rev. Jim Petersen
1-14-07        
First Congregational UCC - Great Falls, MT
Text: Genesis 1:1-10  Matthew 3:13-17

 
Not a year goes by that I don't remind you - once or twice - that Epiphany means "manifestation" or "revelation" of God.  This is the second Sunday of the season of Epiphany, and this is my second reminder.
 
The season of Epiphany lasts until Lent begins, which itself lasts until Easter, which is determined by the vernal equinox and full moons, meaning the date of Easter moves around over a thirty-four day variance.  Not terribly theological, we will get there soon enough.  Easter is April 8 this year.  March 23 next year, for those of you looking ahead to ?08, which is about as early as Easter can be. 
 
It is sufficient for our present Epiphany purpose to tell you that the season of Epiphany is itself elastic, anywhere from five to nine weeks, dependent as it is on Easter, which as I say moves around, and Lent, which is always fixed at forty days.  Therefore Epiphany does the giving.  I just love this stuff.  I hope some of you do.  And the rest of you forgive me.  More importantly, there are two principal revelations of God we remember at Epiphany.  The first and foremost for us as we are coming out of the season of Christmas, is the " revelation" of God in the infant Jesus to the Wise Men.
 
So at Epiphany we sing, "We Three Kings," as indeed we did last week, and conclude the Christmas story with the good news that this Jewish boy born of Mary is the Messiah for all as symbolized in the Magi.
 
The second principal revelation remembered at Epiphany is the baptism of Jesus.  No longer an infant, but Jesus at the beginning of his adult ministry and mission, where the voice of God is heard to "manifest," "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
 
It is for this reason we choose this season to hand out our baptismal doves.  Accompanied by, as you've come to expect, a few words on the subject of baptism, which after all is one of our only two sacraments.
 
Water is a important and powerful symbol in the Bible.  "In the beginning" was water, according to our Creation story.  Primordial seas, if you will.  Dark seas of chaos.  The beginning.  God's spirit moves upon the face of the waters, and after turning on the lights, first day, God inserts a dome into the waters, a protective bubble, which separate the waters, and God calls the ceiling of the dome "sky," second day.  After which God takes the waters on the floor of the dome and moves them to one side, over here, creating land over there, third day.  "In the beginning"...  water.
 
In the end, that is, the first ending, water appears again.  "When Noah was six hundred years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month all the outlets of the vast body of water beneath the earth burst open, and all the floodgates of the sky were opened, and the rains fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights."
 
Ah, here is the answer to one of the questions on our Confirmation quiz for this next Wednesday. Where did the water come from in the Flood?
 a) down from the sky above,
b) up from the earth below,
c) both of the above,
d) none of the above.
 
The answer:
 c) both down from the sky and up from the earth, for God opens the floodgates in the ceiling of the dome as well as the outlets in the floor of the dome, and water gushes in, from above and from below, as a way of dooming the dome, except for the ark and its inhabitants.  For everything else, our bubble is burst, and the world returns to the waters of the primordial seas of chaos.
 
Water is an important and powerful symbol in the Bible.  "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.  The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind...and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.  The Israelites went into the sea on the dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.   The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all the Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and chariot drivers...
 
"Then the Lord said to Moses, ?Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.'  So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and...the waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariots drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh...not one of them remained." (Ex.14:21ff)
 
The Israelites saved by the sea in the seminal event of their history, for the Exodus is to the Jew as Easter is to the Christian.  The waters delivered them from captivity.  "Then Moses ordered Israel to set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness...three days and found no water.  When the came to Marah they could not drink the water because it was bitter, so they complained against Moses, saying,?What shall we drink?'  Moses cried to the Lord, who showed him a piece of wood, which Moses threw into the water, and it became sweet."  (Ex. 15:22-25)
 
The children of Israel surviving in the wilderness because of water. 
 
"From the wilderness the Israelites journeyed from one place to another.  They quarreled and complained to Moses, ?Give us water to drink...why did you deliver us from Egypt, to kill us with thirst?'
 
Then God told Moses to strike the rock with the stick.  Moses did so and water gushed out of it for the people to drink."  (Ex. 17:1-6)  Life giving water for the journey.
 
Water is an important and powerful symbol in the Bible.  As it is in every religion, from the folk religions of so-called pagan people to the world religions with their sophisticated rituals and sacraments.  Water is central and symbolic.
 
Which makes sense, for water is a primary substance, an essential element, still covering 70% of the face of the earth, blessedly, and making up about the same percentage of our bodies.  Water.  We need it.  We can go days without food, and some of us probably should, but only hours without water, and nobody recommends this.  Drink lots of water is everybody's advise, including for diets.
 
So John is in the Jordan, performing a Jewish rite of cleansing with water. He cleanses Jesus, and the Christian story, first "revealed" to the Magi thirty years prior in the epiphany prelude, begins anew as Jesus "comes up from the water," and suddenly the heavens open up and the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus like a dove, with a voice from heaven saying, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." 
 
A second epiphany, in which God adopts Jesus and commissions Jesus to be the Christ.  It begins with water.
 
So it is when we begin our Christian story we do so with water, in our sacrament of Baptism, in which God adopts us, too, and commissions us, too, to be followers of Christ.  We use water, important and powerful Biblical symbol, as the substance of baptism to communicate two things.
 
First, cleansing.  The most common meaning of the symbol of water.  As John was standing in the Jordan, offering a cleansing rite to the Hebrew people, including his cousin, Jesus, so we are cleansed in baptism through the love of God as manifest in the sacrifice of Christ.
 
Baptism is God's forgiveness, with water as its symbol.  Baptism is the grace of God bathing our lives, washing away our sin as we are invited to new life in Christ.
 
The colorful Sam Houston, liberator and first president of the Texas Republic, was baptized and joined the Church at the age of sixty.  He was baptized in a river, as was the custom in those days, especially in those parts.  He wrote to a friend about the sacrament, "They told me that when I am baptized my sins would be washed away.  If that is so, I pity those poor souls living downstream."
 
It is amazing, and truly a testimony to the power of God, what we can do with just a sprinkle around here.  There is not one of us who is not in need of confession.  The promise of the gospel is that we do not have to carry this stuff around.  We can be free and born again. The God who gives life, also renews life.
 
The God who creates life out of water, can also redeem life with water. This is the grace of God present in baptism. 
 
So, you ask, why do we baptize children,?  Surely the infants are innocent.  Well, first of all, I say, "Are you kidding me?  Your kids!"  Then there is the theological point, which is, as soon as we touch down on earth, we are no longer in Eden.  Though we in Great Falls know Eden is just a little bit south of here, there isn't any of us in Eden anymore.  Baptism is a once and for all cleansing.  In the language of that good ol' time religion, baptism provides the protective hedge of Christ around us.  It is being back in the bubble, secure in the dome, with the primordial seas of chaos surrounding us, but not harming us.  Baptism is our safe place in God's grace. 
 
It is well to remember along the journey of life.  As it is said, Martin Luther used to frequently mutter to himself, during his trials and travails, "Remember, Martin, thou art baptized."  This is all we really need to know.
 

In addition to cleansing, water, as the element of baptism, is also intended to communicate a second meaning, covenant.  This is what the miracle of the Red Sea is about.  The real miracle is not so much that God parted the waters, but that God chose to save the Jews and call the Jews into covenant with God.   As the old couplet put it, "How odd of God to choose the Jews."
 
The Israelites, a group of runaway slaves from Egypt, with no land of their own, no power to impress, no military of might, no real respect to speak of.   Yet God, creator of all humanity, chooses them, and delivers them from bondage into new life, with the promise God will always be with them.
 
When the seas parted and protected them, they knew God was with them and that they belonged to God.  Chosen, not because they were better, not for special privilege, but for the responsibility to live in relationship to God and show the world what that looks like, which we call the covenant.  To live in covenant to God, so the world might know.
 
When Christians, over 1200 years later, were trying to communicate what God had done for us in the cross and the Resurrection, we would say it was like crossing the Red Sea, where God had given us freedom from the slavery of sin, and all that holds us back from the life God wants for us.  God promises to be with us forever, and promises that we can be with God forever, every step along the way, and beyond.  This is the claim of baptism.
 
We may leave God.  We may stray to a far off country.  We may live in exile, or wander many years in the wilderness.  But God will not leave us.  This is a promise.  It is the covenant, sealed in your baptism.
 
Norman McLean makes a statement in his book, A River Runs Through It, made into the movie that put Montana on the map, "I am haunted by waters."  The book, or movie, is about water, highlighted by the art of fly fishing, that dance between river and fisherman, consisting of rhythm and timing, skill and technique, all synchronized with wind, sun and shadows, and no small amount of grace.  Fly-fishing.  Maybe this is what I'll do when I retire.
 
A River Runs Through It is really not a story about fishing.  It is the retelling of one of the oldest stories in the world.  "A father had two sons..."  And we know how that goes.  Luke tells us in his parable of the Prodigal Son.  But it goes back farther than that, to Jacob cheating his brother Esau, and beyond, all the way back to Cain killing his brother Abel, in our first family.
 
But there is a story which proceeds these oh, so human, stories.  "In the beginning" was water.  And God parted the waters and created life.  Or, we might say, from the waters life began.
 
So when Norman McLean writes, "I am haunted by waters," he is not saying I am afraid of water.   He is saying he is in awe of water.  He senses in water the flow of life.  The water gives life and renews life, the water heals life and reconciles life.  And this "haunts" the soul or chills the body, as the presence of God should.
 
So in McLean's very human story of family, of estrangement and reconciliation, of sin and rebirth, of separation and return, whenever the characters seek renewal of life, they return to the river, which runs through it.  Sometimes they fish.  Sometimes they just sit by the river.  Which is what I am going to do when I get really, really old, as our Kalispell property nearly borders the Whitefish River.
 
The river is sacramental.  It flows with the promise that life, in spite of all its estrangements, in spite of all its sorrows, will always be good.  We can always come to the waters, and be born again. 
 
Here at the top of a new year, on this 2nd Sunday of Epiphany, it is a good time to remind ourselves of our baptismal blessing. 
 
AMEN