Water Matters
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
March 5, 2006
Genesis
9:8-17/Mark 1:9-15
You will have to bear with us today just a bit if you are not
a member of this congregation. It is the day of our annual meeting,
when we discuss budgets and elect officers and review our program.
Annual meetings are not typically the most scintillating of
events, but I love them anyway. They are, for we Presbyterians,
a clear manifestation of the democratic nature of our church.
Our very name, Presbyterian, means that the people govern the
institution, and not a clerical elite. And our very role at
the forefront of the Reformation indicates a deep commitment
to what is often called “the priesthood of all believers.”
We show off that commitment today, not because we believe our
way of being church is so much better than any others (though
we act that way at times), but because we believe God calls
us to live out our calling together in just this way.
It is not always neat or easy. Because power and authority
is dispersed, decisions are not always quickly made –
that’s an understatement. There are too many jokes about
the pace and nature of our life – here is one: How many
Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb? Change –
why would anyone want change? Decisions are slow and processes
are complex.
We have a judicial process, for example, if you did not know,
that includes the opportunity of a trial by church jury by your
peers. We don’t like to use it, but we are glad that it
is there when we need it to provide some order in the face of
conflict.
Our way of doing things is not necessarily efficient, and it
almost guarantees a diversity of opinion and practice. We know
that well around here – in recent years we have been part
of a larger conversation about ordination and human sexuality
and have experienced first hand the rigors of our Presbyterian
system.
Not less than many times have I heard a statement to the effect
of “wouldn’t it just be easier if we all believed
the same thing about all this?” I have heard that from
the left and from the right. Easier, perhaps – though
I am not so sure. Like-mindedness breeds its own kind of complexity.
Faithful – no, and not very true to who we have been and
who we are called to be. It may be an odd way to run a railroad,
but it is one way, one interesting way, we hope, to run a church.
There are many theological ways to understand the foundation
for all this. A primary way is through the theme of covenant
– the affirmation that God has established a relationship
with a community of people, a relationship that cannot be ended
even though the people do plenty of things to warrant its conclusion.
We Reformed and Presbyterian Christians have been at the forefront
of thinking about covenant. It has served us very well, though
not always. Covenant theology was used extensively, for example,
by our Dutch Christian brothers and sisters to justify apartheid
in South Africa. But it was that same covenant theology that
was used to dismantle apartheid, in fact, by many black South
Africans who had been at one time mission objects of their white
oppressors.
It is an extraordinary notion – that we are bound to
God, and therefore to one another, because God so desires it.
It is very counter-cultural in a me-first world that emphasizes
our desires to make choices and to determine who we are, whose
we are, who’s in and who’s out.
At some point, every novice preacher makes a similar discovery,
that is, how central water is to the telling of the story of
faith. Water is central to our understanding of covenant as
well. Just track the core story lines of the biblical narrative:
creation, Moses and the Red Sea, Jonah getting tossed overboard.
Water, water everywhere. In the Gospels Jesus changes water
into wine and walks on the water.
This morning, water and covenant are inextricably linked. I
could not help but think of our Katrina travelers this week
as I read again and again the story of Noah and the great flood.
Water, biblically and currently, is not always a force for
good. But it is always a force. God uses the flood to make a
fresh start.
Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says that the water question
is the wrong question to ask of the story. “Curiosity,”
Brueggemann asserts, “raises questions about water and
anger and rainbows. But behind all such questions, this (Noah)
narrative is a statement about our common human pilgrimage and
the way in which our common lot is decisively changed by the
change wrought in God.” (Genesis, page 86-86) Our common
heritage.
God’s last word in all this is “I will remember
my covenant.” When the story begins, we were not so sure
that that would be the case.
But the point will need punctuation, continual punctuation.
The baptism of Jesus in the waters of the Jordan is perhaps
the strongest gospel punctuation mark. Mark’s is the leanest
of the tellings; immediately following Jesus is driven into
the wilderness to contend with Satan. That is why we read it
at the onset of Lent. The covenantal relationship God has made
with the people, confirmed with the casting of the rainbow in
the sky, has been confirmed in this human one, this Jesus, God’s
word in flesh and blood.
Baptism provides the connection to the story of the covenant:
for Jesus, for us, for the church.
On an annual meeting Sunday, we rightly spend time thinking
about the business of the church. Money and personnel. Programs
and property. If you are present to participate in the meeting,
you will hear plenty about those things. You will hear about
a dynamic and growing program that involves hundreds of people.
It has done some very important things very well for a long
time, and it is seeking ways to do some new things, particularly
things that would connect us more deeply as a community. You
will hear about dedicated leaders and a gifted, committed community
of staff colleagues who work hard, with good cheer. You will
hear about a beloved church building that serves as the home
for a very great deal, that is very costly to maintain, and
that has some very real needs. You will hear financial news
that is at once heartening and challenging – that we are
able to do many of the things we feel called to do, but not
all of them, and not always in the way that we would like.
That is what you will hear. Please come to the meeting anyway,
because you will hear it more eloquently and convincingly by
people other than myself.
But as you hear those words, as you read the reports, as you
consider the figures, please remember this. Please remember
that we are connected to one another, bound to one another,
by a covenant of grace that calls us to care for one another,
to transform the world and to do great things in the name of
the one whose agenda it is to make a fresh start.
That covenant compels us to think boldly and creatively. It
emphasizes how important it is to teach the story to our children
and youth, and to those of us beyond the ages of children and
youth. It means that we are to seek ways to connect with one
another, to build relationships and community, to fortify one
another as we live day by day. It means that we worship with
joy and passion, and that the excellence of our music and the
piety of our prayers leads us to a deeper connection with God.
And it means that that connection takes us back into the world,
into a Rochester community that needs good news, into a Presbyterian
community that needs good news, into a wider national and global
community that needs good news.
Covenant means all that, and the good news of the rainbow and
the power of baptism means that we are bound to God –
and to one another – so that our efforts matter, inch-by-inch,
day-by-day, drop-by-drop.
What might we do today? Remember the story. Remember your baptism.
Take stock of the covenant, and consider your role in it, and
how that comforts you and how it challenges you. It should do
both, draw you ever closer to God and God’s community,
and propel you ever further into the world, where rainbow news
is scarce, and where water’s cleansing power is ever needed.
“The church’s one foundation, is Jesus Christ her
Lord. She is his new creation – his new creation –
by water and the word.” Thank God for that good news.
Amen.
