Waters of Life

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September 13, 2015 -- Rally Day!

Genesis 1:1-10, 20-22, 26-28

 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 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. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

6 And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8 God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

20 And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

Sermon:

Fifteen years ago, I packed a suitcase that weighed more than I did and headed out on an adventure with people I didn’t know well to Honduras.  I found myself overwhelmed as we circled down, down, down, landing in the valley that was the city of Tegucigalpa.  We were there for a week-long mission trip, and to say it was life-changing for me would be a vast understatement. 

They say smell is the strongest sense of memory we have, and I believe it, because when I think back of my time in Honduras, I remember the smell of sweet pineapple, the smell of dirt as we played duck-duck goose with laughing children, kicking up dust as we ran.  I remember the smell of warm tortillas, fresh off a grill by expert hands.  But mostly, I remember the smell of the rain.  Every evening like clockwork, it started raining at 9 p.m.  As that rain pounded the tin roof of our cabin, the world surrendered to it.  Generators went quiet, so the lights went out.  All there was to do was lay on your bunk, smelling the meeting of water and earth, listening to the cadence of life.

Because water is life, of course.  I studied Bioenvironmental Science in college because a priest in Honduras on that trip reminded us of that, saying it wasn’t enough to meet people’s spiritual needs, we had to also meet their physical needs, like ensuring that every child on this planet has clean water to drink.  I learned in my studies that most fundamental truth: water is the only thing necessary for any life to exist.  Not air (not pulled pork), but water. 

Perhaps that’s why in Genesis it all begins with water.  Before God created anything, there was chaos and darkness.  But there was also water, and the Spirit or Breath or Wind of God danced over that surface.  So you see, Creation in Genesis and scientific accounts might not compete as we often assume: life begins with water. 

Debie Thomas reminds us of what this creation account in Genesis was designed to do, saying,

“Genesis is…an origin story — the origin story of humankind — and as such, it offers us surprisingly rich soil in which to root our identities.  Neither history nor science as today's scholars understand those disciplines, the first chapter of Genesis is poetry, hymn, doxology, and myth. If we in the postmodern world struggle to see truth in those art forms, it is not because Scripture is lying. It is because our post-Enlightenment imaginations are impoverished. To call the creation story true is not to quibble with science; it is to probe deeper than any scientific endeavor can take us. It is to acknowledge who we truly are and where we really come from. It is to affirm, by faith, the reality of a good God, a good world, and a beloved humanity.”

We learn from Genesis who we are, and where we come from.   Who we are is a good creation.  We come from os a good God, the One who wove creation together by first hovering over waters.  Perhaps that’s why we have such a connection to water, being about 60% water ourselves. 

I wonder, can you remember your most significant encounter with water?  Perhaps, like me, it was the comfort of rain, making you feel at home in a strange place.  Perhaps it was water, sweetened with sugar and spritzed with lemons, enjoyed on your grandmother’s porch as a child.  Perhaps it was the salty tears that flowed, unbidden, when you lost the most precious person you know.  Perhaps it was the horror of water, when floods came, or a wave threatened to overtake you as a child, or a boat capsized.  As Norman McLean wrote in that wonderful story of fly-fishing in Montana, A River Runs Through It, we are “haunted by waters.”

Water is life.  In God’s wisdom, it turns out water also tells us the story of life with God in scripture.  For the next seven weeks, we enter into that story.  We find it begins and ends with waters of life in Genesis and Revelation.  We travel waters of fear and sorrow with Noah, we feel the sand in our throats with those thirsty Israelites in the desert, demanding a drop of hope from Moses.  We dare to dream the wild vision of Amos, where justice flows down like waters, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.  We gather in the crowd by the River Jordan as Jesus is baptized with water and flame, opposites that are in perfect harmony, like divinity and humanity.  Our deepest doubts tip-toe on troubled waters with Peter, fearful that we might be consumed by them at any moment, and sinking, only to have Jesus lift our head above the surface once more. 

We who have come from water, who are made of water, journey together, searching the seas and the puddles for signs of life.  We will be troubled.  We will be refreshed.  We will remember the simplicity of this life, and we will trust God it its complexity.

Wendell Barry, that great poet of nature, captures our relationship with water so well, in his poem of that name.

I was born in a drouth year.  That summer

my mother waited in the house, enclosed

in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,

for the men to come back in the evenings,

bringing water from a distant spring.

veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.

And all my life I have dreaded the return

of that year, sure that it still is

somewhere, like a dead enemy’s soul. 

Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,

and I am the faithful husband of the rain,

I love the water of wells and springs

and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise

of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.

My sweetness is to wake in the night

after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

Our souls are thirsty, friends.  We have the fear of dust in our mouths.  We are tired, we have cancer, we have anxieties, we have pressure and criticism, we have doubt and we have anger, we have financial worries, we have racial tension and political bullying, we have too little rest, too little refreshment.  We are dry people, whose thirst is praise. 

So, let’s journey together through the waters of scripture, remembering from where we come and where the currents of God’s grace are flowing, guiding us further downstream, on a path not of our own making.  Let’s turn off the lights, quiet our worried minds, lay down in the care of a good Creator, and listen to the rain, until our cup runneth over.  Amen.