AtomA River Runs Through It (Water, Baptism, Life)
John 4:5-26
I’ve been thinking about water this week. Certainly because of the gospel lesson, but also in returning to the water – the lake where I grew up – to celebrate my Mom’s life and to say goodbye. Water, lake water, water for fishing and boating and skiing, and even snowmobiling when it was frozen, has always been a center to the life of our family. As water is the center to any life.
It is precious, it is life-giving. Scientists tell us, you know , that our bodies are made up of, what is it…95.7% water? It’s amazing that we can even sit upright in the pews today! There is so much water in us. They tell us we can go several weeks without food, but only a few days without water. Water is life!
The gospel reading also reminds us of the life-giving quality of water. It is a familiar story…Jesus is making his way down to Jerusalem from Galilee in the north, but instead of going around Samaria on his way, he goes straight through. This was unusual. Most Jews would have chosen the longer route so as to avoid Amaria and the Samaritans – the people who lived there. They didn’t like each other, you seee, and so whenever possible they would go out of their way to avoice each other, even if it meant walking many miles around. But Jesus decides to go through Samaria, because Jesus apparently knows that he is going to have a very important meeting in that place.
And so he comes to a village called Sychar. And I nteh village there is a well, a storied, historic well. The ancestor Jacob when he came into the land dug a well for his family and for his flocks and they drew life-giving, life-sustaining water from that well. Even today, if you go to the village of Sychar in the land of Israel, there is a well, where they still draw this life-giving water im much the way that they have done for thougsands of years. It is life-giving, precious water in a dry land.
Jesus comes to that place, to that well, and he decides to stop and rest. I had to wonder why it is that he sends the disciples on by themselves to buy food and he himself stops to wait, except that he must have known somehow that this woman would come and that, again, this would be a very important meeting in which he would give to her something that she dearly needed. She comes to the well to draw her daily portion of water, as all people must draw some water for their lives. She comes to draw the water that day, but Jesus sees her coming and recognizes that she needs something more than water to sustain her life… that there is a deep thirsting in her that hasn’t been filled, try as she might, through one relationship after another. Jesus discovers that she has been married five times and all of those relationships have come up empty. She’s thirsting for something, for meaning, for hope, for some love in her life.
And Jesus says to her, “If you knew who I am, you would ask me to give yo water…life-giving water, living water…water that when you drink of it you will never thirst again, but that it will become in you a well, or rather a spring, an artesian flowing well, springing up to eternal life.” It will be life-giving, precious, water for a thirsty life – a river of meaning and hope that never ends.
So I have been thinking of water…life giving water. And I remembered a movie I watched some years ago, one when it came out on DVD that I immediately grabbed and said to my kids, this is a movie I want to watch with you. The name of the movie is “A River Runs Through It.” Some of you have probably seen it. I remember when it first came into theaters, Holly wasn’t so sure that it was a movie she wanted to see. It looked to her to be a fishing movie.
And it was, sort of…full of beautiful scenery, wonderfully captured on film, and quite a lot of fishing. But the movie is more than fishing; it is about a family and it’s relationships and its about growing up together. It is about a clergy family, actually, a Presbyterian Minister’s family in Montana in the early 1900’s And more precisely, it is about two brothers growing up together – competing with each other, quarreling with each other, and caring for each other as brothers do. It’s a story about two brothers who grow up and as they do they take different pathways through life.
The eldest son is so straight-laced that when he is in High School his friends begin to call him “preacher” as a nick-name. (Who would want that?) He came to believe that his calling in life included going on to school, so he goes way out to the East Coast, to Dartmouth, I believe, to go to school and to become a teacher. It is some six years before he returns to Montana. The other brother, the youngest, is a good-looking, dashing young man. I think his name is Paul. He stays home, closer to some of the things he loves – like fly-fishing – at which he is not only an expert, but an artist. So he stays home, and gets a job as a newspaper reporter in a nearby city. And gets involved in some other things that take him in some directions a little further from the path than his pastor-father might have liked. He gets involved in a lot of drinking and gambling, and eventually that gambling and the debts that evolve come together to take his life.
And throughout the movie, there is of course, a river: “A river runs through it.” It is a river that runs not only through the land, but also through the life of this family. Again and again, as they go through their lives, they return to this river…to fish, yes…but more than that. They come to the river again and again for life, and healing, and hope. They come to the river ast the passage times in life…at times when they are maturing and trying to make decisions about hwat the future holds, trying to decide about marriage and life, trying to decide about where they are going to live and raise their families. They come to the river when they are grieving. And, at the end of the movie, the one telling the story, the older brother, returns to the river again when he is much, much older and nearing his own death. And now be brings his grandchildren. But they return always to this river that runs through their life…that source of life and hope and healing.
Now, you may have already guessed what direction I am going here. There is a river that runs through our life that brings life and hope and healing. And that river begins in the ordinary waters of baptism…ordinary waters that become living waters – gushing up to eternal life.
It was never more apparent that the baptismal waters were ordinary waters than the Sunday that I came to do a baptism in a former parish…got all the way to pouring the water over the baby’s head, took the cover off the font and discovered that there was no water. We had forgotten to fill it. So, while I talked on, as pastors will do, one of the members of the council went to the kitchen and brought back a pitcher of water. He was in a hurry, so he grabbed the first pitcher he came to: a brown Tupperware pitcher, rather un-elegant for a baptism. We put the water in the font and we had a baptism, and it was as wonderful as any baptism could be. And afterwards people came to me and said…especially the young people…they said, “Huh…I didn’t know we used just plain old water out of the tap. I thought it was some kind of special water that we used, you know, holy water.” Nope, just ordinary water.
Martin Luther reminds us that this baptismal water becomes special water when we add the word of God…and so we baptize young Alayna in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Then it becomes life-giving water. It becomes a river that runs through our lives, a spring flowing up to eternal life, a river to be returned to again and again and again, because this river, this water, connects us to Jesus who is the living water…the one who comes to give our life hope and meaning and healing.
So, what I would remind you of this morning, friends, is this river that runs though our lives: this river of baptism that we return to again and again, much as the McClain family did in the movie I described to you.
How often shall we return? Perhaps when you were doing your catechism instruction you remember that Luther said we should return to our baptism each day. As we look in the mirror each morning we should remember, “I am baptized,” which is to say, “I belong to Jesus, and today I am going to live my life as one who belongs to Jesus, forgiven, healed, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.” How often should we return? Daily…to the river that runs through our lives.
And, I would add, especially at those passage times of our lives. And so my prayer for young Alayna as she begins her journey, a journey of unknown destination. As parents we don’t know where this journey will take our children, but we pray that Jesus will go with them. I pray that as Alayna begins her journey, and as we continue our journey with him, that he will remember to come back to the river of his baptism.
When she reaches adolescence…the age of 13 or 14…that time of questioning in our lives, when we wonder who we are and where we are going…when our body begins to change and our voices begin to change, and our interest in girls and boys begins to change, and our relationship with our parents begins to change, and we wonder, “Who am I? What am I becoming? At that time we again return to the river of life. We call it confirmation….where we remember our baptism, where we remember that Jesus says to us, “You belong to me…you belong to me!”
So I have a prayer for young Alayna and those of us on life’s journey when we come to the young adult years, those years of great decision making, when we are trying to decide what to do with our life: what our work shall be, where we will live, who we might share our life with, that we will return also to that river, to remember the Jesus who says to us, “I am the way…I will direct you, I will guide you; I will go with you to help you find your way through, for you belong to me.”
I have a prayer for young Alayna and those of us who make the journey with her, that when we come to those middle years of life, those years when we begin to wonder about the meaning of life – sometimes they call it midlife crisis. When we begin to wonder what we have accomplished in the years that we have already lived. Whether we have made it to those dreams that we dreamed in the years of our youth, whether our jobs have really been all that we had hoped that they would be, whether our marriages are all that we had hoped they would be. Those times when we begin to wonder about the meaning of life…we return to the river, to the Jesus who says to us, “I am the truth. Are you looking for meaning? Follow me; serve me; know why you were created and why you live in this place…for you belong to me.”
And I have a prayer for young Alayna and those of us who are making this journey with her, when we come to those latter years of our life…those years when things begin to slip away form us.. when we begin to lose our grip on those things that are important to us: our health, our homes, perhaps when we are no longer able to care for ourselves and we have to move in with someone else to care for us, someplace else. When we begin to lose those who are important to us…our family, our spouse, when we come face to face with our own death. My prayer is that we return to that river that runs through our life and the Jesus who says, “I am the life…and when you begin to lose your grip on life and the things that are important to you, remember…that I hold on to you, and my grip is sure.
Dear friends in Christ, there is a river that runs through our lives, a river that we call Holy Baptism. A precious gift, it connects us to God’s own son, Jesus Christ. My prayer is that Alayna will return to that river often as she lives her life…and that so will we. That we will return often to his river of life and to Jesus, who says, “I have come that you might never thirst for meaning or hope and that my life will become in you a living spring gushing up to eternal life! I am the living water of life and you belong to me.” Amen.
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