St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church
January 8, 2006 Baptism of the Lord Sunday
Jesus joined the crowds of his people has they streamed out into the wilderness to the banks of the River Jordan to hear the prophet, John the Baptist. Deeply stirred by John’s message of repentance, Jesus watched growing numbers of men, women and children enter the river to receive John’s baptism. Jesus could feel the Spirit of God calling his people to a new beginning as if they were crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land for the very first time. But nothing in his life could have prepared Jesus for what he experienced as the water fell from John’s hands onto his head. It was an experience like no other, of unconditional blessing and love poured out on Jesus. He felt washed and renewed in those waters, reborn into closeness with God that he did not dream could be possible. On this Sunday we remember and celebrate the Baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan and with Christ, in Christ, we renew our own baptismal vows. We are anointed with sacred water that is a sign that we too are beloved of God. Symbolically, the water of our baptism is the same water that John poured on Jesus head. The water of our baptism is the sacred water that conveys God’s unconditional blessing on us as God’s beloved children. For all baptized Christians, this water is sacred. The question I want to ponder with you this morning: What would it mean for us as baptized Christians, to move from an understanding of the sacred water of our baptism to an understanding of the sacredness of all water?
To get at this, I want to tell a tale of three rivers. The first was the River Jordan, the sacred river of the people of Israel, a river sacred to all baptized Christians. The second river is perhaps as old. Its name is the Rio Volcan. It is a beautiful pristine river in southern Costa Rica. The Rio Volcan flows through rainforests and nourishes macaws jaguars and monkeys. It is river where children have played and women have washed and men have fished and farming communities have watered their crops. But a new neighbor, the Del Monte corporation is changing the river. Forests in the higher headwaters of the river have been clear cut to make way for fields of pineapple. Massive Erosion has occurred. Pollutants flow down the river. Del Monte is literally draining the river dry. The water level drops from year to year. This is noticed not just by the children whose swimming holes disappear but by the farmers who no longer have enough water to irrigate their crops. What is going on they ask themselves. They talk. They organize. They send delegations to speak with Del Monte. Del Monte says they are doing nothing illegal. The company owns the land along the river; the water is there for them to use. Its free. But what about us? The farmers ask. What about our rights to the water? The struggle for the survival of the Rio Vulcan is a microcosm of a global struggle. Access to clean drinking water is a fundamental human right supported by international law. But we live in a world in which more than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water. 10,000 to 20,000 people die every day from preventable, water-related disease. How to meet the basic needs of over 1 billion people in the 2/3rds world without access to clean is one of the most urgent moral questions before us? Other moral questions include the role of conservation and efficiency in solving water problems. How do we define the economic value of water when we have always looked upon it as free? There are urgent moral questions about the unsustainable use of groundwater, about water pollution, and of course the major issue of climate change. Consider how the world has been in a destructive competition for oil over the last 3o years. What oil has meant to our global reality over the last 30 years, water will be in the next 30 years.
But there are signs of hope around the world. There is hope in the work that has been done in Nelson Mandela’s S. African government. With the leadership of a lawyer named Dr. King, SA has pioneered the most progressive water policies that are now being studied around the world. Over the last 20 years, Dr. King has worked along side of water managers, legislators, activists and others; to bring about a shift in how water is seen and therefore managed. The 20th century viewed water as an economic asset whose sole purpose was to be converted into energy, to irrigate fields, or supply cities. Dr. King has shown that if rivers - nature as a whole - are to continue to be able to supply humans with the services they need to survive, it needs water itself first. Nature is like a blood donor: if the donor doesn't have enough blood in her body, she will die, and all that need and receive her blood will die with her. South Africa is considered a world leader in conserving water because it is the lone country where only two entities have an absolute right to water: nature itself, and people. All other users come after. This shift amounts to turning the water laws and policies in effect in much of the world on their head. Remember those same Costa Rican farmers defending their river and their community? They have invited Dr. King of SA to come and talk to their government. And I think you would like to know that St. Mark’s and FOF helped to make that happen.
Now let’s journey to another river one closer to home. It is the San Pedro. It is also an ancient river. Along its bank 9 thousand years ago, our human ancestors hunted the wooly mammoth. It is a river that runs from south to north and has been for centuries a migration route for countless species of birds. Because this pristine river is literally the border between two giant deserts, it is home to a startling diversity of creatures. But the San Pedro is at the top of everyone’s list of the most endangered rivers in the world. It is drying up. The problem: unplanned, uncontrolled growth in the Sierra Vista community is sucking up the lifeblood, the lifewater of the earth. This is not to say that nothing has been done. There has been a remarkable conservation effort in the Sierra Vista community to address these problems. Nevertheless, it was reported in the newspapers this fall that parts of the river that have flowed year round, are now dry. The San Pedro is still at great risk even with water demands at the current level. But conservation alone cannot save the San Pedro as Sierra Vista prepares for explosive growth in the years ahead. This past weekend my family and I were walking along the banks of the San Pedro with a new friend who is an environmental lawyer living in Cochise cty. With great sadness, Michael told us that he gives the San Pedro 10 years before it goes dry. You would think that desert communities would be the first to understand the sacredness of water, would be the first to understand that water equals life and that it must be preserved for all. But 20th century water laws and policies - including Arizona's current laws and policies - allocate water to industry, to individual property owners, to cities, to farms, first - this is our paradigm - instead of first legislating for and protecting water for nature. In effect, the recipients of blood have a right to it before the donor. But there is a reason for hope. After Dr. King leaves Costa Rica, she has been invited to come to Arizona. And I hope the Presbyterian Church can enable this leg of her trip as well.
I am very hopeful that the church can play a critical role in protecting the environment and holding up the sacredness of water not just as a human right, but as nature’s right. But for the church to be an effective advocate for the sacredness of all water, we must get to the root of the problem. We must return to our creation story and the testimony of the book of Genesis. Genesis teaches us that at the moment of creation, the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep, moved upon the waters in maternal creativity. Genesis chapter 2 tells us that there was a river that flowed from Eden to water the garden paradise. And from there it divided and became the four branches that carried the blessings of God’s water to every corner of the earth. I am convinced that our original sin, our fall from Paradise began when we human creatures began to look upon nature as something that is here solely for our use. This fall is exemplified in reading of scripture itself when it is translated that Adam and Eve and their descendants were given “dominion” over all the earth. What does dominion mean? Is the creation story in Genesis 2 a license to control, to dominate to exploit nature for economic good, for progress and prosperity? Or does dominion point toward our original vocation as a species to be caretakers of the garden paradise - a vocation of stewardship.
The history of the church has unfortunately been one long story of dominion as conquest of nature. A notable exception in our Christian tradition was St. Francis and the canticle of Brother sun. In his canticle of Brother Sun Francis celebrated all creatures as his brother and sister in the family of God. Francis can teach us how to see the sacred in all of nature. Francis has taught me so much about praying with and through and for creation by greeting Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Fire, and Sister water. The prayer that we will invite you to say together in the renewal of our baptismal vows is a prayer inspired by Francis, a prayer addressed to Sister water, a prayer that I have prayed often as I have sat beside Arizona’s beautiful streams and rivers. Another sign of hope within the church happened recently when Gustavo Guitierrez the father of Liberation theology said that 500 years ago, Christian civilization came to the Americas and conquered paradise and all her inhabitants. Now 500 years later it is important for us to renounce this vocation of conquest and turn to our indigenous brothers and sisters to learn from them about a right relationship to the natural world. Indigenous communities are leading the way in a vision of water as sacred. Indigenous communities around the globe are leading in the reformation of global policies to insure not only the right of all human beings present and future generations included to have access to clean water. But the right of nature itself. The church must listen to and learn from our indigenous brothers and sisters. In a few minutes we will be enacting what has become a tradition in our church. On the baptism of the Lord Sunday we are sprinkled by sacred water as a sign of the renewal of our baptismal vows. As we receive the water we are reminded that we are loved unconditionally by our creator and blessed as beloved children of God. As we receive this sacred water, may we give thanks for the divine gift of water that enables life – that is life. May our renewal in the sacred waters of our baptism be a sign of our commitment as people of faith that all people, indeed all creation will have access to the divine gift of sacred water.