As I sat yesterday, contemplating the image of Jesus, rising up from the waters of baptism, dripping wet, looking up to the broken-open heavens, I thought about the wonders of water.  In my house, water was washing the clothes as the washing machine whirred away, water was simmering on the stove, the basis of the soup we would have for dinner, and water was washing dishes.  A glass of water for drinking sat beside my chair, and water was falling and freezing on the tree limbs I could see outside the window.

It is an extraordinarily common thing, water.  This extraordinary combination of hydrogen and oxygen forms the substance which becomes for us the symbol of our initiation into fellowship with Jesus Christ.  Common, essential for life, powerful, peaceful, beautiful, terrifying – water.  When we bless it in the context of worship and are touched by it, we are…

Well, before we talk about what happens to us, let’s consider what happens to water before it becomes the crystal clear substance we see in the baptismal bowl.

This past Thursday, preparing for this week of celebrating baptism, I joined a group of clergy colleagues to tour a water treatment and a sewage treatment plant.  Before water becomes crystal clear and pure, a lot happens to it.

This abundant substance, given as a gift of God, spoken of in the creation narrative of Genesis as the stuff over which God’s spirit hovers at creation, is practically free for the taking in the American Midwest, where the Great Lakes and the system of Rivers that feed the lakes provide for a constant supply of fresh water.

And so, a little bit north of here, along the Olentangy River in Delaware County, I watched what happens to the water after it is taken from the river.  It is pumped into reservoirs, and from there, moves by gravity feed into a series of tanks, lagoons, and concrete pools where additives are placed in it which cause heavy substances to settle to the bottom, and filters are employed which take out impurities.  A couple of things are added – softeners, chlorine to kill bacteria, and fluoride – most of this outdoors.  But then, for final “polishing,” the water comes into a large, and strangely quiet indoor space, where it flows into pools and then leeches through a layer of natural filtering substances at the bottom, into a pipe which takes it to storage tanks, ready to be sent to you, to fill your teapot or your coffeepot, to pour out of the spigot in the shower, and be there for you all day, until that last drink of water before bedtime.

A couple of things I noticed about this process.  An incredible amount of attention is paid to the design of the processes themselves.  Everything is designed to be as energy efficient as possible, by products that come out of the water are reclaimed and sent to be spread on fields as fertilizer.  And the people who do this work love to purify water.  They have a sense of the sacredness of the trust we place in them.  Their diligence and attention to the details totally determine if our water is safe and clean.  They don’t make the water.  But they sure do believe in the work of taking the water God put in the river, and making it into the water that is life giving instead of life threatening.

A little further east, we saw (and smelled) water after it had taken its journey through households and businesses.  And, believe it or not, it is equally true that those who work with the water at that end of the process find a kind of sacredness in what they do.  They take dirty, used, polluted by products of human life and remove them until all that is left is pure, oxygen rich water.  When they put water back in the river, somewhere near downtown Westerville, it is cleaner than when it was taken out of the river near Powell.  Water is constantly flowing – an endless cycle of purification, wherein it takes up the waste products of human life, carries them, releases them, and returns again to cleanse, nurture and bless us.

This is an exacting science, the water business.  This water doesn’t just fall from the sky into this glass like this.

Neither do we leave the baptismal font at the moment of our baptism ready to offer ourselves whole and pure in service to God.

If we are named as disciples at our baptism, we are made disciples through a process that requires no less intention and commitment and passion than those processes that bring the water to the font.

How does God’s gift of water meet God’s gift of life at the baptismal font in such a way that we become beloved, called, and blessed for participation not just in ordinary human endeavors, but in Christ’s very life?

In 1982, the Faith and Order Division of the World Council of Churches issued a document outlining an ecumenical understanding of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry.

That document contains this statement:

“Baptism is related not only to momentary experience, but to life-long growth into Christ.  As they grow in the Christian life of faith, baptized believers demonstrate that humanity can be re-generated and liberated.  They have a common responsibility, here and now, to bear witness together to the Gospel of Christ, the Liberator of all human beings.  The context of this common witness is the Church and the world.  Within a fellowship of witness and service, Christians discover the full significance of the one baptism as the gift of God to all God’s people.”

Like the water, which is God’s gift, but requires skilled and capable human work in order to fulfill its intended function, so is baptism both God’s gift and human response to that gift.

We don’t come from the baptismal font polished and finished and fit for the kingdom.  We come blessed, and called to respond to that blessing.

What is the nature of our response?  What should we do if we want to live as those who are baptized?

In the section on Ministry in the Faith and Order document, these words appear:

“The Spirit calls people to faith, sanctifies them through many gifts, gives them strength to witness to the Gospel, and empowers them to serve in hope and love.

The Holy Spirit bestows on the community diverse and complementary gifts.  These are for the common good of the whole people and are manifested in acts of service within the community and to the world.  They may be gifts of communicating the Gospel in word and deed, gifts of healing, gifts of praying, gifts of teaching and learning, gifts of serving, gifts of guiding and following, gifts of inspiration and vision.  All members are called to discover, with the help of the community, the gifts they have received and to use them for the building up of the Church and for the service of the world to which the Church is sent.”

This is the ministry of all Christians to which we are called.  Service.  Communication of good news in word and deed.  healing.  praying.  teaching.  learning.  guiding and following.  inspiration and vision.

“All members are called to discover, with the help of the community, the gifts they have received and to use them for the building up of the Church and for the service of the world to which the Church is sent.”

There is no better time to take seriously that we have been called by God to transformative and transforming life than at such a time as this – when so much of what we have depended upon has proved to be transient and fleeting.

Over the next several weeks, this community at North Broadway will help us each discover the gifts we’ve been given – and offer concrete and specific ways those gifts can be used for building up the church and serving the world.

John confesses in today’s text that his baptism is a baptism of water – a purification ritual , probably related to the daily practices of the Qumran community of which John may have been a part.  But Mark, reporting Jesus baptism, describes that something unusual happened when Jesus was baptized.

The heavens were torn open and the Spirit descended.

And so, in the ordinary moments of our lives – drinking a glass of water, or washing our face, or rinsing the dishes, or stepping into the shower, we are blessed with a sudden and momentary awareness that we are beloved of God.

Like water, constantly moving in an endless cycle of purification and utilization and reclamation and beautification, our lives are God’s gift, a precious resource.

We are people who live, especially when we celebrate worship and sacraments together, in the thin place, where the heavens might be opened at any minute, and we might know that because we are baptized, because we have claimed our gifts and ordered our lives for witness and service, because the spirit has made it so, God is well pleased with us.

Oh, that it would be so!