To God our thanks we give because you gave to us.
We give our hands to you because you reach for us.
We give our eyes to you because you looked for us.
We give our feet to you because you walk with us.
We give our breath to you because you breathed in us.
We give our hearts to you because you first loved us.
We give our gifts to you because you give to us
In this week’s Dear People of Creator letter Pastor Steve suggested that we look ahead to the Fifty Days of Easter (Easter to Pentecost), designating it as a season of baptism and welcoming new members to the Creator family.
This does feel appropriate and timely. We will celebrate the Baptism of Evelyn Kristine Larson this coming Sunday. Pastor Steve gave a sermon in January, during Epiphany, about the Baptism of Jesus. He preached how this marks our identity in Christ. Together with Evelyn Kristine’s baptism in Lent we are looking forward to our future Easter baptisms and new member. So far. we have or will have planned, a focus on baptism during each church season of 2023. This is Creator’s year for new identity and what we might call our collective waterlife.
We welcomed the sun this week but, in many ways, this has been a particularly wet Lent. Up to this week this has meant rain for us. It has meant flooding for others. Right now, our southern neighbors are experiencing atmospheric rivers. These essentially act like rivers in the sky and can carry the same amount of water as flows through the mouth of the Mississippi River according to weather centers.
Last week our refugia reading invited us to examine the strengths of the Lenten disciplines of self-restraint and repentance and consider lament, at times, as an alternative. Pastor John’s powerful sermon last Sunday reversed that invitation for me. Refugia Faith’s power lies in giving us a realistic vision of how life continues and spreads. I have not quite finished reading the book yet, but the emphasis so far is far more on protected life continuing and less on how life, or faith, spreads between places of refugia.
Since Sunday, however, my thoughts have turned from lament to sacrament, baptism, and what Jesus called living water. When Jesus speaks to the woman of Samaria, as she is drawing water at the well, he tells her “everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again but those who drink of the water I give will never thirst. This sharing of water is important. The sustenance and meaning of both physical and the living water is essential to humankind
Living water here is obviously being used in a special sense. This water can be associated with truth and living water may refer to the kind of “living truth” that makes souls alive to themselves.
In Sunday’s sermon Pastor John imagined that what was said between Jesus and the Samarian woman as freed her from her past. Her social identity may have primarily been associated with her history having numerous husbands. Yet this story ends with her as the first evangelist mentioned in John testifying about the messiah.
There are obviously other interpretations that may be made about this story. One I appreciate, and also fits with the refugia theme, concentrates on the number 5 more than focusing on husbands. For instance, the physical world is perceived with five senses. After their initial exchange at the well, when Jesus observes she has five husbands, he may be speaking metaphorically, essentially saying she is married to the truth as it is revealed through her five senses. Through those sense experiences in her daily life, she sees water as a scarce physical resource.
What Jesus gives her, with living water, is a new truth about how God provides. She longs to gain faith and trust in what he tells her. She wants to see from this new perspective which may explain another of Jesus’ observations about her that “the one you have now is not your husband.”
When we talk about the life of refugia, we are talking about what is left. Initially this is life that has been protected. An interesting question then becomes how does this life spread and how is it shared by other neighboring refugia? In nature, this is partly done through wind and water. With Refugia Faith I think this is partly achieved with spirit and sacrament – with breath and baptism.
God breathes in us and through our lives God’s breath remains within us. Baptism is our reminder that God, through water and mystery, allowed us to die and be reborn as the body of Christ.
It is as we sang in Reamo Legoba, We give our breath to you because you breathed in us.
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