Through Water to New Life

An un-named infant floats precariously in a papyrus basket among the reeds along the Nile, condemned by imperial edict, guilty of being a 3-month-old Hebrew man-child. Miraculously, he’s rescued by an Egyptian princess who names him Moses meaning ‘water-son’ or ‘drawn out of water’.

The Finding of Moses,  Edwin Long, 1886

He will grow up to become liberator of the Hebrew slaves, but first he has to undergo his own rescue, his own exodus, experiencing on a personal scale the rescue-through-water* which God would later accomplish through him for the whole nation at the Red Sea.

Many commentators note the courageous women who are heroines of this story: the Egyptian midwives who defy the Pharaoh’s edict, the mother and sister of Moses who risk their lives to protect him, the daughter of Pharaoh who finances his day-care and gives him his name. They lived in a patriarchal world, but it's impossible to ignore the vital role these women played.

In The Book of Negroes, Aminato Diallo tells us that the word for ‘mother’ in her west African tongue is the same as the word for ‘river’. Like Moses, every person’s life-story begins in water. We were gestated in water and birthed by the breaking of water. Unless we were born by caesarian, a birth canal was our passageway into the world.

Our journey along this birthing river was risky and difficult for both our mothers and for us, but necessary for living a full human life. We are all ‘drawn out of the water’. We passed through water to the wonder of a larger world, to all the heroics and hum-drum, the heart-breaks and hallelujahs of life.

Being birthed was our first exodus into life. It's also a rich metaphor for another gateway, re-birth into the astounding wonder of vibrant friendship with God.

That’s why Jesus, our river-companion a millennium after Moses, goes to John the Baptist at another river, the Jordan, where John called to his compatriots to change their ways and renew themselves spiritually. Jesus tells John to baptize him in the Jordan, foreshadowing his plunge into the ultimate river of Death. Drawn out of that water he becomes liberator and Life-giver for us all.

This symbolism lies behind every Christian’s baptism since that day. The river represents all-but-certain Death, except that Someone braved those waters for us and rescued us from peril, drew us out of the water, gave us a new name and accompanies us in the great Adventure, a life of endless wonder and joy.

* N. T. Wright, Simply Christian, p.212.