A Psalm of Water for Thanksgiving

This week-end I will be in New England to celebrate an early Christmas with my three children and six grand-children.

We will have turkey and potatoes and an abundance of food – and, no doubt, a glass of wine to mark the occasion. And we will pause before we eat to do something very important.

CSI - Ancient Israel Water Ritual

What should you do if a dead body is found in a field, and your basic detective work cannot discover a killer? Here is an ancient water ritual that ensured that cold cases didn’t just suffer the indignity of civil neglect.

You can read the extended ritual in Deuteronomy 21:1-9. Here is a brief summary:

With Palestine at the UN

The halls of the United Nations today are buzzing as the Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas asks the world to recognize his people as a nation. Some are excited by the prospect and others are incensed at the audacity of what they consider a publicity stunt.

I don’t know if this request is an effective diplomatic move, but my sympathies are certainly with a people who have been denied a homeland for far too long.

Both the Old and New Testaments echo an ancient wisdom that says
“If your enemies are hungry, feed them.
If they are thirsty, give them something to drink.
Proverbs 25:21 and Romans 12:20

And make no mistake, the Palestinian people are thirsty.

Presence

I think one of the most memorable lines in all of Isaiah’s inspiring 8th century prophecy is this –

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.
Isaiah 43:2.

These words occur in the part of Isaiah that describes Israel’s release from exile and return to their homeland, but they also convey God’s promise to sustain Israel through the ordeal of exile, which was truly a deep water trauma. It was an upheaval so jarring and disorienting, many Jews doubtless lost what little faith they had. It seemed obvious that God had abandoned them and broken covenant with them.

Laver - God's Peace

When King Solomon replaced the Israel’s primitive tabernacle with a magnificent temple, he had a huge water-reservoir built to serve as the laver for the purification for the priests (1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2-6) It was so large – 15 feet across, 45 feet circumference and holding 16,500 gallons – that it was called a “sea”. This grandiose symbolic ocean illustrated the expansive dimensions of God’s grace and forgiveness.

But it also conveyed another level of meaning. Since the sea for Israel represented the chaotic forces of evil opposed to God, this artifact probably also symbolized “the forces of chaos that have been subdued and brought to order by the Lord who is creator of the world”(1) It affirmed that Yahweh was supreme over the Canaanite deities Yamm and Baal, gods of sea and storm.

Laver - God's Purity

If the first function of water is for human survival – for drinking and irrigating crops, the second function of water is for washing. Washing faces, hands and clothes is both hygienic and pleasing to the senses. It also symbolizes inner cleansing, purifying of the spirit.

Every culture and religion has its rituals of ablution – ceremonial cleansing. Hindus bathe in the Ganges, Cherokee in the Southern US have a ‘going to water’ ceremony; other indigenous people believe the body’s own sweat purifies them, The Qur’an tells the faithful to wash before prayers and if water isn’t available, they can ‘wash’ their hands in sand or earth. (Surah 5:6) The Jews also had a complex system of washings, and the rabbis of the Second Temple period around the time of Christ had mastered the art of complex washings.

Desert, Torrent and Sea

Woven throughout the puzzling images of the Book of Revelation are the twin themes of victory and suffering.

Half-way through the book, in Chapter 12, John sees ‘a great and wondrous sign’ that illustrates this double truth.

A pregnant woman is on the verge of giving birth, but a fierce red dragon stands in front of her ready to pounce on her infant the moment she delivers. It’s a bizarre picture to be sure, but it's a symbolic portrait of the cosmic battle under-lying the history of the human race.

The woman is a composite of Eve, the mother of all living (who was stalked by the serpent) and Mary, the mother of Jesus, stalked by Herod after Jesus was born. The new-born boy-child, we’re told, “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” So we know this is about the reign of Jesus and the hostility of the evil one who seeks to destroy him. The child is no sooner born than he is “snatched up to God and to his throne” (v.5). The story leaps from the birth of Jesus to his ascension to heaven.

Egyptian Reversal

The political pundits of his day wrote him off as simplistic and out of touch, but Isaiah foresaw the unthinkable.

The mighty Nile, longest river in the world, he said, will dry up like a wadi in the desert. In shocking metaphor, Isaiah depicted the economic demise of what was then a vibrant world power.

Selling the Poor for a Pair of Shoes

Ranchers take a pretty good read of the land – and when grazing lands grow dry they think hard about the implications. Amos was a rancher who thought hard and prayed hard. In his day, 200 years after King David, Israel was a fractured nation, split into north and south. Both were prosperous and religious, and they credited God with their prosperity.

But Amos recognized that their religion had very little effect on their ethics. While the wealthy were making money hand over fist, it was largely at the expense of the poor. They would “sell the needy for a pair of sandals” Amos 2:6.

Never Empty-handed

In my previous post we looked at the marvelous gift of rain and that showers down on the earth every hour of the day and night, achieving a vast array of benefits in the environment. It augments alpine and arctic snow-packs, refreshes rainforests and woodlands, nourishes meadows and grain-fields and then by returns by evapo-transpiration into the skies to do it all again.

It’s the original re-use and re-cycle process built into the universe.

The Rock that Followed Them

The Exodus narrative relates four or five wonderful occasions when God supplied water for the multitudes of Israel and their flocks as they traversed the wilderness of Sinai: Marah, Elim, Massah , Meribah and Be'er. Beyond these few references the Bible tells us virtually nothing about how God provided Israel’s water needs - which leaves us with a big question.

There were oases here and there, but how could they have survived a generation in that forbidding terrain without water?

Deuteronomy 8:14-15 summarizes the miraculous odyssey this way: 'the LORD your God, … led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock'.

Speak to the Rock

Twice In the extended story of the Exodus, God miraculously provided desperately-needed water from a rock - with Moses using his staff as a cudgel.

In the second of these stories, near the end of the 40-year migration, we read,

The LORD said to Moses, "Take the staff, and gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink."

Learning to Trust - or Distrust God

At the end of forty years, God told Moses that the years of Israel’s deprivation in the desert had had a purpose. 'My design', God said, was ‘to humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart” Deuteronomy 8:2. 'As a father disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you’ (v.5) ‘to do you good in the end’ (v.16).

Hunger and thirst are powerful tests – and God wanted Israel to internalize deep in their consciousness a conviction that they could trust their covenant Partner. Experiencing God’s provision of water and food in God's time would lay a foundation of trust in other areas of life. But Israel never seemed to pass the trust-test. They were habitual whiners, constantly grumbling against God, testing God’s patience.

Baptism and New Life

In the New Testament - 1 Corinthians 10:1 – St. Paul imagines Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea as a baptism. The imagery is obvious – water, death resurrection, new life - a defining event that birthed Israel’s national life as God’s people.

Today in churches, friends will often burst into applause when a friend is baptized, so it’s no surprise that Israel erupted in spontaneous worship and celebration on the far side of the water. Miriam led the women in song and dancing to celebrate their new life, their freedom.

Taking the Plunge

Easter is on the horizon, so for the next three weeks, we’re going to follow water-stories that revolve around Jesus. Today, Jesus takes the plunge.

Ah, the amazing wonder of water!  Many religions practice ritual washing. Hindus plunge into the Ganges. Shinto worshippers in Japan seek cleansing under waterfalls, orthodox Jews use a mikvah to represent a flowing stream.
  

Baptism is an act of abandoning yourself to the water and embracing the purity, healing and renewal the water represents. It calls for courage and resolve. It says, ‘forget decorum, to hell with face-saving, a new life beckons, it’s time to answer the call’.

800 years before John the Baptist, the Syrian general Naaman, who had a dire skin disease, came to Israel looking for help. The prophet Elisha told him to wash seven times in the Jordan River and he would be healed. At first Naaman was offended - the Jordan was a mediocre river, quite inferior to the rivers of his homeland. But in the end he humbled himself, plunged in, and the God of Israel healed him.

Noah Part 2 - Preserving Life

In the story of the great flood Noah built a massive boat – a barge with three floors. It was a microcosm of creation, designed to preserve life through the year of devastation ahead. In this project we see Noah fulfilling the vocation of all humanity – partnership with God and zealous care for God’s creation.

Noah coated the ark with pitch inside and out to keep his fellow-passengers dry. The water had to be kept at bay at all costs.  Water is a paradox - every animal needs to drink, but that very water, unchecked, threatens its survival. The ark became a place of refuge as everything else went down.

Rehoboth - space to be neighbors

As his herds increased, so did Isaac’s need for water. And when his crops flourished, the jealousy of his neighbors over-flowed. They fouled his wells with rocks and dirt and eventually evicted him from the region.

In a day when revenge and dominance was a sign of strength lest your opponents sensed fear and weakness. Isaac showed remarkable restraint. He intuitively knew the proverb that a soft answer can turn aside wrath.

Spring in the Gerar Valley today

Isaac left his crops and moved his herds elsewhere – to the Gerar valley where his father had dug wells and pastured flocks decades earlier. Local herdsmen had filled them in after the old man died, but Isaac re-excavated them and continued the family cattle business.

Prosperity makes enemies as well as friends - and the local herdsmen harassed the wealthy newcomer. When Isaac dug a new well, his neighbors claimed prior right to the resource. Isaac named the well “Argument” and walked away from it. They contested the next well, so Isaac named it “The Well of Anger” and abandoned it too.

Patiently Isaac outlasted his adversaries. He dug a third well over which no one fought. He named it "Rehoboth" – Wide-Open Spaces – in gratitude for the elbow-room it gave him and the opportunity to live peaceably among strangers – and to flourish together, sharing the natural resources.