WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Good morning. 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:20.000 Well, we're not going to talk about authority at punk rock today, although it's tempting. But what we're going to talk about is water. 3 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:30.000 And ironically, I forgot to bring a glass of water with me because I usually wet my whistle before preaching and today you got me dry. 4 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:36.000 And it's kind of ironic also that I've been thinking about water for the last month. 5 00:00:36.000 --> 00:01:46.000 It started when I was preparing for the mini retreat that we did a couple weeks ago on a Saturday. And we read Robert Alter's translation of the book of Genesis and highly recommend it. It's a great translation. He's a Jewish scholar and the translation is amazing. It's poetic, it makes the story come alive without oversimplifying or dumbing it down by over interpreting it. And we had a lively discussion and I think that everybody had a lot of fun. And the reason I'm saying this is we're going to have another mini retreat coming up in December where we're going to explore incarnation, which I think is really appropriate for leading up to Christmas, because Christmas is all about incarnation. And let's also recognize that we are all incarnate beings. We live in these bodies imbued with spirit, breath, life and water. 6 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:56.000 It's lost on me that since Thursday water has been very much on all of our minds. You know, the one element that we take most for granted? 7 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Well, it's a molecule. Chemistry, chemically, but spiritually, water is an element. 8 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:06.000 The clear, cold, life giving element. 9 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:11.000 Oh, thank you. 10 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:18.000 Now you all are probably getting thirsty, right? 11 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:24.000 Ah, so good. 12 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:46.000 So water, the one element that we take most for granted, that we can rely on being instantly available as soon as we turn on that tap and it's delivered to our homes and our workplaces, our public spaces, our places of worship, water suddenly became suspect. 13 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:53.000 Weird, right? I think we all know it was pretty weird getting that alert on Thursday night. 14 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:56.000 We're supposed to boil it. 15 00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:07.000 Well, thankfully we have also got electricity and gas at the turn of a switch, so it was barely an inconvenience. 16 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:10.000 Yet we panicked. 17 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:12.000 I complained. 18 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:19.000 I don't know if any of you did doubly weird and utterly human. 19 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:44.000 When I read those opening lines from the book of Genesis, this book that gives us our beautiful mythopoetic story of the creation of the cosmos, the heavens and the earth, all the teeming life that inhabits this world, including us, we humans in all of the of our complexity and beauty. 20 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:55.000 I was startled to learn that God didn't create everything that is out of nothing. 21 00:03:55.000 --> 00:04:03.000 Something was already There when God began to form the cosmos, it was the deep. 22 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:11.000 The Hebrew words are nohu, navahu and alter translates these words as water and waste. 23 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:18.000 Water, the primal element, primal meaning both first and most important. 24 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:31.000 And waste, unformed, chaotic water, wild water, the deep, pure potentiality. 25 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:41.000 The spirit hovered over the face of the deep well of wild water, and God began to speak creation into being. 26 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:47.000 Water is right there at the very beginning of the beginning. 27 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:50.000 I love this so much. 28 00:04:50.000 --> 00:05:01.000 You know, we've talked a lot here at St. John's about how our wild stories from scripture have become domesticated over time. 29 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:12.000 Part of the reason for this is that we've heard these stories over and over again and we think we already know the message that's going to be delivered. 30 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:22.000 Maybe we've heard them preached over and over again and heard the same dry message over and over. 31 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:51.000 In an effort to bring us back into the wildness of what is actually written in the scriptures, we're trying to rewild them. You've heard us talk about this effort not to add anything to them or subtract anything from them, but to allow the stories to startle us into the grace and beauty and love and sometimes horror that these stories are meant to deliver. 32 00:05:51.000 --> 00:06:06.000 What I've been thinking about lately is that the stories and the poetry that are at the heart and the basis of our faith have not only become domesticated, they've been dehydrated. 33 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:21.000 The water, the juice, has been extracted, just like the dehydrated food that you might carry in your pack to reduce the weight of what you're carrying. 34 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:38.000 The stories have been dehydrated and have become bland, light and well preserved with a long shelf life, but so dry that sometimes they don't do us much good anymore until they are rehydrated. 35 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:48.000 So rehydration could be the first step in an effort to rewild our stories, our faith, and our lives. 36 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:50.000 So let's consider water. 37 00:06:50.000 --> 00:07:05.000 It's a miracle that we take for granted until it's either in short supply, becomes contaminated, or there's too much water. Let's face it, there can be too much of a good thing. 38 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:15.000 Water covers about 70% of the Earth's surface, and roughly 3% of that water is what we refer to as fresh water. 39 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:29.000 And the bulk of that fresh water, well, the vast majority is locked in glaciers and ice caps and some stored deep in the ground. So deep that we can't even drill down to it to access it. 40 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:32.000 So deep we can't even drill down to it. 41 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:45.000 So of the most abundant substance on Earth, water, only 7,000ths of, of 1% is available to sustain life. 42 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.000 And yet here we are. 43 00:07:48.000 --> 00:08:02.000 All living things, all living beings on Earth that rely on water to live are sustained by what amounts in the big picture, to a few drops of water. 44 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:05.000 And think about where water comes from. 45 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:13.000 And I don't just mean the water that magically appears when you turn on your tap, but we should consider that, too. 46 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:25.000 If you live in town, that water comes from wells northeast of town, and they pump water from deep in the ground out of the Snake river alluvial aquifer. 47 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:33.000 And if you live out of town, you're still drilling down into the Snake river alluvial aquifer. 48 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.000 But where did that water come from? 49 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:38.000 A bunch of different places. 50 00:08:38.000 --> 00:09:02.000 Primarily, it comes from the snowpack that fills these mountains that surround us. Most years. We had kind of a dry winter last year. But it comes from the Tetons. It comes from the Gros vence, which, during spring runoff, this water percolates down through the gravelly floor of this valley until it reaches the aquifer. 51 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:20.000 And it comes from stream flow leakage as the Snake and the Grovon Flat Creek and other tributaries seep lose some water through their gravelly beds. 52 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:35.000 And it seeps down through the soil, finding its way into the deep of the aquifer hidden in the ground below us. It's almost as if it was waiting there for us. 53 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:37.000 But where do these waters come from? 54 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:44.000 They come from rain and snow falling from the sky. But where does that water come from? 55 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:50.000 Evaporation from the face of the bodies of water on the surface of the earth. 56 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:56.000 Ultimately, they come from below the face of the deep. 57 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:01.000 It's an endless cycle of water replenishing itself. 58 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:08.000 And I almost wanted to say that it's a perpetual motion machine, but it's not. 59 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:19.000 It's the circulatory system of a living, breathing planet within a living, breathing cosmos. 60 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:27.000 It's as much of a miracle as your own living, breathing body. 61 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:30.000 Think of your own body. 62 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:33.000 It's about 60% water. 63 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:40.000 Why all this water everywhere? Well, water moves nutrients through your body. 64 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:49.000 It's a building block for the cells and serves as an internal environment where all life happens. 65 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.000 It's wet in there. 66 00:10:51.000 --> 00:11:06.000 It is the primary component of blood and lymph, carries oxygen, glucose, vitamins and minerals to the cells of your body and hauls away metabolic waste products. 67 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:12.000 It manages your body's internal temperature by way of sweat. 68 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:17.000 It lubricates joints and cushions vital organs. 69 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:23.000 It is the solvent that drives all the chemical reactions in your body. 70 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:30.000 I love that. We call oceans and lakes and ponds bodies of water. 71 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:35.000 Yours is also a body of water. 72 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:48.000 Water is so common that we take it for granted and so extraordinary that we can barely fathom it chemically and physically. Water is nothing short of miraculous. 73 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:53.000 It's as if it was made for us and we for it. 74 00:11:53.000 --> 00:12:07.000 Water is a spiritual substance, and this has been recognized by every tradition, every religious tradition, and ours, our tradition, tradition is saturated. 75 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:13.000 There's this beautiful story that we heard today from Exodus about water. 76 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:28.000 The people had escaped from bondage in Egypt and found themselves in the wilderness in the desert last week. They were starving. If you remember, God provided them with food, manna and quail. 77 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:31.000 Now they're dying of thirst. 78 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:39.000 And God empowers Moses to cleave the rock, bringing forth water from the deep. 79 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:48.000 Water, the universal solvent, cleanses the people who come to the River Jordan to receive the baptism of repentance from John. 80 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:57.000 Then John goes on to baptize Jesus. And the sky is ripped open and the dove comes down and the words are heard. 81 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:00.000 This is my son, my delight. 82 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:12.000 Listen to him and remember all the significant things that happened at wells, those holes in the ground that tap into the waters from the depth of the earth. 83 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:15.000 Rebecca waters, camels. 84 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:27.000 And Jesus conversation at the well with the woman at the well, promising her that he has water that will quench her thirst for good. 85 00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:37.000 The wedding at Cana, where huge clay jars filled with sacramental water were turned to wine. Jesus first miracle. 86 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:50.000 Jesus washes his friend's feet at the Last Supper with a bowl of water, a towel tied around his waist. 87 00:13:50.000 --> 00:14:05.000 I don't know if you've ever noticed, but when we do communion, when the deacon is setting the table, one of the things that he or she do is pour a little water in with the wine. 88 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:09.000 Keep an eye out for that. 89 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:19.000 When Jesus is hanging on the cross, one of the last things that he says in one of the gospels is, I thirst. 90 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:27.000 And a spear is driven into Jesus side. And what comes out? 91 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:29.000 Water. 92 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:56.000 And the list goes on and on. And I invite you to keep your ears and your hearts open for the sound of water in scripture, in the murmuring of the river, in your kitchen sink, savor the taste of a cold cup of water as it enters your mouth and feel it mixing with your blood. 93 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:01.000 Feel the spirit rise from the deep and descend from the heavens. 94 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:12.000 Next time you get caught out in the rain, put yourself out in the rain once in a while and get drenched. 95 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:22.000 Because God is in every drop that falls and rises and falls and rises and cycles through this world. 96 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:25.000 And you are a cosmos. 97 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:33.000 You are a microcosm. A wet breathing, beautiful microcosm. 98 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:43.000 A part of of this wet, breathing and beautiful creation which is God's good creation. 99 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:50.000 Your life, my life, our lives together are as common as water. 100 00:15:50.000 --> 00:16:02.000 And that's good news, because that means that your life, my life, our lives together are as miraculous as water. 101 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:07.000 Yes, we are formed from dust, and that's where we will return. 102 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:16.000 But for now, we are alive, hydrated by the Holy Spirit. 103 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:19.000 Anybody thirsty? 104 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:21.000 So let's get wet. 105 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:28.000 Amen.