Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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There's that combination -- in the very opening words of the Bible: water and the spirit. "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the water." "Hovering," "brooding," waiting, in its incomprehensible power, to make something happen. Water and the Spirit.

The combination appears again, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Jesus' ministry, his baptism. Thirty years old, Jesus puts the carpentry shop behind him, and any hope of obscurity, and is baptized by John in the Jordan. "And just as he was coming up out of the water," Mark writes, "he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him." Water and the Spirit.

The Jews, originally, had been a desert people, nomads. And, though their lot had improved, and they had come to live a settled life in cities and towns, like desert people everywhere, they never lost sight of the importance of water. And neither has the church in its rituals. In our baptism service, for example, the minister prays over the water and reminds us of water's ubiquitous role in the Bible: "Eternal Father," he says, "when nothing existed but chaos you swept across the dark waters and brought forth light." You saved Noah and his family, during the flood, through water (which held up the ark). You delivered the Hebrew children from Egyptian slavery through the waters of the Red Sea. Later you led the chosen people through the waters of the Jordan River and into the promised land. Jesus was nurtured "in the water of his mother's womb," walked on water, and called himself "the water of life." It's uncanny how often water shows up in the Bible, usually on some occasion of deliverance, and often in combination with God's Spirit. The traditional words, as candidates for baptism step forward, are: "Dearly beloved, for as much as all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and our Savior Christ saith, "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God…." And so forth. Water and the Spirit.

Water for Christians means baptism, and baptism means cleansing. Christians claim, incredibly, that human existence (my existence, and the existence of the whole human race) can be transformed through Jesus, can be converted, regenerated, flipped, you choose the word. But, we say, before that central miracle can take place, there are things about us that have to be gotten rid of, purged away. We need to be cleaned up. Not out of meanness. Not because we are Puritans or prudes. But because these things would be woefully out of place in the new man or woman. Let me change the image for a moment: as God begins the transformation process in us, there remain chains that bind us to our old selves: chains of anger, chains of pride and self-reliance, chains of unbelief, and lust, and greed; and these chains must be broken before any real transformation can take place. That's what baptism symbolizes: breaking with the past, emptying oneself, becoming free, permitting God to cleanse us. That's what we mean when we say our sins are washed away.

Karl Barth said the process of conversion is like awakening from a dream (and he was always careful to say that it was God who awakened us, and not we ourselves). When we wake, things which, just moments before, seemed so real and important (so wonderful, perhaps, or so frightening), now are seen as mere illusions, with no power to charm us or harm us. And a whole new set of realities, things never dreamed of, need to be considered with care. Conversion puts us in a whole new world. Without a map. It sweeps all the demons out of the house, and leaves it empty. That's it for the water. Its work is done. Enter the Spirit. "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit," Jesus told Nicodemus, "he shall not enter the Kingdom of God." The Spirit will dwell in our house, and leave no room for new demons.

The Holy Spirit, Barth said, is "God coming to man." That's the simplest definition I know. "God's enabling power," someone else said. We might say of a person, "She has a wonderful spirit about her." And it is by that spirit, and not by her clothes or her outward appearance, that we know her. God has a Spirit about him, which is part of himself, and by which we know him. The Holy Spirit, in truth, is a mysterious thing, in that it is so close to us that we can hardly know it. When I was depressed, I learned what a powerful thing mood was. When my mood was up, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. When I was down, it was as if a black cloud had settled over my life. And nothing was right. And everything was impossible. Yet it was the same world, the same life. Doctors cannot see mood. It can't be removed surgically and examined under a microscope - an invisible, intangible power that completely controlled my life. The Holy Spirit is like that - for the good.
Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit was an invisible power, and that it could do anything, but he also warned us that the Spirit was like the wind: we can't tell where it comes from or where it goes. The Holy Spirit is God, and so does what it does without our help or direction. Often we can see its working only in hindsight. We get in trouble when we forget that. Never presume to know how the Spirit will manifest itself in you or in others. The Spirit may send some people into spasms of ecstasy, I have no doubt of that. But the Spirit may send other people to seminary to study Greek. I have no doubt of that either. The Spirit will fill us and direct us, after we are baptized and cleansed of former things. "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit…." Nothing requires more faith than to open one's life to the working of the Holy Spirit, and not inquire where it is taking us. That is why John Calvin said that the first work of the Holy Spirit is to elicit faith from our hearts. With faith, and only with faith, can we live by the Spirit.

After we have come up out of the water of baptism -- new, washed clean and set free of the past -- it is the Holy Spirit that guides us, fills us and sets the overall tone of our lives. With the Spirit's leading, our priorities fall into place. And he (God/the Spirit) makes himself our first priority. This week I came upon Eugene Peterson's introduction to the Book of Genesis. This is how Peterson introduces the first book of the Bible. This is what he says Genesis is all about: "First God. God is the subject of life. God is foundational for living. If we don't have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right, get life right, get our lives right. Not God at the margins; not God as an option; not God on the weekends; God at center and circumference; God first and last. God, God, God." That is the message of Genesis, isn't it? That's what the creation story, and the Noah-and-the-ark story, and the Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob stories are all about. "God at center and circumference; God first and last."

We are born of water and the Spirit - scrubbed clean and then dressed in God. The two go hand in hand, sometimes they happen simultaneously, so that we can speak of being "baptized in the Spirit." That's o.k. Just understand from all this the implications of our faith: If you don't want to have your name changed, don't get too near to Jesus. If you don't want to give up your old ways, come to church only now and then. Because God's plan is to change us. We can't sugar-coat it, and there is no easier way to say it. Most of the people who saw and heard Jesus during his earthly life walked away and soon forgot him, as do most of the people who hear about Jesus today. But a tiny handful, although they staggered at the end, held on. They were changed, washed in water and filled with the Holy Spirit. And they changed the world.