Water [Baptism of our Lord A - Acts 10:34-43]

The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Acts 10:34-43

 

Water

St. James, Au Sable Forks

 

We live on a world of water.  Seventy-one percent of the surface of our planet is covered in the stuff.  And that water makes life possible.  The smallest to the largest lifeforms are teeming with liquid life.  Including us.  Each person, each human being, is mostly water: babies are almost 80% water weight; adults around 60%.  Water allows us to think (the brain is about ¾ water); to breathe (the lungs are more than 80% water); to pulse with life (the heart is about 75% water and our blood checks in around 90%).  We are a water people on a watery world.

 

And in this big world, we happen to live and minister in a diocese very much defined by water.  Our southern border is a mountain range named after a kill, a creek – the Catskill Mountains.  Our northern border is the St. Lawrence.  Not far from here, our eastern border is the great Lake Champlain.  When I drive this diocese, I am often accompanying and crossing the Mohawk and Hudson rivers.  Sometimes I even catch a glimpse of a frozen mountain waterfall or the glimmering Lake George.

 

And then there is this place: this census designated place, Au Sable Forks, is named for the sandy delta where the river meets the lake.  A place where the east and west branches of the Ausable meet.  We are here and we are defined by water.

 

Water is so prevalent in our part of this watery world that at times it cannot be avoided or escaped.  Sometimes the water is too persistent and too invasive.  Most of you were likely not present for the great flood of 1856.  But some of you did live through the floods of 1996, 2011, and 2022.  And so you know the power of water, how it can be both blessing and threat.

 

While there are some small wetlands in my neighborhood, I do not live on the banks of a mighty river; unlike you, I don’t live near any forks.  But even so, in our two years in the diocese, our basement has flooded twice and our roof keeps leaking.  And also because of the water, we are treated to beautiful flowers and vibrant colors.  Water is all around us.  It shapes our experience.  Water defines our lives, defines us.

 

St. Peter, a man who made his living on the water, was staying with a friend, down by the sea, when God gave him a dream.  You might remember that dream.  It included a large sheet covered in unclean animals and the surprising divine instruction that Peter should “get up, kill, and eat” against the Law. 

 

It was that dream, a dream dreamed on the water’s edge, that convinced Peter to accept the invitation of the Roman centurion, Cornelius.  You will understand, given Jesus’ crucifixion on a Roman cross not long before, and the lingering threat that would later become Peter’s own crucifixion by the Roman authorities, that Peter might have had some reservations.  But that dream: that dream told him to go.

 

And so he did.  To the home of Cornelius.  To the home of an officer of the Roman army.  To the home of a Gentile – back when things like that simply did not happen.  

 

Our reading from Acts today is the sermon Peter delivered in Cornelius’ living room – to the officer and his friends and his family.  Because he was speaking to a Gentile audience, and more significantly because of the dream, Peter prefaces his sermon with the following disclaimer: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”  At the time, this theological assertion was not widely accepted.  The angry criticisms and intense scrutiny that open Acts chapter 11 prove that Peter was crossing a line; partiality was preferred; preaching the Gospel to these Gentiles ruffled some feathers; muddied the waters.  Many of the earliest followers of Jesus believed the story of Jesus, and the salvation of Jesus, was reserved for a limited audience.  But that dream changed Peter’s mind and, more importantly, his heart.

 

The story that Peter told started in the water.  Not with the birth of Jesus.  Not with the shepherds and the angels of Luke’s Gospel.  Not with the wise men or the flight into Egypt of Matthew’s Gospel.  Not with any of the beautiful Gospel Christmas stories.  Peter, like the Gospel of Mark, begins in the Jordan with the Baptism of Our Lord.

 

In the water, Jesus was marked with the Holy Spirit and with power.  He walked out of the water into his public ministry.  It was a defining moment in the life of Jesus.

 

We, those of us who follow Jesus, follow him through the miraculously treacherous water of baptism.  And that water defines us; in it we share in the death and resurrection of Jesus; in it we are incorporated into his body; in it we become one with Christ.  That water is the birthplace of our identity and our ministries.

 

Our story starts in the water.  And that water makes this life, this life with Jesus, possible.  It is in the water of baptism that the cross of Christ is branded on our lives.  It is in the water of baptism that the Gospel message is poured into our hearts.  It is in the water of baptism that we encounter the transformative love of God – a love from which nothing can ever separate us.

 

We are a water people.  We are baptized ministers of the Gospel.  We are people of the Good News.  And in these barren times, in this parched nation of this dusty world, in this moment in which people are desperately thirsty for some Good News, our water is life.