Sermon Pentecost A 2011-06-12
John 7:37-39, Acts 2:1-21
In 1995, Ismail Serageldin stated “If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” Pointing out the veracity of Serageldin’s claim, Vandana Shiva in her book Water Wars highlights a headline from the New York Times in 2001 which stated “For Texas Now, Water, Not Oil Is Liquid Gold.”
Despite our rather rainy Spring, we continue to see challenges to water everywhere. Texas is in the midst of yet another drought. Water is continually polluted. We dam up rivers to generate electricity, and ruin runs for salmon which were a natural means of providing nutrients and fertilizers to mountainous regions.
Shiva points out that the scarcity of water has already unleashed conflicts. There are actual traditional wars, fought with guns and grenades as well as paradigmatic wars, conflicts over how we perceive and experience water. In the traditional wars, we might not understand that they are over water, because they are camouflaged with many other issues but many conflicts she points out are because of scarcity of resources. She cites a conflict in the 1980s that led to over 15000 deaths. The conflict was painted as a move for Sikh separatism, that is, a conflict over religion. But the sharing of river waters was at the heart of it.
But for paradigmatic wars, she points to her experience on a train to Jaipur in western India. On the train, everyone was served bottled water, where she claimed Pepsi’s Aquafina was the water of choice. On the streets of Jaipur there was another culture of water. During drought times small thatched huts, Jal Mandirs, “water temples” were set up to provide free water to the thirst. This follows the ancient practice of Piyaos, providing free water in public spaces. Shiva writes:
This was a clash between two cultures: a culture that sees water as sacred and treats its provision as a duty for the preservation of life and another that sees water as a commodity, and its ownership and trade as fundamental corporate rights. The culture of commodification is at war with diverse cultures of sharing, of receiving, and giving water as a free gift. The nonsustainable, nonrenewable, and polluting plastic culture is at war with civilizations based on soil and mud and the cultures of renewal and rejuvenation.
Water wars, she writes further are “global wars, with diverse cultures and ecosystems, sharing the universal ethic of water as ecological necessity, pitted against a corporate culture of privatization, greed, and enclosure of the water commons.”
The stories of the Bible overflow with narratives of water. God’s Spirit broods over the waters at creation. God cleanses the earth through a flood. The Israelites are led through the waters of the Red Sea. Moses rescues Jethro’s daughters from shepherds. Jesus walks on water, turns water into wine, and establishes baptism. In many of these stories, conflict is central. We think of water providing a dual role, sustaining us in life and cleansing us. Whether it is the everyday dirt that is cleaned off of us, or if we are speaking of the cleansing of sin provided in baptism, water is crucial.
In the midst of daily life, as we look around, we can see that sin, like a drought, or pollution, or the twisting of the proper order of things abounds, creating the scarcity out of the abundance that God gives. And we are set at war with one another. We want what is ours. We fight, nation against nation, state against state. Communities and individuals are pitted against one another. All because of what is perceived as a zero-sum game. Scarcity does that to us. If someone else has a resource it means we don’t. If they have one, they we have a lack of it. This vision drives much of our thinking, our public policy, and our interactions with others. The resource could be actual natural resources, like water, coal, oil, wind, trees and so on. Or it can be other good gifts that God gives us: family, sex, occupations, education, the political governances we have and more. But often we camouflage the gifts and create conflicts, twisting these signs of beneficent providence, of good gifts God means for us to use and share as a sign of what God desires for the whole world.
As such, we hear Jesus’ words today: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” He says this message on the last and great day of the festival of booths, which commemorates the wanderings of Israel in the desert and God’s abiding care throughout the whole thing. The Jewish people still commemorate this festival by constructing Sukkahs, impermanent dwellings and staying in them. Jesus makes the claim that he is the fulfillment of this festival that those who abide in him, partake of his life, will be sustained in all things. Additionally the Holy Spirit will create living water gushing forth from those who believe.
In the power of the Spirit, flowing out of the waters of baptism, we become sources of life and sustenance and cleansing for the drought-filled and dirty world around us. We can think of ourselves as walking fountains that bring Christ’s life to all. Rivers of living water flowing out of us, but not just obligating us to do things for Christ. Peter’s speech in Acts links the sending of the Spirit to Jesus’ resurrection. The Holy Spirit unites us to Christ in the waters of baptism, makes the presence of Christ known to us and makes us bearers, not only of the message of Christ but of Christ himself. To proclaim the gospel is not simply to stand on the street corner and thump a bible at passersby. No, the proclamation is both easier and more difficult. The proclamation of the gospel in the power of the Spirit, as on that day of Pentecost, is about making Christ known in ways that others understand. In the fabric of our lives, the Spirit enables and empowers us to use the language of our lives to communicate the gospel. We are his witnesses. But we don’t just get to talk, but live the gospel.
Those rivers of living water shape us as we engage in the life of the Spirit. The Spirit’s twists and turns in us form us to be a people who make Christ known, who bear the risen Christ into the world. A world where sin has brought about drought and decay…. But where the Spirit works through us that we might bring Christ in the flowing waters of our lives.
Thanks be to God. Amen.