Water – Friend and Foe

Texts: Job 38:1-11; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41

We had a small water emergency in the vicarage this week. On Tuesday we discovered that we had no hot water. Plenty of water was coming out of the tap, but it wasn’t hot. It hadn’t reheated after Trish had a shower that morning. We summoned the electrician, but it turned out that was not the problem. The problem was a burst overflow pipe on the roof, and the plumber fixed it for us.

Our problem was pretty minor – we were without hot water for about 36 hours; far longer than our Auckland friends had to go without power recently, but nothing compared to some of the problems still facing the people in South Canterbury. And, of course, nothing at all compared to the crisis that daily faces so many millions of people in many parts of the world where clean drinking water is a luxury, if it is available at all.

Dirty, unhealthy water is the best many of those people can hope for. In my former existence as a Law Draftsman, one of my specialties was public health legislation. One day I was talking to the then Director-General Health about the improvements in public health over the last century or two. He was himself a doctor and I had expected that he would claim a fair chunk of the credit for that on behalf of the medical profession, but he didn’t. He assured me that plumbers and drainlayers have been and still are far more important to the health of a nation than doctors, surgeons and pharmacists. They are important to us in our individual illnesses and accidents; but the health of the nation as a whole is best served by good clean water and safe sanitation.

Foreign affairs experts have long been warning us that the most likely source of conflict among nations in the coming decades is not land, oil, or armaments – it is access to water. They are predicting that whole cities could become ghost cities through the inadequacy of their water supplies; Perth is a case in point, where they are depleting their underground water supplies faster than they can be replenished. Perth is a beautiful city, with lovely parks and sports grounds that can only be maintained by the application of vast amounts of water. One day – and soon – that water won’t be available.

So much for freshwater. What about the sea? Most of us love the sea – in fact, there’s not much point in living in New Zealand if we don’t. It is beautiful to look at, fun to sail on or swim in, and a source of good things to eat, if you like that sort of thing. But it is also threatening, dangerous, and sometimes fatal. The sea is both great friend and lethal enemy of humankind. It feeds, refreshes and transports us; it also steals our land, drowns our people, and sometimes wipes out whole settlements.

No wonder the Jewish Scriptures have a very negative view of the sea. The Jewish people feared the sea, and in their Scriptures – what we call the Old Testament – the sea is often used as a symbol of chaos, as it is in the literature of other Middle Eastern people. In the sea lurks the great Leviathan, a huge monster that symbolises death and destruction – the taniwha to beat all taniwhas. The sea in Jewish theology represents evil – the forces opposed to God.

In our first reading this morning – from the Book of Job – we see an example of this in reverse: God is the one who controls the sea. In his challenge to Job God says this: Who shut up the sea behind the doors, when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

No doubt this passage is at the back of their minds when the gospel writers tell this story about Jesus calming the storm. Today we have St Mark’s version of the story, but St Matthew and St Luke have similar versions in their gospels. Jesus and his disciples are heading home across Lake Galilee; Jesus is tired and is asleep in the boat when a sudden storm gets up and soon the boat is in danger of being swamped. The disciples wake him up, and he commands the waves and wind to be calm, and the storm dies down.

We might have expected the disciples to be overjoyed – or at least, relieved – but we’re told that they were terrified. Many of those guys were experienced fishermen – they knew only too well what the weather could be like on the Lake – they had probably had a few close shaves in the past. But one thing’s for certain – they had never ever seen or heard of a man standing up as Jesus had just done and calming the storm with a few short words. First they were scared by the storm – now they are terrified by Jesus. St Mark puts it this way: They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him?”

That’s a great question. That’s the question at the heart of our Christian faith. Who is Jesus? Is he just a good man – a great bloke to have on your side when the chips are down? Or is he God? Well, we’ll be putting that sort of question to Maisy’s sponsors shortly, but in the meantime I want to stress this point.

That short story beautifully illustrates this dual quality of water. The Sea or Lake of Galilee was at the time a great source of fish – many families made their living from it, including, as I’ve said, some of the disciples. And yet, so quickly, could it turn into a potential death-trap as a storm blew in from the surrounding hills. Water can be a blessing – water can be a curse.

Which gets me to the health warning that I must in all fairness give to Maisy’s sponsors this morning. In baptism we use ordinary water – and therefore we are dealing with something that is both life-giving and dangerous. We can be pretty confident that it is clean water, let me hasten to assure you. If I should drop a bit in Maisy’s eyes, or mouth or up her little nose, or something – I’ll try not to, of course, but if I do she’ll come to no harm.

But the water of baptism is dangerous; and to give you fair warning I’m going to finish with one of my very favourite stories. The locals have heard this before, so I’ll ask them to bear with me. This story is for Maisy’s sponsors. It’s a true story, honestly. It’s about a young woman in the United States, a college student. She was a great student, A-grade all the way. She had set her heart on being a doctor, to the delight of her parents, and in particular her father who was himself a doctor. So we can imagine the delight when he was offered a place in a prestigious medical school.

And we can imagine the reaction when she arrived home earlier than expected from college to announce that she had changed her plans. She had decided not to accept the offer from the medical school – in fact, she was not even finishing her last year at college. She had instead left college and joined a Christian aid agency and was going with them to Guatemala to dig wells and drains for poor villagers there.

Her father was apoplectic and thought he knew who was responsible for filling her head with such nonsense. He rang the college and demanded to speak to the chaplain. When the chaplain came on the line, he started to wind himself up, but the chaplain was ready for him. He interrupted, apparently just as mad as the father. “Now just a minute, sir, “ he said. Don’t you dare blame me for this. This is all your fault.! It wasn’t my idea to have her baptised as a baby. You did that. You handed her over to God, so don’t complain to me that God has taken you at your word and called her into his service in Guatemala!”

I want to say to Maisy’s sponsors this morning, it’s not too late to bail out. We are going to have a prayer and a song in a moment to give you an opportunity to think it over. Just so long as you are aware that if you hand Maisy over to God anything might happen to her. She might become a doctor – or she might become a drainlayer in Guatemala.. How would you feel about that?

Bearing in mind, of course, that drainlayers contribute much more to the health of the nation than doctors!