Matthew 3:13-17

January 13, 2008

Mark S. Bollwinkel


The leader of a distant Iban longhouse came to our village to sell his oil nuts, some twenty-seven years ago while Bonnie and I were serving as United Methodist missionaries to the former headhunters of Northern Borneo. During his stay he came to our house for lunch. We lived in a comfortable house on stilts over looking the Rajang River. He was amazed at the running water from the brass faucet in the kitchen and asked, "Where can I get one of those?" His longhouse was situated on a tributary of the Rajang but the villagers had to carry heavy loads of water from the stream up notched logs into their own homes on stilts at great effort. The idea that one could have running water right in the house was miraculous to him. Naively we answered, "Oh, you can buy one of these faucets down in the market place from the man who sells hardware" which is exactly what our friend did.

Months later, he returned to our village and greeted us warmly and then with a loud complaint. He explained that he had traveled home with his brass faucet, fixed it to the wall in his cooking area and then gathered the entire village to watch the miracle. With great fan fare he turned the spigot...and nothing happened. As the leader of his community he was quite embarrassed and was returning the faucet as defected. We then had to explain that one had to attach the faucet to a source of water with pipes for the water to come out of the brass faucet. Water just didn't come out magically as he had mistakenly assumed we North Americans had somehow discovered.

How many of us take our domestic running water so for granted that we expect it to always be there too, clean and clear as if by magic?

We certainly use it as if it were.


The average citizen living in a residential area of North America or Japan uses 350 liters of water every day; in Europe 200 liters each day; in sub-Saharan Africa 20 liters a day (www.worldwatercouncil.org). "It is estimated that 8% of all home water use in the United States is wasted through leaks. A leaky faucet wastes about 2,700 gallon of water a year at a drip per second. A leaky toilet can waste more than 100 gallons a day." ("The EcoQuiz", Lori Pottinger, Sierra Club, Pomegranate Communications, Petaluma, CA, 2007)* It not only costs money to waste water, it significantly increases the amount of energy consumed to provide it to us; in California 6.5% of our energy is spent cleaning and distributing drinking water (Pottinger).

And that doesn't include our use of bottled water. Last year, Americans consumed 4 billion gallons of drinking water in individually portioned portable plastic bottles; that's as many as 32 billion bottles (National Public Radio, 6/11/07). Here in California the State Department of Conservation estimates that we only recycle 16% of those bottles or in other words 3 million bottles a day end up in the trash. If they were recycled we could collect $ 26 million in CRV deposits. That plastic if recycled could be made into 74 million sq. feet of carpet, or 74 million XL Tee shirts or 16 million sweaters. **

As our planet is experiencing a trend of global warming and as communities around the world adapt to climate change, it hits the hardest for those who are poor and in the former colonial, tropical world. According to the United Nations 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water, 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, 3,900 children die every day from water borne diseases (2002, UNICEF/WHO JMP 2004).

It's ironic that those statistics actually report a significant improvement in the human condition since World War II. But those statistics will only get worse if the earth continues to warm as predicted as it a disproportional affect on the most vulnerable populations.

What does God have to do with all of this? What does God have to do with our water? Many cultures over time have understood the divine origin of earth, air and water. Our own Judeo-Christian tradition celebrates the origin of creation as divinity inspired and sustained;



The ritual of baptism as described in our scripture lesson this morning from Matthew was a little used rite among the Jewish people that had its origin 200 years before Jesus was born. It was a symbolic act of repentance, a spiritual cleansing, washing away the sin and stains of the past for a new beginning.

Each of the four gospels agree that Jesus was baptized by the John the Baptist, who was drawing such crowds out near the Jordon river that the historians of the day recorded his fame and influence. John the Baptist was offering baptism along with his apocalyptic message. The faithful were to cleanse themselves in preparation for the coming new messiah who would judge the sins of the nation, usher in the kingdom of God on earth and bring about the end of the world as they knew it.

The promised future of God, long awaited by the faithful had begun.

It is very fitting that a cleansing ritual of water is used to convey this symbolism. Most of our bodies and the atmosphere of our planet are made up of water. Seventy-five percent of the Earth's surface is covered in water. Water makes the crops grow and nourishes the animals we count on. Life is impossible without water.

Isn't that also true for the spirit of God?

One thing the New Testament agrees upon is that Jesus was baptized by water. They can all agree that at the baptism Jesus has a new beginning in his life and the world will never be the same.

Is the full potential of life possible without the spirit of God washing over us? Do we have a future without it?

Isn't that true about our water as well? If God is creator and intends all of creation....earth, air and water...to be a blessing of life, isn't how we treat the creation also how we treat God? Stewardship of our domestic water supply or the recycling of our drinking water containers are eventually spiritual matters. Can we really be satisfied in our own comfort knowing that too many brothers and sisters are still thirsty?


Harvesting hay by hand is some of the most labor intensive work on a ranch. Today modern machines do most of the work but thirty-four years ago when Bonnie and I worked on the Mackey ranch near the Oregon border the cowboys did it a lot by hand. After the hay was cut, dried and bailed...each bail weighing 80-100 lbs....my partner and I would take turns driving a truck down the rows of bails, lining up a conveyor shoot which picked the bail off the field and lifted them up to the stacker. The stacker would then lift the bail by hand into position on the back of the truck until it was completely loaded. We would then drive the load to a huge barn and by hand stack the bails inside until it was full. We figure that summer we harvested 400 tons of hay on the Mackey ranch and that my partner and I lifted each bail twice in the process.

The summer was hot, into the 90's most days. The straw itches and the dust suffocates. In the beginning of the morning each cowboy fills up their own gallon jug of water, covered with burlap which when wet will cool the liquid by evaporation. The jug stays in the truck throughout the day and is refilled many times. At the end of each load the cowboy can look forward to a cool and long drink of the most precious water, often pouring over it your head and hat to cool off as well.

It was that summer on the ranch bucking bails of hay that I realized why God uses water for baptism. Hot, thirsty and exhausted that water never tasted so good. It gives new life, it revives the soul, and it cleanses and washes away the dirt that clings.

Water literally can be the difference between life and death. Without water there is no future.

That's true for the planet.

Isn't that also true for God's love and grace in our lives?

Amen.


* If you are worried about leaking water at your home, check your home water meter. Stop all water use for 30 minutes then take a second reading. If the dial has moved, you have a leak. If you suspect a toilet, shut the water value off to that toilet, add food coloring to the tank and wait 30 minutes. If colored water appears in the bowl, there's a leak from the flapper value. If you hear or see water running into the tanks' overflow pipe, the fill value may need replacing. If you have an older toilet, consider replacing it with a low-flow model which only uses half as much as the older models.

** (http://www.consrv.ca.gov/index/news/2003%20News%20Releases/
Pages/NR2003-13_Water_Bottle_Crisis.aspx)


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