Epiphany 1, Year B, 2024: Genesis 1:1-5

 “Inflatable pool full of dad’s hot air / I was three years old splashin’ everywhere / And so began my love affair with water.” My own love of water can be dated even before three year old Brad Paisley in the lyrics from his song Water. I was born in central Louisiana and, although I have no memory of living there, my mother has always affirmed how brutally hot and humid it was, and there are some adorable pictures of me as a chunky nursing baby in a swimsuit in a triple decker inflatable wading pool. And that stuck throughout my life. From loving morning swim lessons in the cold early summer neighborhood pool while listening to my instructor through chattering teeth, to my brother’s and my petition campaign to keep city pools open one summer despite budget cuts, being in the water has always been an important part of my life and one I want to pass along to my children.

One of the most important things I learned through all of my years in the water is to never be too confident. To not put myself in situations I wasn’t totally sure I could get out of. To not go out on a boat without a life jacket, never swim in a river, and to be wary of deep backyard pools. But it’s a constant reminder that water is amoral - not immoral - water itself doesn’t have morality. Water doesn’t know it’s hydrating you in the same way that it doesn’t know it’s drowning you. It is what we do with it that makes the difference.

Which leads me to my appreciation of Brad Paisley’s choice in lyrics: a “love affair with water”. I really appreciate his decision to focus on positive events in his life surrounded by water, for, what is more powerful than love? Today’s lessons give us a double origin story of our own faith’s “love affair with water,” where most of the water’s action is due to the Spirit acting through water. In our lesson from Genesis, the water preexists with God - in Genesis 1:1 a wind from God swept over the face of the waters of the formless void that is the earth before God creates light in 1:2. Remembering here, as always, that the purpose of Genesis is theological, not geological. Genesis is uninterested in how the world was physically formed. Its interest is in how God works in the world. God moved through the formless void, over the chaos that is water, and created order out of the chaos.

In St Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church in Rome, there is a mosaic behind the altar that contains two lines of scripture. One is the beginning of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God,” in Greek, the other is Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” in Hebrew. They both start from the same place on the wall and move outward from one another, and since Greek is read from left to right and Hebrew is read from right to left it works. It’s been five years since I first saw that mosaic and yet I continue to be struck by the power of the theology of the single starting point for both the Old and New Testaments. That all of those scriptures, different as they may be in style, come from the same source of the one God.

God the Father and God the Son, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels, are constantly working with and subduing the chaos that is water for God’s purposes. In the story of Noah, it is God’s wind that makes the flood waters subside. The prophet Elijah pours water on top of wood before he prays to God to send fire upon it. When the Israelites are wandering in the desert, God has Moses the people together so that God can give them water.

Jesus turns water into wine. He walks on water and calms the storms. He submits to baptism in the waters of the river Jordan to create a new baptism in his resurrection - the same baptism we are celebrating today.

When we pray over the water at baptism, we do so with the same style of prayer we pray over the gifts at the Eucharist: where we recount God’s action throughout history. At the Eucharist, we give thanks for “the goodness and love which (God has) made known to us in creation; in the calling of Israel to be (God’s) people, in (God’s) Word spoken through the prophets; and above all in the Word made flesh, Jesus, (God’s) son.” In the same way at baptism, we give thanks for the gift of water, saying “Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it (God) led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it (God’s) Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.”

We say a lot about what we believe is happening, through the baptismal covenant, through our prayers for the baptized, and through the thanksgiving over the water before we even get to the baptism itself. In the Book of Common Prayer, the text from the Presentation and Examination of the Candidates until the Peace takes eight pages. We want to make sure we’re clear about what it is we think we’re doing before we create the indissoluble bond that is Holy Baptism.

Then, “The Baptism” itself is less than half a page, counting the giant “The Baptism” heading. Although our baptisms give us assurance in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Savior, we don’t baptize people as an insurance policy in case they die. We do it in case they live - it is in preparation for how we live our lives. For children, baptism establishes how and with what principles the child will be raised. For adults, baptism establishes how that person will go forward in their new lives in Christ. For all of the witnesses present, we are to help both the adults and children baptized live into the vows made and made on their behalf. We state what it is we are trying to do and how we will do those things: “with God’s help”, and God’s help is a constant reality. Our baptisms are the measurable point in time to which we can look back as the time when we began accepting God’s help.

The placement of our font, like the placement of everything in our worship space, is very purposeful. The concept and intention is that when we enter and exit the nave we pass the font and it serves as a constant reminder of what our baptisms mean to us. And that baptism affects who we are and what we do; how we treat other people and how we interact with all of creation. On the way in we are reminded that what we do here strengthens and renews our baptismal covenant every time, not just on days when we are celebrating new baptisms. On the way out we are reminded of the promises we’ve made through the laying on of hands and water, and that we are to live those promises in the world. Amen.