Drenched

Every year it seems to be the same old stories. Floods here, floods there. If it's not the Red River Valley (though seriously, when is it not the Red River Valley?), it's the Ohio River or Mississippi or the Missouri. It's the Gulf Coast, tsunamis and spills. It's the Glades, it's Pacific islands, it's...

Water is life. And death. We're made up mostly of it. We're drenched in it.

Every religious tradition has its flood story. Every tradition that I know of has water as a symbol near its heart. And this is no doubt because of water's ubiquity. When I look outside today I feel wet. The rainfall may only be a drizzle, but it pierces the skin. It is both a physical need and a powerful metaphor. The uncertainty of the future looms like storm clouds. You might say it's like sitting under a dunk tank. Water is life; it is also death.

When we talk about resurrection, especially in the Easter season, we tend to use the symbol of the open tomb, but I tend to prefer the image of the risen Christ on the shoreline cooking fish for his disciples (John 21). Fish live in the water. Fish breathe through the water. They don't escape it but embrace it. They are at home there. And so are we.

I got some flack for calling the Pacific Northwest "The Drear" in my post last week. So, today I switched it to the "Salmon Lands," but it comes to nearly the same thing. When we look up into the murky, gray sky we tend to feel lost. The clouds, however, bring much more than despair. That murk is bringing with it new life. April showers don't just bring May flowers; they resurrect life from death. Our hope lies in being drenched.

Luther reminds us that we are put to death in baptism and raised as a new creation. To be a new creation is to be a fish. It means to swim in the waters without fear because Christ surrounds us. Christ is, in fact, the very living water in which we move and breathe, and that which we drink in. The waters of destruction only fill in our milieu; they can do not more than turn us about. Pollution may seep into our lives and put our bodies to death, but we are promised that through it all we are drenched. The water is the very environs of our lives.

So rather than the simple "Remember your baptism" that many of us church-goers hear in worship. Let me offer you a stronger alternative. You are a fish. The waters will not get you. And that's good because you are drenched.