A Christian Reflection on Water
For the Christian, water is more than just sustenance, more than an element of life or death; for as a primary Christian symbol, it brings Christians together and makes connections within the larger community of the Church as it flows through the liturgical practices of our Christian traditions. Thus, a brief reflection on water and the Christian faith.
In antiquity all life in Israel depended on rainfall which fell sporadically from mid-October through mid-March. Drought was a constant threat (Gen 26:1; Acts 11:28). Thus, springs and wells were a commonplace feature of life (Gen 21:30; John 4:11-12). Water could even be stored in open pools (John 5:2-7) or cisterns (Jer 2:13). But despite these systems, everyone knew the quality of “living water” or running water which brimmed with refreshment.
In the Gospels “water” (hydōr) occurs 39 times. These include references to the Sea of Galilee where Peter walks on the water (Matt 14:28), swine who rush headlong into the lake (Matt 8:32), and the disciples’ boat which fills in the storm before Jesus exerts his authority (Luke 8:23-25). In the Middle East water is also the primary means of refreshment. Feet were washed as a sign of hospitality (Luke 7:44; John 13:5). Jesus even illustrates generosity by describing the offer of a cup of cold water to a stranger (Matt 10:42; Mark 9:41).
This interest and respect for water led to its symbolic and ritual use. Water symbolized life, cleansing, refreshment, and renewal. In water, the Christian can experience many things: the purification ritual of a shared Jewish past; the medium in which one is initiated into the Christian church; a water bath symbolizing the crossing of the Sea of Reeds; a transition point from a life of selfishness to a life of selflessness; and the forsaking of self for the life of the other.
Water brings the kinetic and the tactile to Christian worship, allowing the church to feel the enwrapped experience of death and life in Christ, particularly in baptism (Rom 6:3-7) but also in that which honors the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ (John 19:34)—the mixing of water and wine in the Eucharist.
As such, water has what Don Saliers calls in his book Worship as Theology “multivocality, or a fusion of many levels of meaning.” It is satisfying to contemplate this multivocality after two millennia of liturgical development, because grasping the meaning of what water reflects in the liturgy is enhanced by the procession of time and tradition. Water provides an important element of continuity as the primary symbol within baptism and the Eucharist. Saliers writes:
Each liturgical celebration forms and expresses a selected range of the many levels of meaning inherent in the symbol, and brings together in a unified experience both the sensate human dimensions of what is symbolized and the mystery signified by the biblical word of the divine human interaction. It is over a period of time that the fullness of symbol may be comprehended, if comprehended at all, by the worshipping assembly.
What does water symbolize in our faith and in our worship then? There really is so much to consider. Water, of course, has been significant since the first days of creation, when at God’s spoken word, life (creatures for sky and sea) issued from it (Gen 1:20-21). In our worshiping communities, water baptism in the name of the Triune God is a grace, an unmerited gift from Jesus Christ, a marking-out of the baptized as one named by God.
Just as the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds, transitioning from lives of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the desert, so the Christian catechumen responds in water baptism to the Spirit’s baptism, and leaves the slavery of self-interest and sin, crossing into the freedom of righteousness and holiness, and all things godly, and the forsaking of self for the priority of the other through grace and reconciliation in Jesus Christ.
Water baptism takes on added meaning when administered in the name of Christ, upon which the deeper theological framework of the new Chrisitian identity is rooted (2 Cor 5:17). Because the baptismal bath transcends various Christian traditions, it becomes a symbol aiding liturgical mediation, which brings together the human pathos to the ethos of the praise and celebration of God. The cultural adaptation of water as symbol in the inexhaustible richness of Christian liturgy and the sacrament gives us hope for a wider appreciation of liturgical diversity.
Water as a "thing" to be mixed with wine symbolizes the water and blood spilled from Christ’s side when pierced by the Roman spear (John 19:34) and is now ritualized in the mixing of the wine and water in the Eucharist in some Christian traditions. Cyprian helped early Christians understand reasons behind the mixing of the wine and water in On the Sacrament of the Cup of the Lord:
For because Christ bore us all, in that He also bore our sins, we see that in the water is understood the people, but in the wine is showed the blood of Christ. But when the water is mingled in the cup with wine, the people are made one with Christ, and the assembly of believers is associated and conjoined with Him on whom it believes; which association and conjunction of water and wine is so mingled in the Lord’s cup, that that mixture cannot any more be separated.
Just as water binds us symbolically in the sacramental tradition of baptism across various traditions, so too can water bind us in the communion of the Eucharist.
In the Jewish and Christian tradition, water has also symbolized the Holy Spirit (Is 44:3-4; Ezek 36:25-26). This is why the Bible describes the Spirit as “poured out” (Joel 2:28–29; Acts 2:17, 10:45) and believers as being “filled” (Luke 1:15, 41). In the eschatological vision described by Zechariah 14, Jerusalem itself would give birth to a mighty spring of water which would create two rivers, one flowing west to the Mediterranean, the other flowing east to the Dead Sea. Water symbolizes the spiritual renewal promised in the OT prophets and offered in Christ. This living water is flowing within Christ (John 7:37-38) who becomes a renewing spring from whom we are invited to drink (John 4:13–14). At his death, his Spirit is released—this water is poured forth (John 19:34)—and the fulfillment of Jewish eschatological hope begins.
There is one other final quality of water in the Christian experience to be mentioned, one not readily quantifiable but important nonetheless to Christian understandings of God: water is not tame. Water both gives life and brings death. God destroyed the world once with water (Gen 7) and made a promise to never destroy the world in such a fashion again (Gen 9). Without its life-sustaining properties, humans die without it, as does all life on earth. Perhaps that is why, in highest praise, the psalmist likens our desire for God, to the desire for water (“As the deer pants for water…” Ps 42:1-2,7). Water, like the presence of God, is grace and blessing—a gift of nature and the divine economy which humanity does nothing to manufacture or deserve.
