Sunday Sermon - 13 September

I have always loved water. 

Especially the ocean, although lakes are pretty wonderful too. In fact, as many of you know, I am hypohydrotic, which is the medical way of saying I don’t sweat—or at least I sweat very, very little. Yesterday, while working at our cottage, I misjudged the temperature, got overheated, and had to literally “go jump in the lake” to cool off and get my body temperature down. So, yes, I lack some of the water I need to live, which may explain my extreme dependence on it. Perhaps that’s why I love it and have lived most of my life on, or near, the water.

I’ve lived here in Lakefield, on our beautiful Lake Katchewanooka, for over 30 years and our cottage home is also on a lake (Dickey Lake). As I’ve already told you in earlier sermons, I love being in the water, sitting beside it, and simply listening to the waves splash against the rocks and shore. There is something about being near water that feels sacred to me. I find God here and, thankfully, God finds me.

A couple of years ago, Janice and I decided to camp in Hawaii. The campsites were right on the ocean beaches. There is nothing quite like falling asleep to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore and then opening the front zipper of the tent in the early morning and seeing nothing but the vastness of the magnificent Pacific Ocean. I can remember the awe I felt in the early morning poking my little bald head out of the tent and seeing and hearing nothing but the power of the ocean’s water. I felt small – and yet I felt comforted.

There is something about water that can do that to us. Water is necessary for our survival. It is beautiful. It can be comforting. It can also be deadly. That is one of the things that is made very clear in our Exodus reading this morning.  

The Israelites have just come miraculously through the Red Sea. They have escaped Pharaoh. They have escaped slavery. They have come through the waters to freedom.  So what do they do? They sing. Moses sings. Miriam takes up her tambourine. The people celebrate what God has done. It is a wonderful moment.

The sea is the unchanging sea. It is still powerful. It is still dangerous. It is still capable of taking life - as it did to the Egyptians. The difference is that God has brought them, miraculously, through it. I think that is an important image for us as we begin this year's Season of Creation, with its theme of Living Water, because water is never simply something "out there." Water is in us, we are made of it. We depend upon it. We live beside it. We play in it. We drink it. We grow our food with it. It sustains us and all life as we know it.

Yet we also know how destructive water can be. Floods, storms, rising water levels, drought. We know that water can be both a source of life and a source of enormous death and danger. Perhaps that is why water is such a powerful image throughout Scripture and in our Christian faith.

We come to the waters of baptism, and we are reminded that we don't enter those waters as isolated individuals. The waters of baptism sacramentally move us into a community of belonging. We are claimed as God's beloved. We become part of something bigger than ourselves. Baptism isn't simply about what God does for me. It is also about where God places me—with and among God's people. The waters of baptism remind us: I belong to God, and I belong with others - like this, our family at St. Johns.

I think that is what Paul is getting at when he says, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.”  The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone.

We are brought through the waters together. Our first nine months are spent in water. Water reminds us that we are a dependent species. We are not self-sufficient. We don't live to ourselves. Paul's words in Romans make this point abundantly clear. Paul is dealing with Christians who disagree with one another. Some eat everything. Others eat only vegetables. They disagree about their holy days. Paul essentially says, "Really? This is what we're going to argue about?"

Now, Paul doesn't say that our differences don't matter, rather, he says something much more important.  He says:

"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves."

We hear these words most often at funerals, and they have a beautiful meaning there - in our life and even in our death, we are not alone, God is there. But Paul wasn't talking about funerals. He was talking about how we live together. He was talking about people who were looking at one another and saying, "I'm right. You're wrong." Paul says, stop making every difference a division because we do not live to ourselves.

Now, I've been speaking on this point the last couple of weeks because it seems like a particularly important message for us these days. We live in a world that seems to have become very good at dividing people. We divide ourselves politically. We divide ourselves socially. We divide ourselves by what we believe, what we eat, what we drive, what we read, what news we watch, what issues we care about. Increasingly, we seem to think that if someone disagrees with us, they must somehow be against us.

Paul says: That's not how the Christian community works. You don't have to agree with everyone. You don't even have to like everyone's opinions, but you do have to remember that you don't live to yourself. Your life is connected to the lives of other people. Through the waters of our baptism we are connected, all of us.

Water has power and it has a forceful habit of reminding us of that power. It reminds us that our boundaries aren't nearly as important as we think they are.  Water doesn't care about political boundaries. A river doesn't stop because it has crossed from one township, province, or even country into another. A lake doesn’t care what we call it. In fact, it’s not just water, creation doesn’t care about human boundaries at all. The air above the ocean doesn't stop at the shoreline. A wildfire doesn't ask us what political party we support before it destroys homes, towns and villages. We are connected – in life, through nature.  

And we aren’t just ‘a part of nature’ - we are nature. Whether we like it or not. This is one of the most important points when we speak of and celebrate this season of creation. We don't stand outside of creation looking in. We are in it, we are creation. So, when we celebrate the Season of Creation, we are also celebrating the gift of the natural life that we are given. In fact, in a way, we are also celebrating our life.

Which brings me, perhaps inevitably because I’m a nerd this way, to another one of my many favourite Disney movies: Moana. If you haven't seen Moana, I won't spoil too much of it for you. It’s fun and I recommend it. The music is especially fantastic. My point in referencing Moana is that in the movie, water is actually a character – It communicates. The ocean is alive. It is powerful. It is beautiful. And Moana has this extraordinary relationship with it. She is drawn to the ocean, even though she's been told by her father to stay away from it. Eventually she has to defy her father and venture out onto that ocean because something has gone terribly wrong on her Hawaiian island. Here's what I love about the story. The problem isn't simply that the people on the island don't have enough. Something has gone wrong in their relationship with the world around them. The reef is dying. The fish are disappearing. The coconuts are failing. Eventually we discover that the great threat they have been trying to defeat is not at all what they expected.

Te Kā, the terrifying creature, the antagonist, is the god of fire and lava but as the story unfolds, Te Kā, turns out to be Te Fiti, the mother god of creation who formed the islands and is the giver of all life. It was Maui, the Hawaiian demigod and cultural trickster in polynesian mythology, who stole her heart to give the power of creation to humans. When he robbed her of her sacred power she was transformed into the vengeful, angry and powerful fire god Te Kā.

Moana goes to her, she doesn't defeat her. She recognizes her true identity. She restores what has been lost. She puts the heart back where it belongs and the whole world begins to heal.

It is a beautiful creation story with an important message for us all: When we seek to separate ourselves from creation, to dominate creation, control the natural order - we destroy it. Creation isn't simply about resources that we can use. Creation is about relationship and what happens when the relationship goes out of balance and humans assume power over this island planet we live on. When the relationship is broken, everything suffers.

That's something we see in our Gospel today as well. Peter comes to Jesus and asks:  "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?"

Peter probably thinks seven times is very generous. Seven times seems like a lot! Jesus says, essentially, "You're keeping count?" Then seventy-seven times – to exaggerate his point.

You see, it isn't that Jesus wants Peter to actually forgive a literal number of times. The point is that forgiveness isn't supposed to be an accounting measure. This is also Paul's point. Paul says: Don't keep score about who is right. Jesus says: Don't keep score about who has wronged you. The parable Jesus tells makes the point even more clearly:

A servant has been forgiven an enormous debt. An impossible debt. Then he goes out and refuses to forgive someone who owes him a fraction of what he has been forgiven. In other words: He has received mercy, but he doesn't want to extend mercy. Isn't that something we can all recognize?

As I mentioned last week:  

We want mercy when we're the ones who have made the mistake.  

We want understanding when we're the ones who have fallen short.

We want people to remember the circumstances that explain our behaviour but when someone else hurts us, somehow we're much better at keeping score. I’m not sure whether or not this is human nature, but it is certainly a common trait of us human beings.

Jesus reminds us again and again that the kingdom of God doesn't work that way and this is what ties these readings together. The Israelites come through the waters and discover that they are a people who belong to one another. Paul reminds us: We do not live to ourselves. Jesus reminds us that because we have received mercy, we are called to become people who extend mercy.

Creation itself reminds us of the same thing. We are not isolated individuals. We are connected to one another. We are connected to the land. We are connected to the water. We are connected to generations that came before us and responsible to the generations that will come after us. What we do matters because we don't live to ourselves.

You see, the Season of Creation isn't simply about being told to recycle more or use less water, drive less or reduce your carbon output. It’s not just a trendy, churchy or ‘woke’ thing to do every fall. These things matter and in fact, it’s kind of sad that we need to even have Seasons of Creations and Earth Days to remind us of our responsibility and place in creation at all. It is sad that we are creation’s parasites when we are called by God to live symbiotically with creation.

That said, it is indeed time for change. In fact, I pray it is not too late for change. So today I ask:  What kind of people are we? What kind of people are we becoming? Are we people who think only about ourselves? Or are we people who understand that our lives are bound up with the lives of others and the life of all creation? And if our lives really are bound up with one another, then how do we live with one another? Do we keep score? Do we keep track of who has hurt us, who owes us, who is right and who is wrong? Or do we become people who know how to forgive, people who understand that mercy and reconciliation are more important than keeping score?

Perhaps the same question can be asked of how we live with creation. Do we see creation simply as something to use, something that belongs to us? Or do we recognize that we belong to God's creation, and that we have a responsibility to care for it? Because we don't live to ourselves. We live in relationship—with God, with one another, and with all of God's creation.

I began by talking about how much I love the water. When I'm sitting beside Lake Katchewanooka or Dickey Lake, listening to those waves splash against the shore, I do feel small, and I feel comforted. Maybe that's not such a bad place for us to be. Small enough to remember that we are not in control. Humble enough to remember that we depend upon one another. Grateful enough to recognize that the water, the land, the air, the creatures around us, and the human beings around us—all of it, all of us - is God's gift.

The Israelites came through the water and sang. Moana crossed the water and discovered how to save creation by restoring a divine relationship. Paul reminds us that we don't live to ourselves. Jesus reminds us that the answer to a world that keeps score is mercy.

This Season of Creation, as we think about Living Water, we are called to remember this: We don't live to ourselves. We belong to God. We belong to one another. We belong to this beautiful, fragile planet that God has entrusted to us.   

I pray we take better care of it, for in doing so, we also take better care of ourselves. Perhaps, when we really understand that, we will find that the waters with the power that sometimes frighten us can also carry us toward freedom, toward reconciliation, and toward life.  

Amen.