(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Isaiah 12

You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. ²Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. ³With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.  ⁴And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. ⁵Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. ⁶Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

This passage speaks of redemption, of God’s always-present faith in us.  Yes, that’s right.  Faith is not just a one-way thing.  We have faith in the faith that God has in us.  We love this passage.  We love to say it.  We love to sing it.  It brings us joy.  It is our affirmation that we trust that God will save us and that we rely on that.  And we wait and watch for those lovely flowing waters of salvation.  The writer’s vision is one of liberation—to the exiles, to the world, to all of Creation, to us.  The destiny is clear.  God is walking us all toward salvation and offering us healing waters and that is indeed something about which everyone should be joyful.

But notice, it’s not just about you and me; it’s about us—all of us.  It’s always odd for me when the language of prophets begins to sound like it’s intended for just one individual (i.e. the reader), as if it is called to direct the relationship that one person has with God.  That’s not usually the way prophets talked.  Their exhortations tended to be more collective.  They tended to talk more to the community rather than to just one individual.  So, I often find myself wondering if there’s some translation problems with some of the pronouns or maybe some confusion with the antecedents to which they refer.  I mean, what if God was OUR salvation.  Oh, wait, God is!

Faith is really meant to be more of a communal thing, don’t you think?  It’s not as if we’re in some sort of game to see who can come the closest to God.  After all, there’s that whole image of God thing.  If we are made in the image of God, then we are called to be trustworthy—for each other.  We are called to be the ones to draw waters that quench both physical and spiritual thirst–for each other.  We are called to be there for each other.  We don’t have individual wells. (Even if you HAVE an individual well, you’re still susceptible to the ground water from which you’re drawing).  The water is all of ours.  The well of salvation is a communal well.

And, yet, we still tend to wall ourselves off from each other and pull ourself into our own lives.  I think that is part of the reason that our society seems to be drowning.  You can’t wall off the water.  You can’t permanently hold it.  You certainly can’t choose who gets it.  It’s offered to us all.  You can’t quit trusting each other.  You can’t quit offering to each other.  God is in our midst, not to see if we’re doing everything right (because we’re probably not) but to show us the Kingdom of God—you know, the one for all of us.

When I visited the River Jordan (which is not the ACTUAL place of Jesus’ baptism but rather a part of the river where humans have again seen fit to wall it off and charge admission for the experience.  I’m not really sure if that’s what God had in mind.), I collected my perfunctory water to bring home.  All I had was a small pill bottle.  Yes, it made it home.  But it didn’t last.  Because water cannot be held.  (And apparently the seal on pill bottles is not all that reliable). It is shared whether we want to admit it or not.  I once was preparing to do a baptism and the mother of the child passed me on the stairs as I climbed to the next floor with the baptismal bowl (to go get water out of the sink in the lady’s bathroom).  She asked where I was going and my immediate response was “the River Jordan”.  She laughed and replied, “well as long as it’s clean.”  It was funny.  But think about it—water molecules don’t disappear.  They drain out, they evaporate, the return in as some form of water over the earth.  It continues forever.  Maybe some of those molecules in the lady’s bathroom HAD once been in the River Jordan.  Maybe some of those molecules were there with Jesus that day.  The point is, we’re really just swimming in a community pool all the time.

God IS our salvation.  God offers us the waters of salvation—over and over and over again.  There is no water destined for me.  There is none destined for you.  We really are just swimming in a community pool.  And while we wait for the world to change, the water remains.  Get out of yourself.  Even if it’s hard right now, realize that we are in this together—all of us.  We have the water, offered to each of us, to quench our thirst and clean our very being.  But it really is a communal well.  So don’t hold on so tightly.  Just let it refresh you and bring you peace.

One cannot step twice in the same river, for fresh waters are forever flowing around us.  (Heraclitus of Ephesus, c. 500 BCE)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli