Waters of Baptism

The last two posts, Water followed by ...And More Water came out of wondering about the significance of the waters of baptism in light of a couple of big environmental issues that had been in the news around the First Sunday of Epiphany, when we remember the Baptism of Our Lord. Those issues were catastrophic floods several places in the world and plastic pollution in our oceans. Increased frequency of major flooding is one expected effect of climate change, one of the many effects that bring hardship to people around the world.

Thinking about this has brought more questions than answers to my mind. As noted in the first post about this, both the effects of climate change on people and other living things and the extent of plastic pollution and its effects on people and other living things are issues of such a large scale that it’s difficult to even comprehend the challenges we face, let alone reflect on their spiritual significance.

But the questions are persistent if still in formation, so in this post, I’m offering some first questions for reflection in hopes that we might have a conversation about the way we see and talk about the waters of baptism in a rapidly and significantly changing world.

Comments, stabs at answers, answers made in confidence of their certainty, are all welcome. (If you’re commenting on the blog, please sign your comments if you want them to be shown.)

The first question is an easy one, but serves to introduce the second: What characteristics have we traditionally associated with water that suits it to be the matter – the “outward and visible sign” -- for the sacrament of baptism? What new associations do we or will we have with water as more of the earth’s water becomes permeated with plastic and as we face extremes of flooding and drought in many areas of the planet? Will this change the experience for people witnessing baptisms?

It seems almost dishonest or as if we were in denial if, as these environmental phenomena unfold, we continue to use water liturgically in the ways we have always used it without commenting on or acknowledging what has changed. If the significance for us of something like water changes in our daily lives – if, for example, we someday find ourselves in a world where pure water is rare – what, if anything, do we say about that?

The promises we make in our baptismal covenant (Book of Common Prayer, pp. 304-305) raise questions for us as we struggle with these new sorts of issues. We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. When our brothers and sisters around the world suffer from the effects of climate change, how can we best respond to disasters such as the floods of January? What can we do to prevent these things from happening?

We promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. We know that our actions, our comforts, are producing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, and we know that the effects of climate change are bringing hardship to many people. We know that the plastic things we use find their way into the oceans and other waterways and have an effect on living things that comes up the food chain. What is the just thing for us to do? Are we respecting the dignity of every human being if we can’t bring ourselves to acknowledge and name the problem? What changes can we make to help us better keep our baptismal covenant?

The core of these questions seems to be centered on truthfulness with one another and with God about the changes in our environment and the part our actions play both in causing those changes and in responding to their ill effects. Where does truthfulness rank in our priorities when we approach liturgy? If we are tempted to pretend the world is something other than it is, or if we deny the realities of our world, how does that affect what we do before God and God’s people?

...and More Water

Over a week ago, I started this series of posts about water by talking about floods, especially the flooding in Queensland, Australia, and in Brazil. At that time, the death toll in Brazil was 13 people. Yesterday morning that number was estimated to be at least 665. . This morning’s estimate is over 700, with the number expected to rise as bodies are found and as the region remains at risk for fresh mud slides.

While no single weather event can be linked conclusively with global warming, the floods in both Brazil and Australia are linked to exceptionally high ocean temperatures which would be expected to result in above normal precipitation. In a Reuters article Matthew England of the Climate Change Rese

arch Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney notes that “the waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon”.

CNN reports from South Africa that at least forty people have died in flooding, more than 6,000 people have been displaced, and more heavy rain is expected. Most rivers and reservoirs in South Africa have reached their capacity, so more flooding is expected.

After a week in snowy Syracuse, New York (where there has been more than 100” of snow this season, putting them on track to break their seasonal record), we came home to more snow in Nebraska. A video found here from The Weather Channel’s Earth Watch does a good job of explaining the link between the cold and snow in much of the United States and global climate change.

Ocean Plastics

The news this month about plastics in the ocean comes in the form of good news / bad news. The good news is that the now-famous garbage patches, including the most well-known of them, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, don’t seem to be growing in size. These “garbage patches” are, in fact, not the dense and easily visible areas some reports have led the public to believe, but contain mostly small bits of plastic. Marcus Eriksen’s post on the 5 Gyres blog, Beyond the absurdity of a ‘Texas-sized Garbage Patch’ lies a larger menace of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans , says that while the idea of a big, almost solid patch of plastic real estate appealed to the sense that someone could go do something about it (or with it), the reality is “much worse”. What we have instead is a “thin plastic soup”, and that in a way is better news than a floating island of plastic trash. But the bad news is also that it’s not in a definite area; it’s everywhere. That means it’s not something we can go out and clean up. The only way to address the plastic pollution in our oceans is to quit adding to it, and clean up the bits that get spun out of the gyres and onto beaches.

Writing on the Discovery News website, Emily Sohn writes ‘Great Garbage Patch’ not so Great After All , noting that these small bits of plastic throughout the oceans pose a variety of threats, especially as fish ingest them and as they break down.

Waters of Baptism

Water, of course, still has all the characteristics it has always had, and holds all the same meaning for human beings. Water has always been both essential and potentially destructive. But with plastic pollution in the oceans and the prominence of worldwide floods brought about by torrential rains, our understanding of water as a metaphor is no doubt shifting in some way, adding perhaps some new aspects of meaning to a very traditional sign. That's the subject of the next post.

Water

Despite the less liquid form of H2O covering much of Nebraska today -- and doing that beautifully -- I’ve been thinking about water for several days. Last Sunday we remembered the Baptism of Jesus, and many parishes had baptisms that day. The prayers of thanksgiving over the water in our baptismal service remind us that along with being essential to life, water has great spiritual significance.

Personally Challenging Task

In the week leading up to the First Sunday after Epiphany (The Baptism of Our Lord), stories were popping up in the news about floods in Australia and South Africa . The floods in Australia were fairly well-covered in the news; fewer people here heard about the ones in Eastern Cape Province and KwaZulu Natal. The same week, I came across more information about the plastic in our oceans – both the extent of the pollution and more evidence that plastic is entering the food chain. Not having a lot of time to sit and process all of this, I simply didn’t write the post during the week. When Saturday came, it was even more difficult to focus on something this complex after news of the shootings in Tucson.

Since then, I’ve been looking at why it was so difficult to put these pieces together. Thinking about water brings together two environmental phenomena that I find very difficult to really comprehend because of the scale of the phenomena and the unthinkable nature of their consequences: the effects of climate change on people and other living things, and the extent of plastic pollution and its own effects on people and other living things. Thinking about the waters of baptism, reflecting on the relationship between the physical properties of water and its spiritual significance for us, is a whole different exercise when done with an awareness of the environmental realities with which we now live.

With this next Sunday’s Gospel (John 1:29-42 ) beginning with John talking about the Baptism of Jesus, the blog plan for this week is to talk about floods in this post, plastic and water in the next post, and perhaps be able after that to put together at least some of the pieces in relation to the waters of baptism.

Floods

This morning there were new headlines: Dozens missing from flooding in Australian valley and 13 Dead After Heavy Rains in Brazil. No single weather event can be connected to changes in the climate brought about by global warming; floods happen and have always happened. But two things indicate an overall connection: first, the record-breaking rainfalls and severe storms that have caused the flooding are exactly what scientists have told us will happen as the earth’s atmosphere warms and holds more water vapor; and second, there have been multiple floods in the past year with the phrases “record-breaking rainfall” and “catastrophic flooding” attached to them. If we were experiencing weather phenomena within the old norms, we wouldn’t be breaking so many records.

Remember the July floods in Pakistan? In early December, a reporter for the British Telegraph reported on current conditions in the flooded areas . A recent PBS NewsHour report tells more about the aftermath of the flooding and other water issues there:

If we find it difficult to imagine what is happening in faraway places, we might look closer to home and re\member the floods in Iowa last summer. A report on the impacts of climate change on Iowa was released January 1. It’s a good report for Nebraskans to look at to help us think about how we might best live in the next several years, and it does a good job of laying out the connections between global climate change and local weather trends. Increased precipitation and flooding is discussed in this report. An Iowa State University press release about the role of some ISU researchers in the study notes that the university itself was flooded in August 2010.

Along with concerns about flooding caused by increased precipitation and severe storms, global warming brings coastal flooding from sea level rise. Flooding of both kinds is expected to increase in the years ahead. Disaster aid to victims of floods is the sort of charitable work that churches have historically done. One consequence of increased flooding will be an increased need for aid.

I suspect this is one piece of the connection to the waters of baptism. We who have made a covenant to "seek and serve Christ in all persons" should think about how we would respond to increased flooding both close to home and far away.

Burning Water

This morning's news includes a report that the Coast Guard is considering burning the oil slick on the Gulf of Mexico. Choosing the controlled burn seems to be the sort of option I often discuss with my students in ethics class: what do we do when faced with two or more options, none of which are desirable? In this case, if the oil slick isn’t burned, forecasters think it will be reaching the Gulf shore, covering birds and beaches with oil and creating a disaster for both wildlife and for people whose incomes depend on tourism along the shore.

The irony of learning that what was left of the oil rig fell into the Gulf of Mexico on Earth Day is compounded by this latest development. Seth Borenstein’s Earth Day article that ran in many newspapers and that I mentioned in my post The Day After looked back at the sorts of environmental issues that were the impetus for the first Earth Day, including the infamous flammability of the Cuyahoga River. So we have come full circle in these forty years. There’s still concern in the United States about offshore oil spills, and there’s still talk of water burning. This time, though, instead of river pollution accidentally catching fire, we are talking about a controlled burn in the Gulf of Mexico as a possible best option.

For Christians, water is a symbol of cleansing, of new life in baptism. Last Wednesday at Hastings College we held an outdoor chapel service designed by students. We started with a water liturgy, pouring water into a container while talking about its meaning for us throughout Scripture and especially in our baptisms. Dr. Dan Deffenbaugh preached about the river of the water of life, using Revelation 22 as the text and reminding us of the wonder and sacredness of the great Ogallala aquifer beneath our feet. At the end of the service, we used smaller containers to take water from our “font” to the trees and flowers around us.

Coming soon after our celebration of the Great Vigil of Easter, when we talk about water in the story of creation, in the Exodus from Egypt through the Red Sea, and in our baptisms, this Earth Day service reinforced for me the sense of the holy meaning of water for Christians.

I wonder today, then, what meaning we give to burning water. What might it say to us on a deeper level if later today we do see images of the huge oil slick burning in the Gulf? What does it mean to have burning water become a recurring image in the United States? What does it mean when setting the water on fire -- and adding to the pollution of our air -- looks like our best option? And I wonder how we can make a connection with the reality of burning water in our liturgy, how we can acknowledge and find hope and redemption in the image of the water that cleanses us and gives us life being so contaminated that it burns.