Living Water
Sermon
Dancing The Sacraments
Sermons And Worship Services For Baptism And Communion
Call To Worship:
The Lord is my shepherd. He leads me beside still waters. Come, let us worship God who gives us living water.
Hymn: "O Worship The King"
(words: Robert Grant; music: Johann Michael Haydn)
Children's Time:
There once was a boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux. Two things he enjoyed: books and adventures, so when he was teased and chased by the bullies in his class, he ran into a bookstore. There he discovered The Neverending Story, and when he hid in the attic of his school to escape his bullies, he entered the story and his adventures began. Stepping into Fantastica, the land of stories, Bastian met the boy hero Atreyu, "Son of All," whom the Childlike Empress commissioned to find a cure for her illness.
When Bastion met the Childlike Empress, she gave him a medallion of power on which he read "Do What You Wish," and explained to him that with each wish Bastian would lose a memory. When Bastion had used up his wishes, he became powerful, but losing his memories, he also became evil and unable to love. Only the Water of Life could return his ability to love, and only if Bastion would take some of it back for others could he go back to his own world. To love was his only hope for returning home.
At last Bastian reached the fountain of the Water of Life, and there he found Atreyu. Bastian gave Atreyu the medallion and jumped into the crystal--clear water, drinking until his thirst was quenched, and he found he could love again. Filled with the joy of living and loving, he cupped his hands and gathered as much of the Water of Life as he could to take to his father, and then he was home.1
Talk Together:
What might the "Water of Life" be here and now? (Children are concrete in their thinking and will probably respond, "Water to drink, wash hands, swim in," etc.) What would happen if there were no water? In the church we call the water of life "baptism."
Hymn: "Child Of Blessing, Child Of Promise"
(words: Ronald S. Cole--Turner; music: C. F. Witt)
The Sacrament Of Baptism
Prayer Of Confession:
Dear Lord, having been baptized we know that we are your sons and daughters. Forgive us when we forget. Help us begin anew, filled with your spirit, the living water of baptism. Forgive us when our fears, confusion, and busyness drown our trust in you, forgetting you when life is smooth, and clamoring in fear when it becomes stormy. We perish without the "living water" of your steadfast love. Amen.
Words Of Assurance:
"Whoever is thirsty, let them come, and whoever wishes, let them take the free gift of the water of life" (Revelation 22:17b).
Affirmation Of Faith
Hymn: "Come, Let Us Use The Grace Divine"
(words: Charles Wesley; music: English melody)
Psalter Reading: Psalm 42:1--2a
Old Testament: Jeremiah 2:13
Epistle: 1 Peter 3:20b--22
New Testament: John 4:1--5
Sermon:
When Jesus came to the well in Samaria at noon, he was thirsty. Meeting a Samaritan woman there, he said to her, "Give me a drink." She said, "How can you, who are a Jew, ask a drink from me, who am a Samaritan woman?" Jesus replied, "If you knew the gift of God, you would ask him to give you living water." The woman asked, "Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than Jacob who gave us this well?" Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. But those who drink of the water I give them will become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." She exclaimed, "Give me this water so I won't have to keep coming here!"
Water plays an important part in our sacred story! Creation appeared out of the waters of chaos. Noah and his family were saved from the waters. So was Moses. Naaman, the leper, washed in the water of the River Jordan and was healed. Jesus was baptized in that same water and was given his identity and his call.
Jesus knew the importance of water; both physical and spiritual. At the well at high noon, thirsty and without a bucket or a cup, he asked for a drink of water, physical water to quench his thirst. But when he spoke of "living water," the Water of Life, he referred to that which was spiritual, not stagnant water held in a cistern, but living, flowing, gushing water.
Jeremiah called God "the fountain of living water," for God said to Jeremiah, "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water" (2:13). God is the source of the Water of Life.
Each of us can think of our own "cracked cisterns" we put in place of God, but they hold no living water. In living water there is life and movement; waves crashing on the shore, soaring up over the high rocks and the dry, sandy beaches, ever--flowing brooks, sparkling in the sunlight, summer swimming pools bubbling with children's laughter, refreshing sprays of spring rains, and water sprinkled over the head of the one being baptized.
The sacrament of baptism recognizes our oneness with God and our oneness with creation, with the earth which is the Lord's. In the baptism of rain, God blesses the earth for growth. God blesses the earth with rain to make bread and wine, for it, as we, are fed to feed.
On a rainy day,
the old Cree Indian,
weary of the missionaries' naggings,
impatient with their persistence
that he be baptized,
stood,
drinking the rain,
bathing in its wetness,
dancing in its music,
and said,
"Rejoice with me!
I am baptized!"
Standing on a dry porch
I waited for the thunder
to make its announcement,
tearing open the heavens,
seeing that baptized figure,
knowing who he was.
Oh, for a baptism like that when every rain, every shower we take, reminds us of who we are, baptized in living water!
Longing for God, we thirst for the Water of Life, waiting for God to send us blessing in some supernormal way, when all the while God is giving us an abundant supply if we would only learn to retreat into the fertile source of our own spirit where the well of living water seeks to rise.
During a dry season the missionary dug for water. The natives were shocked. Did the missionary not know that water came down from heaven and not up through the earth?
Where do we, you and I, seek living water, that living water Jesus gave the Samaritan woman?
The preacher--poet, George Herbert, wrote,
When God first made man
Having a glass of blessing standing by;
"Let us" (said he) "pour on him all we can...."2
The sacrament of baptism is the pouring of water and of words, the blessing of God. The Gospel writer, John, called Jesus both "living water" and "The Word."
Baptism is the sacrament of God's free gift of grace, unearned and undeserved, for the dependent, unproductive infant cannot earn this love. Nor can we. It is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given by God, but still the church has debated its practice as early as the second century when Tertullian objected to the practice of infant baptism, saying sin was a matter of the will and contingent upon the intent of the individual, and since infants have no conscious intent to do wrong, therefore they are immune from the judgment of sin.
In the third century Cyprian argued that no one should be hindered from baptism and the grace of God, symbolized in the practice of infant baptism. Augustine insisted that salvation is by grace alone, as did Martin Luther, and baptism is the seal of that covenant with God.
There will always be tension between tradition and the Spirit concerning the sacraments, because we need both the discipline of tradition and the freedom of the Spirit. Too strict a conformity chokes meaning and experience. The desire to preserve the purity of the sacraments can lead to a mentality that limits the Spirit, for in place of stagnant water that is dead and inert, there is the living water that springs up joyfully, playfully, abundantly.
We need our rituals, our sacraments, to combat the rituals of the world, for we are bathed in the babble of television and take the bread and wine of junk food and drink. We worship at the altar of the corner bank and sing our praises to Progress, Production, and Possessions, while the Spirit prefers relationship, living water.
The mystic Meister Eckhard wrote that the first gift which God gives is the Holy Spirit and in that gift God gives all of the divine gifts.
Without water we perish. When Nicodemus came to Jesus, Jesus told him that "no one sees the kingdom of God without being born from above, without being born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5).
Without water we die. When a ship was grounded at sea for so long that their fresh water supply ran dry, the people began to die of thirst. Day by day they watched the horizon for help. At last a freighter came in view and those who were able, waved frantically to attract its attention. When at last the freighter saw and drew close enough to hear, the captain shouted, "Give us water. We are dying of thirst." The captain of the freighter called back, "Put down your bucket. You are grounded in fresh water."
In baptism we are grounded in fresh, living water, the Water of Life. Praise be to God! Amen.
Hymn: "Lord, I Want To Be A Christian"
(words and music: African--American spiritual)
Prayers Of The People
Pastoral Prayer:
Gracious, loving, listening Lord, we come to you as to a fountain filled with fresh water, gushing forth, and thank you for the blessings of life you have given us. Amen.
The Lord's Prayer
Offering
Doxology
Hymn: "Come, Let Us Use The Grace Divine"
(words: Charles Wesley; music: arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams)
Benediction:
Go now in the name of God who gives us physical and spiritual water through Jesus Christ who is the "Water of Life" and the Holy Spirit who enables us to come and drink and take some back for others. Amen.
____________
1. Michael Ende, The Neverending Story (New York: Dutton Children's Books, 1997).
2. George Herbert, "The Pulley," George Herbert, The Country Parson, The Temple (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 204.
The Lord is my shepherd. He leads me beside still waters. Come, let us worship God who gives us living water.
Hymn: "O Worship The King"
(words: Robert Grant; music: Johann Michael Haydn)
Children's Time:
There once was a boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux. Two things he enjoyed: books and adventures, so when he was teased and chased by the bullies in his class, he ran into a bookstore. There he discovered The Neverending Story, and when he hid in the attic of his school to escape his bullies, he entered the story and his adventures began. Stepping into Fantastica, the land of stories, Bastian met the boy hero Atreyu, "Son of All," whom the Childlike Empress commissioned to find a cure for her illness.
When Bastion met the Childlike Empress, she gave him a medallion of power on which he read "Do What You Wish," and explained to him that with each wish Bastian would lose a memory. When Bastion had used up his wishes, he became powerful, but losing his memories, he also became evil and unable to love. Only the Water of Life could return his ability to love, and only if Bastion would take some of it back for others could he go back to his own world. To love was his only hope for returning home.
At last Bastian reached the fountain of the Water of Life, and there he found Atreyu. Bastian gave Atreyu the medallion and jumped into the crystal--clear water, drinking until his thirst was quenched, and he found he could love again. Filled with the joy of living and loving, he cupped his hands and gathered as much of the Water of Life as he could to take to his father, and then he was home.1
Talk Together:
What might the "Water of Life" be here and now? (Children are concrete in their thinking and will probably respond, "Water to drink, wash hands, swim in," etc.) What would happen if there were no water? In the church we call the water of life "baptism."
Hymn: "Child Of Blessing, Child Of Promise"
(words: Ronald S. Cole--Turner; music: C. F. Witt)
The Sacrament Of Baptism
Prayer Of Confession:
Dear Lord, having been baptized we know that we are your sons and daughters. Forgive us when we forget. Help us begin anew, filled with your spirit, the living water of baptism. Forgive us when our fears, confusion, and busyness drown our trust in you, forgetting you when life is smooth, and clamoring in fear when it becomes stormy. We perish without the "living water" of your steadfast love. Amen.
Words Of Assurance:
"Whoever is thirsty, let them come, and whoever wishes, let them take the free gift of the water of life" (Revelation 22:17b).
Affirmation Of Faith
Hymn: "Come, Let Us Use The Grace Divine"
(words: Charles Wesley; music: English melody)
Psalter Reading: Psalm 42:1--2a
Old Testament: Jeremiah 2:13
Epistle: 1 Peter 3:20b--22
New Testament: John 4:1--5
Sermon:
When Jesus came to the well in Samaria at noon, he was thirsty. Meeting a Samaritan woman there, he said to her, "Give me a drink." She said, "How can you, who are a Jew, ask a drink from me, who am a Samaritan woman?" Jesus replied, "If you knew the gift of God, you would ask him to give you living water." The woman asked, "Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than Jacob who gave us this well?" Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. But those who drink of the water I give them will become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." She exclaimed, "Give me this water so I won't have to keep coming here!"
Water plays an important part in our sacred story! Creation appeared out of the waters of chaos. Noah and his family were saved from the waters. So was Moses. Naaman, the leper, washed in the water of the River Jordan and was healed. Jesus was baptized in that same water and was given his identity and his call.
Jesus knew the importance of water; both physical and spiritual. At the well at high noon, thirsty and without a bucket or a cup, he asked for a drink of water, physical water to quench his thirst. But when he spoke of "living water," the Water of Life, he referred to that which was spiritual, not stagnant water held in a cistern, but living, flowing, gushing water.
Jeremiah called God "the fountain of living water," for God said to Jeremiah, "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water" (2:13). God is the source of the Water of Life.
Each of us can think of our own "cracked cisterns" we put in place of God, but they hold no living water. In living water there is life and movement; waves crashing on the shore, soaring up over the high rocks and the dry, sandy beaches, ever--flowing brooks, sparkling in the sunlight, summer swimming pools bubbling with children's laughter, refreshing sprays of spring rains, and water sprinkled over the head of the one being baptized.
The sacrament of baptism recognizes our oneness with God and our oneness with creation, with the earth which is the Lord's. In the baptism of rain, God blesses the earth for growth. God blesses the earth with rain to make bread and wine, for it, as we, are fed to feed.
On a rainy day,
the old Cree Indian,
weary of the missionaries' naggings,
impatient with their persistence
that he be baptized,
stood,
drinking the rain,
bathing in its wetness,
dancing in its music,
and said,
"Rejoice with me!
I am baptized!"
Standing on a dry porch
I waited for the thunder
to make its announcement,
tearing open the heavens,
seeing that baptized figure,
knowing who he was.
Oh, for a baptism like that when every rain, every shower we take, reminds us of who we are, baptized in living water!
Longing for God, we thirst for the Water of Life, waiting for God to send us blessing in some supernormal way, when all the while God is giving us an abundant supply if we would only learn to retreat into the fertile source of our own spirit where the well of living water seeks to rise.
During a dry season the missionary dug for water. The natives were shocked. Did the missionary not know that water came down from heaven and not up through the earth?
Where do we, you and I, seek living water, that living water Jesus gave the Samaritan woman?
The preacher--poet, George Herbert, wrote,
When God first made man
Having a glass of blessing standing by;
"Let us" (said he) "pour on him all we can...."2
The sacrament of baptism is the pouring of water and of words, the blessing of God. The Gospel writer, John, called Jesus both "living water" and "The Word."
Baptism is the sacrament of God's free gift of grace, unearned and undeserved, for the dependent, unproductive infant cannot earn this love. Nor can we. It is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given by God, but still the church has debated its practice as early as the second century when Tertullian objected to the practice of infant baptism, saying sin was a matter of the will and contingent upon the intent of the individual, and since infants have no conscious intent to do wrong, therefore they are immune from the judgment of sin.
In the third century Cyprian argued that no one should be hindered from baptism and the grace of God, symbolized in the practice of infant baptism. Augustine insisted that salvation is by grace alone, as did Martin Luther, and baptism is the seal of that covenant with God.
There will always be tension between tradition and the Spirit concerning the sacraments, because we need both the discipline of tradition and the freedom of the Spirit. Too strict a conformity chokes meaning and experience. The desire to preserve the purity of the sacraments can lead to a mentality that limits the Spirit, for in place of stagnant water that is dead and inert, there is the living water that springs up joyfully, playfully, abundantly.
We need our rituals, our sacraments, to combat the rituals of the world, for we are bathed in the babble of television and take the bread and wine of junk food and drink. We worship at the altar of the corner bank and sing our praises to Progress, Production, and Possessions, while the Spirit prefers relationship, living water.
The mystic Meister Eckhard wrote that the first gift which God gives is the Holy Spirit and in that gift God gives all of the divine gifts.
Without water we perish. When Nicodemus came to Jesus, Jesus told him that "no one sees the kingdom of God without being born from above, without being born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5).
Without water we die. When a ship was grounded at sea for so long that their fresh water supply ran dry, the people began to die of thirst. Day by day they watched the horizon for help. At last a freighter came in view and those who were able, waved frantically to attract its attention. When at last the freighter saw and drew close enough to hear, the captain shouted, "Give us water. We are dying of thirst." The captain of the freighter called back, "Put down your bucket. You are grounded in fresh water."
In baptism we are grounded in fresh, living water, the Water of Life. Praise be to God! Amen.
Hymn: "Lord, I Want To Be A Christian"
(words and music: African--American spiritual)
Prayers Of The People
Pastoral Prayer:
Gracious, loving, listening Lord, we come to you as to a fountain filled with fresh water, gushing forth, and thank you for the blessings of life you have given us. Amen.
The Lord's Prayer
Offering
Doxology
Hymn: "Come, Let Us Use The Grace Divine"
(words: Charles Wesley; music: arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams)
Benediction:
Go now in the name of God who gives us physical and spiritual water through Jesus Christ who is the "Water of Life" and the Holy Spirit who enables us to come and drink and take some back for others. Amen.
____________
1. Michael Ende, The Neverending Story (New York: Dutton Children's Books, 1997).
2. George Herbert, "The Pulley," George Herbert, The Country Parson, The Temple (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 204.
