“Gone Fishing: Over the Earth and the Sea"”
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 8
August 24, 2014
Mark S. Bollwinkel
In Psalm 8 of the Hebrew Scriptures the congregation sings,
O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
While the cantor sings,
When I look at your heavens, the
work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of
them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than
God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of
your hands;
you have put all things under their feet….
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Ever notice how we are so often
drawn to bodies of water for our vacations or weekends away? Whether it is sitting on the deck of a lake
cottage, or watching the waves on a beach, casting a fishing line in a babbling
brook or swimming in a beautiful pool, humans yearn to connect with water. Watching a sunset from the deck of a cruise
liner or paddling out into a kelp bed in a kayak there is something that can be
relaxing and peaceful about our relationships with bodies of water. Setting sail into a storm or stacking
sandbags against a rising flood reminds us of the primal power of water when set
against human endeavor.
In the Biblical record creation
begins with light and water as God on the second day harnesses water’s chaos
that life might begin (Genesis 1:6-8). Our bodies are 57-60% water on average, our
brains 70% water. We take in and breathe
out H2O with every breath in an atmosphere comprised globally with water vapor
in varying degrees.
It’s not surprising to me that we
so often define our notion of rest and recreation in and around water. Whether a tropical island paradise or
watching the whales out of Moss Beach, there is something very human….and let
me suggest spiritual…..in our relationship with water, not just for consumption
but for orientation in this life.
Does the fish know about the water?
This may sound like a Zen Buddhist
koan; a riddle used by a master to assist a student or pilgrim on their road to
enlightenment.
In the normal course
of events, a fish is born in, lives in and will die in water never experiencing
any other reality. By forcing water
through its gills the fish will derive the oxygen it needs to live. Water brings the fish its nutrients and food. The power of current will direct its
travels. Water will permeate each
moment of the fish’s existence, sustain its life and makes up most of its
body. Yet we can assume the fish knows
nothing about water at all.
Human
beings are born in, live in and will die in a living spirit not of their own
creation. Religious traditions from
almost all human communities and all epochs will describe the force which
animates our being as divinity. The Old
Testament suggests that divine spirit is as pervasive as the air we breathe
(Gen. 2:7, Job 27:3, 33:4, Ps. 104:29, 144:4, Isa. 2:22, 57:16). Just as oxygen fills our every cell, the
spirit fills our every moment. With
every breath we are connected to all living creatures that are sustained in the
one common atmosphere. Like the fish in
water, the spirit permeates each moment of human existence, sustains our living
and connects us with both past and future.
Yet humans are very different than
the fish in the water; humans can know about the spirit or we can reject or
pretend it is not even there. So in
asking, “Does the fish know about the water?” we are left to ponder what we
know about this spirituality in which “we live, and move and have our being”.
Those words are recited by the
apostle Paul during his stop-over in Athens ,
Greece Asia Minor . There in the capital of Greek culture and
philosophy he is concerned about the idols found in the city. He is invited by a group of philosophers to
debate. They take him to the Areopagus,
a place you can even see today, not far from the Parthenon, where the learned “men”*
of Athens
Like a good debater he begins with
disarming flattery; they are so prudent in their religion they even have an
idol to “an unknown god”, so to cover their theological bases not wanting to
alienate a mysterious deity should they unintentionally leave it out of their
worship. Paul quotes from some of their
own philosophers in order to establish common ground. The Stoics and Epicureans both adopted
Aristotle’s notion of God as “the unmoved Mover”; attributing the created order
to the hand of God but a Divinity content to stay in heaven, unattached and
uninvolved with human history or individual lives.
Then the preacher makes his
point. Paul argues that since we are
children of the same God, idol worship is not only inappropriate, it is
“ignorance” since it ignores the new thing this God has done in the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus. God does not
dwell at distant in the heavens like Zeus on Mt. Olympus
Paul invites these Athenian
philosophers to repent of their idol worship.
This didn’t go over too well, as you can imagine. Most in the crowd took off at this point but
a few of them stayed, listened and believed, including Dionysius, a member of
the council and Damaris* a woman who had been listening into the conversation
(:34). *(In patriarchal culture
intellectual pursuit was considered “men’s work”, but as we see throughout the
New Testament, women not only overheard the debates, they directly participated
and became leaders in the church.)
No wonder we use water in the
sacrament of baptism!
The ritual of baptism was a little
used rite among the Jewish people that had its origin 200 years before Jesus
was born. It was a symbolic act of
repentance, a spiritual cleansing, washing away the sin and stains of the past
for a new beginning.
Each of the
four gospels agree that Jesus was baptized by the John the Baptist, who was
drawing such crowds out near the Jordon river that the historians of the day
recorded his fame and influence. John
the Baptist was offering baptism along with his apocalyptic message. The faithful were to cleanse themselves in preparation
for the coming new messiah who would judge the sins of the nation, usher in the
kingdom of God on earth and bring about the end of the world as they knew it.
The promised future of God, long
awaited by the faithful had begun.
It is very fitting that a cleansing
ritual of water is used to convey this symbolism. Seventy-five percent of the Earth’s surface
is covered in water. Water makes the crops grow and nourishes the animals we
count on. Life is impossible without
water.
Isn’t that also true for the divine
spirit? Is the full potential of life
possible without the spirit of God washing over us? We are so much more than fish but do we know
about the water?
Psalm 8 suggests we are given
“dominion” over the waters and the seas as evidence of the “glory and honor” by
which God has crowned us as human beings.
Stewardship
of our domestic water supply or the health of our oceans, lakes and streams are
eventually spiritual matters. That
being the case how are we doing?
The
National Resources Defense Council reports that “In recent years…two major
independent commissions reported that our oceans are in serious trouble -- in a
state…of "silent collapse" due to over fishing, farm and industrial
pollution, coastal development, climate change and inconsistent management of
ocean resources (http://www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/policy.asp). Facing a historical drought here in
California citizens have yet to adopt requested water conservation targets and Central
Valley agribusiness is drawing down groundwater supplies beyond all records (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_25915949/public-apathy-drought).
If God is
creator and intends all of creation….earth, air and water…to be a blessing of
life, isn’t how we treat the creation also how we treat God?
Harvesting
hay by hand is some of the most labor intensive work on a ranch. Today modern machines do most of the work but
forty years ago when Bonnie and I worked on the Mackey ranch near the Oregon
border the cowboys did it a lot by hand.
After the hay was cut, dried and bailed…each bail weighing 80-100
lbs….my partner and I would take turns driving a truck down the rows of bails,
lining up a conveyor shoot which picked the bail off the field and lifted them
up to the stacker. The stacker would
then lift the bail by hand into position on the back of the truck until it was
completely loaded. We would then drive
the load to a huge barn and by hand stack the bails inside until it was
full. We figure that summer we
harvested 400 tons of hay on the Mackey ranch and that my partner and I lifted
each bail twice in the process.
The summer
was hot, into the 90’s most days. The
straw itches and the dust suffocates.
In the beginning of the morning each cowboy fills up their own gallon
jug of water, covered with burlap which when wet will cool the liquid by
evaporation. The jug stays in the truck
throughout the day and is refilled many times.
At the end of each load the cowboy can look forward to a cool and long
drink of the most precious water, often pouring over it your head and hat to
cool off as well.
It was that
summer on the ranch bucking bales of hay that I realized why God uses water for
baptism. Hot, thirsty and exhausted that
water never tasted so good. It gives
new life, it revives the soul, and it cleanses and washes away the dirt that
clings.
Water
literally can be the difference between life and death. Without water there is
no future. That’s true for the
planet. Isn’t that also true for the
spirit of God’s love and grace in our lives?
Amen.
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