Water is Life, Water Bestows Eternal Life

Hollywood usually gets life in the Old West wrong. They love to show cattle rustlers, gun slingers, bank robbers, heroic sheriffs, and cowboys. They show stables, general stores, banks, saloons, saloons, and more saloons. The saloon will fit a particular stereotype: a piano, men gambling, and elaborately dressed women hanging out in the saloon. Life just was not like that. The vast majority of people in the wild west were farmers. They did not go into town often, they did not have money to waste at the saloon, and they did not have leisure time. What people did in the Old West was struggle to survive. Life was touch-and-go for farmers, ranchers, and businessmen. Drought, pestilence, and other natural disasters made life difficult and uncertain. Hollywood makes the Old West more of a cartoon than a depiction of reality. We could say the same thing about their treatment of medieval times and Biblical times as well. Stereotypes prevail in most historical periods that Hollywood tries to depict.

Stereotypes are useful, however, in storytelling because the theme or the moral of the story can be obscured by historical details. The stereotypes provide a backdrop against which the story is told. But for a stereotype to work it must convey the truth as some level. We would balk at men in an Old West saloon drinking mojitos and arguing about college football or knights in a pub drinking soy milk lattes and listening to jazz music. We know that the cowboys in a saloon would drink whiskey or beer. The medieval pub would serve ale, mead, or wine. What were they drinking in the time of Jesus? The beverage of choice was wine. Why? Why did people in the past drink wine, beer, ale, mead, or whiskey? Were they alcoholics? Not at all. It had everything to do with the safety of water. Most lakes, rivers, and streams were too polluted. Rivers and streams were the sewers of the day and the further downstream you were, the worse it got. It was the brewing, fermenting, and distilling processes that killed the harmful germs and the alcohol preserved the beverages. You could almost always trust beer, wine, ale, and whiskey.

This is foreign to us today because we have fairly safe municipal water supplies. But in times past, if you found a safe stream or spring, this was worth more than gold. It is no wonder that 13 western states have towns named Sweetwater. Safe water was precious. It was a matter of life and death. You were much more likely to get shot in a dispute over a good well than in a bar fight or a bank robbery.

It makes sense that God made water the visible and tangible element by which He conveys not just earthly life but also eternal life. Clean water gives and sustains life. Baptism by water and the Spirit is grace giving and eternal life promising. Earthly life is impossible without clean water, eternal life is possible by being spiritually cleansed in the waters of baptism. Jesus says “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mk 16:16). It is also clear when Jesus says to Nicodemus: “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above… Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (Jn 3:3,5). No one can see or enter the Kingdom of God without baptism. This is the way that God has prescribed for us to become a new creation, to be baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Baptism is the way that God has given us to become adopted children of the Father.

This is why we hear the Father say “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” He is revealing Who Jesus is and also revealing the existence of the Holy Spirit Who descended on Jesus in the form of a dove. Jesus already was the Son of God and He already possessed the Holy Spirit. By being baptized, Jesus makes it possible through His humanity for us to become sons and daughters of God and possible for us to become tabernacles of the Holy Spirit.

Baptism is a truly profound gift given by the Father, through the Son, with the Holy Spirit. We must not take our baptism for granted. It is easy for us to take clean water for granted, and it can be just as easy to take our baptisms for granted. If good, safe water was worth fighting for and sometimes even worth dying for, what is the baptism we have received worth, especially since Jesus died that we might receive baptism? If our ancestors would name towns Sweetwater because that town had a pure and safe water supply, how sweet must we regard our own baptisms that have purified us and saved us from hell?

—Fr Booth