(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Coldwater Canyon”, originally shared on November 22, 2021. It was the 168th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What has cold water done for you lately?
Everything. Today, we’re going to find out why.
I was near the crest of Coldwater Canyon Drive the other day. It’s one
of the two north/south canyons that connect the San Fernando Valley with the
Westside area of LA and the City of Beverly Hills.
Mulholland Drive runs east and west and it was just south of me. And the
Tree People, an LA environmental advocacy group, was just north of me.
A green space, including the Coldwater Canyon Open Space, the Franklin
Canyon Park, North Beverly Park and the Coldwater Canyon Park, runs
continuously from where I was to just a few blocks short of Sunset Blvd.
Sally and I drive over Coldwater quite often for Dr. appointments or
when Sally is serving as a docent at the Museum of Tolerance.
Coldwater reminds me of the brother and sister from the city who were
sent to spend a few summer weeks with their grandfather in the mountains.
They were dropped off at his simple cabin just in time for dinner and
the grandfather told them that they could set the table with dishes from a pile
on the floor.
“Grandpa, are those dishes clean?” they asked.
“They’re
as clean as cold water can make ‘em,” he said. “But, if you want, you can get
some dishes from the cupboard.”
They looked into the cupboard and said, “Grandpa, are those dishes
clean?”
“They’re as clean as cold water can make ‘em,” he said.
They put the dishes on the table and had dinner with their grandpa.
When dinner was over, grandpa collected the dishes, put them on the
floor, and walked over to the door. He whistled out the door and he yelled,
“Here Coldwater! Come here, boy!”
There’s quite a view from up there. I imagine you can see the ocean on a
clear day.
Views like that are inspiring. They give us the really big picture that
we don’t ordinarily see. The slight feeling of danger amplifies our knowledge
of our own mortality. It intensifies our sense of the importance of what we
see. It can turn a vista into a vision of what is possible. Awe can do the same
thing.
Sometimes, we have what are called “mountain-top” experiences for the
very same reasons, but you don’t have to be on a mountain-top to have them.
Those mountain-top experiences are internal.
Some of us remember our baptisms in this way. Many of us don’t. We were
too young to remember them.
But remember them or not, the result is just the same.
Baptism is a gift. We never earn it. We can’t fully understand it or
deserve it. It is a gift of God’s grace, God’s unearned love for us.
It is water and the Word of God that accomplishes the gifts of
forgiveness, of freedom from death and all the forces that defy God, and of
everlasting salvation to all who believe these things that God has promised.
Paul writes, in Romans 6:3-4,
3 Do you not know that all of us who
have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore
we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in
newness of life.
It is the Holy
Spirit that enables us to receive these things. The Holy Spirit is like “a
spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Cold water.
One of the passages
from the Bible that uses the image of “streams of living water” as a metaphor
for the Holy Spirit is John 4:5-14
5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the
plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s
well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well.
It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to
her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone
to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman
said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of
Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus
answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to
you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you
living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you
have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are
you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons
and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to
her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but
those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The
water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to
eternal life.”
Well water is cold water.
Our baptism is usually accomplished in cold water. Some people are
baptized in river water because it moves, it is what people in the time of
Jesus called “living water”. Some are baptized by pouring, a method that is
also one of the earliest depicted in Christian art. The water is cold, but it
brings life.
Some churches have baptistries that allow full emersion baptism and they
are sometimes heated. I proposed putting one into the new worship and
administration building we built when I served as a pastor in San Dimas. I
don’t think that the amount of water matters; baptism is the water and the
Word. But I think that full-immersion baptism is a better image of dying and
rising, while not being necessary for a valid baptism.
But, we decided not to install a baptistry.
We didn’t install it because the mechanical engineer in our congregation
told our committee that putting in a baptistry is viewed by the County of Los
Angeles as installing an indoor swimming pool and requires all kinds of special
piping and regular inspections. And it’s expensive! We ran water piping outside
and capped it off near a rose garden for when we had the funds to build it,
instead.
Actions have consequences.
The presence of the Holy Spirit and the gift of Baptism have
consequences for our lives. That cold water with the Word, makes us a new
Creation by the grace of God. We are born again; our lives are made new in the
faith that is also God’s gift to us. The consequences of newness of life in
Christ include lives lived for the sake of others within the congregations
where we serve, and how we treat people within the whole people of God and
among all people in need, who are our brothers and sisters.
Jesus
said, in Matthew 10:40-42,
40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and
whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever
welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward;
and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will
receive the reward of the righteous; 42 and whoever
gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a
disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
What has cold water done for us lately? Everything.
We live in response to what God has done in the world. We act toward
those who are little in the faith and little in years, because worldly status
means nothing.
We are children of God, baptized in cold water so that we might see the
big picture that God reveals to us in the Word and the Sacraments.
We are baptized in cold water so that we might be awakened to newness of
life.
We are baptized in cold water and as a result we are born again, we are
servants of others in the name of Jesus Christ.
“What does Baptism mean for daily living?”, 16th Century
Church reformer Martin Luther asked. He replied, “It means that our sinful
self, with all its evil deeds and desires, should be drowned through daily
repentance; and that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in
righteousness and purity forever. St. Paul writes in Romans 6: ‘We were
buried therefore with him by Baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of
life.’”
