What comes to your mind when you think about water?
The seashore? A beautiful lake? Swimming? Fishing? A cool drink on a scorching day?
If we could ask Helen Keller that question, she would probably say, "a water pump," because it was at a pump that this blind and deaf woman learned that things have names. "W-A-T-E-R," her teacher, Anne Sullivan, spelled into her hand for what seemed like the millionth time. "The thing has a name - W-A-T-E-R." And young Helen sprung to life, understanding for the first time what most of us discover as children - that things have names. She emerged a new person, knowing a new dimension of life and growth at a well that day.
At another well, on another day, Jesus said in effect, "I am the water of life" (John 4:5-42). He told the Samaritan woman that he had living water and that this would become "a spring welling up to eternal life." In still another setting Jesus said, "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink ..." (John 7:37). Water has always been important for Christians. Many of the apostles earned their living on water, as fishermen. Many of Jesus’ most famous sayings were spoken and many of his miracles were performed near or on the Sea of Galilee. Christianity began in the desert of Israel - where water means life. Most importantly, the Kingdom of God begins in a person through the Sacrament of water - Holy Baptism. Here we focus on Jesus’ words about living water, which is interpreted by the Gospel writer as the Holy Spirit. Jesus is saying, "You who have thirsted after water come now to me for spiritual water. After I am gone, I will send you the Spirit who will quench your thirst for eternal things."
Everyone thirsts for eternal water. God made us in his own image. We all have a spark of the eternal within us. The Gospel of John says that the Word, that is Jesus, was the One through whom we were created. Jesus here speaks of filling our need for the waters of life. He ought to know what we need and how to meet that need. He is the One who made us the way we are.
The Holy Spirit is a well spring of water, W-A-T-E-R, welling up to eternal life. The Spirit, S-P-I-R-I-T, creates the Church, C-H-U-R-C-H. Let us look then at the Spirit and the Church.
S-P-I-R-I-T
The Holy Spirit was given by God to keep his people close to him and to empower his people for service to others. The first task of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to a saving relationship with God in Christ, as Luther says in The Small Catechism:
I cannot by my own reason or strength come to the Lord Jesus Christ, or believe in Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith ...1
The Holy Spirit calls. We get phone calls. We make phone calls. We understand that the one making the phone call is the initiator of a conversation or relationship. Likewise, the Holy Spirit is the initiator. For example, in Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit is given to us before we have anything to give in return. Baptism is the act by which God says, "You are mine. You belong to me." We are recipients of the initiative of God who calls us in Baptism.
We have had many babies born in our parish recently. As the parents have prepared for the baptism of their children, they have had special opportunity to understand the central mystery of our faith - that baptism gives a person THE GIFT of the Holy Spirit. There is a difference between THE GIFT of the Holy Spirit which comes in baptism (and faith) and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are added to our lives as we grow. There is one GIFT, the Holy Spirit, but many gifts. The GIFT provides our essential unity as Christians. The gifts provide diversity and variety.
"The Holy Spirit enlightens me with his gifts,"2 Luther says. The gifts of God are given to spread light to our lives. Christians are given the gifts of witnessing, helping, and teaching to light up the lives of others by helping them understand God and the ways of God.
For example, one of our members who is gifted as an evangelist, recently spoke to a young woman who worked with him. He urged her to come to the church, then to a pastor’s class. She came. She was baptized recently. A gift of the Holy Spirit - witnessing - was used to light up the life of another person.
Again, one of our members told me that a pastor from Our Savior’s was the only one in Tucson to help him with a serious financial problem some years ago. Today he is on his feet, but he would not have made it if that pastor had not used his God-given gift of caring (social ministry). Thus, not only his life, but his family was enlightened at a time of great darkness.
One of our families wrote a devotional for the devotional booklet, "Knowing Him and Making Him Known." At a hospital bed recently I left that booklet, which the wife read to her dying husband. The Bible verse was Romans 8:28: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose." As the dying man heard those words, he was cheered and encouraged. The darkness of death was lightened. He then spoke his last word on earth. "AMEN," he said.
One member was gifted to write and to teach. Another benefited a short time before his death. One member’s life was enlightened by the gift of teaching of another member. That is as God has designed it.
The Holy Spirit calls us and enlightens us with his gifts. He also sanctifies us in the true faith. To sanctify means to make holy or bring us closer to God. We often grow closer to God through adversity.
A Christian family wrote:
Several years ago, our lives encountered serious turmoil and heavy burdens. It was literally destroying our family tranquility and at times we felt our relationship with God was lost. Our prayers seemed so useless at times.
This family talked to a pastor who said:
Let me tell you what has helped me all of my life. I refer to Romans 8:28: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose."
The pastor and the family prayed together. A light was provided for a dark situation. The family began putting the pieces of their lives together by the help of God. When it came time to write a devotional for their church, they wrote about Romans 8:28. It had helped them. Maybe it could help another. It did.
That’s the devotional which was referred to earlier, the one to which the dying man said "AMEN" just before he died. Sanctification is the process of growth by which the Holy Spirit works to make things work together for good - even those things which are back-breaking adversities in the lives of the people in the family of God.
Luther continues his teaching about the Holy Spirit in the Small Catechism with these words:
... even as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it in the one true faith.3
C-H-U-R-C-H
The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a denomination. The church is not an organization. The church is people.
What kind of people? Holy and sinful people, people who are baptized and given the GIFT of the Holy Spirit, people who have faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, people who are gushing forth with streams of living water to quench the thirst of other people by using their gifts for others. People, holy people, the holy people of the living organism called the church, which Saint Paul calls "The Body of Christ." The church is a living organism created by, sustained by God. Thus, it is holy.
"The one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" we say in the Nicene Creed. That holiness is given. "We are clothed in righteousness," Luther said. The Holy Spirit gives holiness to all who are baptized and believe. What is the church? Holy people in the living organism of the Body of Christ ... and sinful people.
There are many distortions in the church as it is seen by the world. After all, every congregation of every denomination is made up of sinful people. The Holy Spirit clothes us with righteousness, but we are far from perfect. Sometimes that imperfection becomes the area of temptation for "the principalities and powers" as Saint Paul calls them - those satanic tendencies toward legalism, institutionalism, and insensitivity which chase so many people out of the church.
After a recent funeral, I went back to the reception where family and friends were talking. One of the families told me that they had been away from their church for over ten years. "We really felt bad about it, but our denomination was so set on rules and regulations that we could not stay. Our children are really missing out," they said. I urged them to go back, to try it again in a different parish. They said that they would consider it. I pray that they will. Why? Because you cannot be a Christian in isolation. There is no such thing as "private Christianity."
Christianity must be personal, but it is never private. We need baptism and Holy Communion. We need the preaching of the gospel. We need one another in Christian fellowship. Every congregation and denomination must experience an ongoing reformation of its forms, its ways and its means. We must always ask how our life as an organization is bearing witness to our existence as the living organism which Saint Paul calls the Body of Christ, the Church
C-H-U-R-C-H.
The only option to the organized church is a disorganized church, and that’s not a very good option. The church as organization is a tragic necessity.4 You cannot do without it, but at times you can hardly live with it. And yet, where there is Holy Baptism, Holy Communion and the preaching of the gospel, there is the true church, the church as an organism, in which, as Luther says, "God forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers."5
"Helen, it’s a whole new world. The thing has a name," Anne Sullivan said to Helen Keller. "Water has a name." At the water pump, a little girl came out of darkness into light. She discovered water, W-A-T-E-R. A whole new world opened up to her. Spell it out: W-A-T-E-R. It opens up a whole new world to all of us. The next time you take a shower or a swim, or the next time you take an icy drink on a hot day, remember your baptism. Water is the outward element used by God to give you his Spirit and make you his Church.
Spell it out: B-A-P-T-I-S-M, God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, through water, creates and sustains the church. Spell it out: S-P-I-R-I-T. Get back to the root meaning: C-H-U-R-C-H. And a whole new world opened up to the people.
1. Martin Luther, The Small Catechism explanation of the third article of the Apostles Creed.
2. Op. cit.
3. Op. cit.
4. Ron Lavin, "The Tragic Necessity of the Church," You Can Grow In A Small Group, CSS Publishing Company, Lima, Ohio, 1976. Chapter 4.
5. Op. cit.