Living Water (A Review of the March/ April 2005 edition of Horizons
Magazine)
by
Viola Larson
The March/April issue of _Horizons_ has ‘water” as its theme. Many of the
writers as well as the editors look at problems associated with
globalization, corporations and the needs of various people groups to have
there own safe water. However, in this new issue of _Horizons_, Jesus as the
giver of living water is barely visible while the issue of how churches or
Christians can help with the problems connected to the need for safe water
is not addressed with enough care or discernment.
The theme ‘water” in a Christian magazine leaves the Christian reader
believing they will read articles about Jesus Christ! That is a symbolically
rich word. The article, ‘The Flood Prayer,” is beautiful and relates water
to baptism in the church. Gratefully, the story of salvation is found here
in the article. And yet, this article along with the article, ‘From Water to
Table,” by Paul Galbreath and Jane Rogers Vann, simply turns the reader’s
attention to God as creator and to baptism, not small subjects, but we are
not encouraged to marvel at the very person of Jesus Christ. In deed, the
article, ‘Joining Together,” by Janice Sikes Rogers eliminates Jesus from
thought or ritual. The unique Son of the Father is surprisingly absent from
one of his own symbols. Because this particular issue of Horizons focuses on
what we can do as Christians, it is so necessary to first lay a foundation
in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus as the foundation is important
for two reasons: It is only in our union with him that we are able to truly
work the works we are called to, and because of our union with him we
receive the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who guides us, once again
turning our attention to Jesus and his words. It is also the Holy Spirit who
comforts and gives discernment in the midst of evil.
Insight about Jesus’ connection with the symbol of water is powerfully shown
in the Gospel of John. Beginning with chapter seven, John focuses on Jesus’
interaction with the symbols of the Feast of Tabernacles. Lesslie Newbigin,
in his commentary, _The Light has Come: an Exposition of the Fourth Gospel_,
explains the significance of this festival as it relates to Jesus. He
writes:
This was the most popular of the annual festivals and drew vast crowds to
Jerusalem. It was originally the celebration of the completion of the
harvest, but it had become filled with a strong element of eschatological
expectation. It was a foretaste of the age to come, of the final harvest.
Its central ceremonies made use of the symbolism of water and light. Each
day water was drawn from the pool of Siloam and carried up to the temple in
procession, while the words of Isaiah12:3 were sung (With joy you will draw
water from the wells of salvation.”) The prophecy of Zechariah 14:8 that
‘on that day” living waters would flow out from Jerusalem was recalled. And
at night the temple courts were brilliantly lit uprecalling the preceding
verse (Zech. 14:7) with its promise of unending daylight.1
Jesus uses these ceremonies, the one of light and the one of water to
proclaim to the people that he was fulfilling their eschatological
expectations. After the feast Jesus states that he is the light of the world
in the same temple area where, ‘during the festival, lamps were lit which
illuminated the whole Temple area and even the houses beyond.”2 More
important to _Horizons’_ theme of water, John writes that Jesus stood on the
last day of this feast and cried out, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to
me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, from his
innermost being will flow rivers of living waters. (John 7:37,38). The
people at the festival understand, though many did not believe, that Jesus
was claiming to be the Christ who would give them life. And certainly the
ability to walk in hard and desert places following Jesus, submitting to his
commands, flows from this gift of rivers of living waters, the Holy Spirit
that Jesus gives to those who believe in him. (John 7:39; Titus3: 4-8) Only
in our relationship to Jesus, as adopted sons and daughters of his Father
can we draw water from the wells of salvation.
Jesus also offered living water to the woman who came to the well at
Samaria. To her he said, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who
says to you, Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have
given you living water.” (John 4:10) Jesus further told her, ‘whoever
drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water
that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to
eternal life.” (John 4:14) R. V. G. Tasker in his commentary on John,
points out that the Samaritan woman is seeking physical water and even when
Jesus tells her that his water will cause her to never thirst again she
thinks of it as something magical.3 But Jesus exposes her sin and allows her
to understand that, ‘true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and
truth.” With this she sees him as the Christ and eagerly goes to tell those
in her city of the Messiah. It is on the basis of her faith in Jesus Christ
that she reaches out to others. It is for the sake of Jesus Christ and
others that she exposes herself to those who probably shunned her. The
Samaritan woman is transformed and called because of Jesus who gives her
living water.
Drawing on the theme of water the editors have provided many articles on the
need for safe and cheap drinking water for various people groups and
nations. One article, ‘Living water for the World,” by Steve Young, is
notable. It is the story of how a water purifying system was developed and
promoted by Christians in the Synod of Living Waters. It has been used
effectively in ‘Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, Haiti and Belize.” A
church related water purifying system that helps the poor and offers the
gospel is commendable. Several articles, ‘Nothing Sacred: the Privatization
of Water,” by Molly Graver, ‘The Water War” by Mariela Ribera and ‘Water,
Water, Everywhere?” deal with the political problems of people who do not
have enough access to a source of clean and cheap water.
The authors of these articles cite several corporations who have been given
private rights to provide water systems for various countries and sell the
water to the people. Some of these corporations have, evidently, done a very
poor job and have charged excessive amounts for water that rightly belongs
to the people and their nation. The problem with these articles is not the
fact that they point out the dishonesty and sinfulness of some corporations,
but that they are advocating that Christian believers buy into other strange
ideologies as a corrective to this problem. Some of the ideological groups
the editors are suggesting as good places to find resources connect with the
very radical on the far, far left. The Polaris Institute is one case in
point. They are a covering group for many groups protesting many causes.
They not only link to the popular and reasonable Sierra Club but also to a
group of Anarchists. Having left Jesus mostly out of the picture they are
counting on strange helpers.
One is reminded of the history of Israel’s failure to follow Jehovah. In the
second chapter of Jeremiah we are told, ‘My people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves
cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2:13) Not only are
we called to come to the fountain God has provided but we are not allowed to
build our own cisterns, to create our own way of salvation. All that we
build, false idols, false ideology, false theology is broken and will not
hold water. The sins that God is pointing out in this chapter of Jeremiah
are mainly two: following after false gods and harming the ‘innocent poor.”
The text in this chapter mostly focuses on Israel’s continual idolatry but
in verse thirty-four the prophet states, ‘also on your skirts is found the
lifeblood of the innocent poor.” These two sins, following after false gods
and harming the ‘innocent poor, are not really separate issues with God. One
follows from the other.
A case in point: in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century so
many variants of philosophy, ideology and theology were forming, changing
and gathering followers that moral and theological confusion was rampant.
Most could not have predicted what great totalitarian movements were looming
on the horizon, nor could many have understood that their own easy
relationship with the prevailing culture would connect them to such evil.
Who could know that groups advocating for nature or health or ethnic
spirituality would turn evil. But, doctors in Germany who, before the time
of Hitler, advocated for the right to die ended up choosing those who would
die in gas chambers. And the influx of nature worship, spiritualism and
ancient paganism at the beginning of the twentieth century fed into a racism
which by the thirties became a racist paganism determined to destroy both
the Jewish people and the Church. Social Gospel Preachers in America who
advocated for eugenics both in the early twentieth century never dreamed
that that crusade would end with the attempted annihilation of a whole
race.4
When utopia is in the air many who call themselves Christian fail to be
Christian. False deities and ideologies mixed with good intentions can still
place innocent blood on worshiper’s clothes. The important point is we also
are living in a time when many differing groups and ideologies are competing
for attention. Both Communists and Fascists fought against each other in the
streets of Berlin before the triumph of Nazism. Both groups were
anti-Christ. Today we have groups, some listed on the Polaris Institute web
site, fighting against WTO in the streets of Seattle and elsewhere. We
cannot know, since they do not have Christ as their center, what shape any
of these groups will take in the years to come and discernment is necessary.
As a final and important reflection, in the last issue of _Horizons_, Janice
Cantron wrote on the coming Presbyterian Women’s Gathering, ‘Creation,
Celebration,” and I critiqued her very bad translation of John 1: 1-4a. The
actual correct translation in the New Revised Standard Version is:
In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through
him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being
in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (Verse 2 is
included here.)
Thankfully, in her new article on Creation she translates those verses using
the masculine pronouns, thus putting the incarnation back into the text. In
her commentary Cantron writes, ‘John stresses that Jesus, the Christ who
came into the world fully and completely as a human being, was also fully
and completely Godand always had been.” (39) However, on the back of the
new issue of _Horizons_ the editors have allowed the verse to be printed
without the pronouns, thus once again eliminating the incarnation from the
text. That is, they have once again written, ‘In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things came into
being through [God], and without [God] not one thing came into being. What
has come into being in [God] was life, and the life was the light of all
people.” (Brackets part of translation.) The editors have simply eliminated
the Greek masculine pronouns for Jesus and added God in their place
eliminating the importance of the incarnation to this text. But, the proper
way to paraphrase the text would have to be, ‘All things came into being
through Jesus Christ, and without Jesus Christ not one thing came into
being. What has come into being in Jesus Christ was life, and the life was
the light of all people.” The editor’s text is blasphemy because it
eliminates Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of the Father thus denying the
earliest confession of the church, ‘Jesus is Lord.”
________________________
1. Lesslie Newbigin, _The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth
Gospel_, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1982) 91.
2. _Ibid_., 102.
3. R.V.G. Tasker, _The Gospel According to John,_ _Tyndale New Testament
Commentaries,_ reprint (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press 1995), 76.
4. Robert Jay Lifton, _The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology
of Genocide_, paperback edition, A new preface by author, (no city: Basic
Books 2000); George L. Mosse, _The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual
Origins of the Third Reich,_ (New York: Schocken Books 1981); Christine
Rosen, _Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenic
Movement_, (Oxford University Press 2004).