Readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year B)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on Sunday May 5, 2024.
“This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.” 1 John 5:6
We continue our reading from the first Epistle of John, who highlights in his own poetic way the two great sacraments of the church: Baptism and Eucharist. Water and Blood. Jesus came to us by water in his baptism and he also came to us by blood through his crucifixion and death. Some in the early church denied Jesus’s crucifixion and death since they refused to believe in a God who could be so vulnerable. However, John insists that Jesus came not with water only but with the water and the blood. He insists on this because he himself bore witness to the crucifixion and death of Christ, whose dead body was pierced on the cross. And when he was pierced, what poured out from his side? A sudden flow of water and blood (John 19:34).[1] Jesus came to us by water and blood; and Jesus comes to us still today by water and blood.
For us Episcopalians, Baptism is more than just an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, it also is a sure and certain means by which we receive that grace. Jesus still comes to us today by water. Something holy and mysterious happens when we sanctify the water; when we pray, “Now sanctify this water we pray you by the power of your Holy Spirit.” I don’t pretend to understand this mystery, but I believe it and the experiences of mystics and Near-Death Experiencers offer some fascinating insight and perspective on this mystery; and Eastertide is an especially appropriate season to reflect on Near Death Experiences, which always fill me with hope as I continue to grieve the loss of loved ones. One person named Vincent Tolman who was clinically dead and even zipped up in a body bag for 45 min tried to describe his experience of water in the afterlife. He writes about his experience in his book The Light After Death: My Journey to Heaven and Back. He says, “Water there is fundamentally life changing. Water…approached me and asked if I wanted to experience water. And I said, ‘Yes, I want to experience everything here.’ And so, water came up over me and didn’t get me wet, but everywhere that it touched, it essentially swapped cells and gave me new cells, energetic cells. And these new cells were just full of this light. This light that was just everywhere there. And this light had love, it embodied love. I felt like I was now finally worthy of love, this unconditional love that was being poured on me this whole time. And that’s when the water went back away to its little stream, and I was just glowing in this love.”[2] And then this man’s angelic guide told him that it was time for him to return to his earthly body and that it was going to be hard but that it was going to be worth it.
When we ask God to sanctify water by the power of the Holy Spirit, I wonder if the water becomes similar to that life-changing, cell-swapping water of the heavens, if it helps make us glow in God’s love. I also wonder if we should tell those who have been baptized that living into their baptismal covenant will indeed be hard, but it will be worth it. It will sometimes be hard to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. It will sometimes be hard to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. It will be hard to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, to persevere in resisting evil, to continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.
It will be hard, but thankfully God gives us strength for our journey in the Eucharist, in the Body and Blood. Jesus Christ comes to us “not with the water only but with the water and the blood.” We get baptized only once, but we receive nourishment from the Eucharist on a regular basis. The consecrated wine, the blood, reminds us of the tremendous suffering Jesus endured for our sake so that we might be strengthened, encouraged, and transformed by his tender compassion. Jesus can empathize with us in our darkest hours of fear and anxiety and grief because Jesus experienced all these things to the point of sweating blood and then shedding blood on the cross. Jesus knows how hard it can be to let that light of God’s love shine through us authentically and persistently in a world that so easily and quickly smothers and snuffs us out. Jesus knows how hard it is to extend compassion even to those who are actively hurting us: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Jesus knows how hard it is because it was the dazzling radiance of his light of divine love that got him crucified in the first place, but that same light burst through his own body bag three days later, raising him up to new life on Resurrection Sunday. The Risen Body of Christ now becomes present to us in the consecrated bread and wine.
If the sanctified water becomes anything like the water experienced by those in the afterlife, then just imagine how much more life-changing the wine becomes when it is consecrated, consecrated as the blood? Jesus comes not only to transform us once and for all with the water of Holy Baptism but to keep transforming us on a regular basis with the Eucharist so that we grow more and more into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18). So that the biophotons that flowed in Jesus’s blood and burst him out of the tomb might flow in our own veins as well. So that we become blood brothers and blood sisters with Jesus, who said, “I no longer call you servants. I call you my friends.” It is through the water and the blood that Jesus comes to us and it us through the water and the blood that we enter into and deepen our friendship with the one who has prepared for us such good things that surpass our understanding and exceed all that we can desire. Amen.
[1] We read this on Good Friday, remember? John quotes Zechariah, “They will look upon the one they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10 / John 19:37) …and I will pour out upon them a spirit of compassion!
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 