My choice of song from the Sing Praise book for 22 January. We’re still in the Epiphany season and looking at hymns and songs relating to baptism.
The phrase “water of life” is itself a very common one, not restricted to Christian theology. Even alcoholic spirits are sometimes given the same honour. At its most basic, water is an essential compound for life as we know it to exist at all, and no animal can live long without drinking it (even camels can only go a week or so without water from the plants they eat).
Water is significant in many key passages of the Bible, from the creation stories where God commands the sea not to invade the land, to the symbolic ‘river of life’ flowing out of the heavenly city. Rivers are crossed miraculously, water drawn from the rock with a holy staff, gallons of it turned into wine – and much more. The symbolism in the chorus of this short song is of baptism, where the water that is blessed and poured over the person being baptised symbolises them being cleansed of their sins and filled with the new life of God’s Spirit.
The first chant (as they are intended to be sung solo rather than as verses of a congregational hymn) starts “all you who thirst, come to the waters” and is from Isaiah 55:1, part of a series of prophesies about the reign of peace of the Messiah. When we turn to Jesus we find abundant life in him. The second, “as rain from heaven, so is God’s word, it waters the earth and brings forth life” draws on several Biblical verses rather than a single one, but the metaphor is a striking one – just as the earth will be dry and unproductive in a drought, so people are spiritually dry and unproductive if they are not ‘watered’ by the presence of God
The third chant is not about water but about resurrection, a link that’s often made, for the plunging into the waters and rising up again at baptism (which makes more sense for the ‘full immersion’ of an adult) is a symbol of resurrection from death. Christians believe that not only did Christ get physically resurrected by God, but that in itself is a promise of a new kind of life after death for all of us who have united ourselves with him.
The last chant, which perhaps should be the first, is about repentance, because normally the challenge to repentance comes before the response of being baptised. But equally, being reminded of our baptism is a prompt to note where we have fallen away from following Jesus and turn back to him.
I think this is a charming little setting of its words: very engaging and with the power to become an ear-worm in the singers and listeners. And I like all the sentiments of the verses, which are firmly based on bible quotes.
And, unfortunately for me, I can’t subscribe to addressing the water itself in this manner. If the “water” was Christ himself (perhaps as in the hymn “Bread of heaven on thee we feed” where “Bread” means Christ himself, for it is his flesh that is “meat indeed” (John 6:55)) then I would be able to give my assent – but the line clearly asks the water to bring us to Christ so logically the water cannot be Christ himself. And Christ never said “I am the water”, in the way in which John reports he said “I am the bread of life” or “I am the gate” or “I am the way” – he used water in his verbal pictures, but not that way. So I’m stuck – I can’t sing it. Sorry about that!