Wade in the water

God's gonna trouble the water...

I love that gospel hymn. We used to sing it on Wednesday evenings at St Patrick's. I love it because it is so simple and yet confounding. At first it seems an invitation to play (at least to these beach-raised ears), but why invite someone into troubled waters? When I sing it, not very often anymore, I find it tantalizing. Where are the waters that are still that will be troubled? All around me? My home life often seems still, or like a river, fast-moving but smooth. Lakes, at least the lakes of my New England childhood, are dark on the bottom, and unknown, even as the surface is mirror-still. My church life has always had the assumption of the stillness of a large lake - it's so large that nothing can stir it up too much.

For the past 13 years the reality of my life, home and church together, has resembled nothing so much as the ocean. We move often, change the pieces a bit: where we worship, where we learn, what we eat, like waves constantly on the shoreline. Sometimes a neap tide sweeps out and leaves what we thought to be hidden, airholes and slime trails and the imprints of waves. As a child I spent summer nights in a boathouse, where the river met the Atlantic. Spring tides, the opposite of a neap tide, would wash right up to the foundation, to the base boards! The house would rock, gently, secured in it's concrete moorings. On those sticky summer nights the spring tide felt gentle and soothing, certainly not troubling! But most frequently, the waves are just there, rolling in and rolling out.

Surely we know where this analogy is leading? Neap and Spring tides are a constant, occurring month in and month out. But hurricanes are out of the ordinary. The waves of a hurricane break foundations and change shorelines, both under the water and at the water's edge, forever. My beloved clapboard St Patrick's, where I first learned that God invites us into the water and invites us into the trouble, was washed away by a hurricane.

I don't want to speak for the people of St Patrick's, as by the time of their trouble, we had already moved on - the current of Navy life taking us away. But from afar, the troubled waters of Katrina, of homelessness, of government ineptitude were what showed that the foundations of the community of St Patrick's are solid, drilled deep in the sub-strata, and while shaken, unbroken.

In community, we all live in waters that can be troubled: by the policies of our government, the choices of our church leadership, the actions of our neighbors.

But what about as individuals? A few weeks ago the Gospel lesson from Matthew showed Peter stepping out on the smooth water, to be like the apparently calm Jesus. Peter steps out and the waters are troubled, he falters, and Jesus catches him. I'm not going to take the time to go into the normal exegesis of this passage. Rather, I was caught by the discussion at RevGalBlogPals about the troubling of the waters that occur when someone steps out of the boat. Peter steps out, towards Jesus yes, but away from his fellow fishermen. That rending of relationship causes waves. I'm not advocating NOT rocking the boat. I'm struck by the truth of the fact. We need the people who travel with us in our boats; in our boats we can weather the troubling waters.

Church people get this, on many levels. I've sat in many churches, particularly those on the eastern shore, whose ribbed naves (the very word means ship!) mirror the boats at rest in the harbor. Church people believe in communal worship and fellowship "to give us strength and courage to do the work You have given us to do." BCP p. 365 In the tradition of the social gospel, being together in worship allows us to walk into the waters of the troubled world and be the change that troubles complacency.

The Episcopal Church takes the water analogy even further. The Episcopal Church encompasses many people who are called into worship through the Book of Common Prayer. It is our communal actions in worship that define us. I was once told that I could pray anything I wanted, as long as all the congregants had the same prayer in front of them. We believe that we are made members of the family of God at baptism. We are the one member of the Anglican Communion that creates a covenant with each member at baptism. Baptism transforms us from ordinary individuals into the body of Christ, able and affirmed to do Christ's work in the world. The rubrics of our prayer book instruct that when a priest baptizes, it must be with the whole congregation as witnesses. Only in extreme need may we baptize in private. Everyone in the congregation repeats the baptismal vows together, and we repeat them again at Easter. Each time we repeat them, we firm up our boat a little more. And we compel that boat further out into the waters of the world.

My own little boat seems to be leaking a bit. I haven't had the gracious good fortune to share in a baptism or repeat my covenant at Easter in a long while. I am not buoyed enough to brave the troubled waters of our society, nor am I brave enough to delve into my own complacency.

Lord, help me to find the waters that I can wade in and be with me in troubling.