Sermon: Making Holy Water

2015 September 13
by Rev Ana Levy-Lyons

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Human Powered Water Skiing

Imagine a desolate, rocky place with no TV, no Facebook, no Twitter, and cellphone service that barely works. There’s no hot water except for occasional showers, which are strictly rationed. There are no cars, no subway, and nowhere to go anyway. You’re trapped there for a whole week. You’re separated from the nearest glimmer of civilization by six miles of deep, cold ocean. Escape is impossible. Even El Chapo wouldn’t stand a chance.

 

I’m not making this up, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen and others, this is real. This was the fate that befell me and my family and about fifteen other First U members this summer. I think I can speak for all of us who were there when I say that it was pure bliss. We were on Star Island, where I had been invited to go for the first time to serve as minister of the week.  Star Island is an island off the coast of New Hampshire that is home to a Unitarian Universalist retreat center. Several families of our families go every year and spend a week together, just hanging out, reading, making music, going to workshops, walking on the rocks and sitting and watching the ocean rise and fall. The kids play, the grown-ups play. Everyone is pretty much unplugged, de-wired, and connecting, not virtually, but actually face-to-face with one another and with the natural world.

 

Being on an island like this, there is no “entertainment” as such. At least nothing provided by multinational corporations and tailored to the ease, taste, and preferences of us, the audience. If we wanted to be entertained, we had to create the entertainment ourselves. And create it, we did. There were various talent shows and musical performances put on by the people there that were way better than any TV show or YouTube video. And then there was the waterskiing. Not with a motorboat. Please. This was human-powered waterskiing.

 

Basically you take a wooden board out into the ocean a ways out from the shore. The would-be water skier gets on top of it and someone in the water hands him or her the end of a long, long rope. That rope stretches all the way to the beach, where about ten people, adults and kids, are holding the other end. When the water skier is ready, perched on the floating board and holding the rope, somebody counts to three, and all the people holding the rope on land begin running as fast as they can away from the water. The rope pulls tight and pretty soon the water skier is water skiing! Trying to stay balanced on the board while the people on land pull him through the water.

 

Some people, like my 5-year-old son, fall off right away and just swim the rest of the way, glowing with pride. Others ride the board standing, like a surfer, all the way in to shore to wild applause. I know this may be hard to picture. Would you like to see a dry land demonstration of how that works right here in the sanctuary? [demo here]

 

Here’s the thing: if the rope had been pulled by paid staff people or had this been conventional, old-fashioned water skiing with a shiny motor boat and expensive water skis, it might still have been fun, but I believe that it would have been spiritually flat. The thing that made this so special was that it was created by the people. Everybody who got to ride also pulled for others. And there were some who pulled who didn’t even want to ride. They just did it for the joy of participating and creating something together. To see the happy excitement on the faces of the water skiers and to know that they had done this together with nothing more than a board and a rope. The whole was far greater than the sum of its parts. And that whole – the camaraderie, the selfless giving, the sparkling energy, the collective chutzpah of such a ridiculous idea brought to fruition in that moment – was magical. Holy, even.

 

Hymn: 1064 Blue Boat Home (teal hymnal)

 

Making Holy Water

What makes water holy? Most of the religions of the world have some concept of holy water – water with the power to clean us, not only our bodies but our souls, water that blesses or nurtures us and brings us closer to the divine. For Catholics, holy water is water than has been specially blessed by a priest. For Hindus, the Ganges River and other rivers are considered holy, each connected to a Goddess. In Judaism to make a mikveh, or ritual bath, you take pure rainwater, pour it into a basin with stone walls, and make sure that it’s flowing, not still. This water is considered so holy, so spiritually charged, that nothing can ruin it. Even if you were to throw a pig into it (which I don’t recommend), it still keeps its purity and potency. Holy water, in all these traditions, has power. Just as water conducts electricity, it’s also a medium for transmitting blessing – the juicy goodness of life.

 

And what about Unitarian Universalists? Can we get in on this holy water thing? What, if anything, makes water holy for us? To the extent that Unitarian Universalists can agree on a theology, it entails the idea that the holy is to be found in the collective. The “illuminated moment of our gathering.” That when we come together, when we each bring a piece of our authentic selves to the community, we create something far greater than the sum of our parts. That something greater – that ineffable sparkle of electricity – is what some of us call God. And so, for us, I believe that holy water is water that all of us make together. It’s water that sparkles with the energy of a little bit of each of us, a little bit of each of our experiences, our history, our stories, our hopes, our love. It’s where the one includes the many and the many become one.

 

Making holy water is what we’re going to do in our water ceremony today. We are each going to pour a little bit of our water into the two basins in our two side aisle chapels and to this beautiful baptismal font from 1853. The water that results, probably part salt-water, part fresh water, some chlorine, millions of microorganisms, molecules from New York and molecules from far away, atoms from the age of the dinosaurs, that water will reflect the diversity of all of us. This water will be greater than the sum of what we pour into it. This water will hold a spiritual charge because it has been charged with love from each of us. And this water is water that we together will pronounce holy.

 

What are we going to do with this holy water? Well, first we’re going to boil it. I assure you, this will not diminish its holiness in any way but it will diminish the headcount of the microorganisms in there. And then we’ll use this water to bless people. We will use it in our baby dedication ceremonies here at First U, right from this baptismal font as it was intended. When we touch that water to a baby’s head, it will transmit the blessing from each of us in this room to the baby. And when one of our gathering is ill or dying, if they would like it, they can also be touched with this holy water and receive our blessing.

 

What is it to give a blessing? It’s to give a part of yourself – part of your own internal electric charge. It’s to say, “Here. Here’s a little bit of me that can become a little bit of you. It can strengthen you, connect you a little more to the universe. Because of course I am made of the little bits of everyone and everything that came before me. Here’s a little bit of my love; a little bit of the juicy goodness of life as I experience it that I am sharing with you.”

 

At the end of this year, we’re going to save a little of our holy water to include in next year’s holy water, so each year will also include molecules from each of the past years. If we do this for the next hundred years, your water will still be there, however diluted, taking part in making the blessing. Babies born to people not born yet will receive your blessing. Elderly people in their final days on this earth will receive your blessing. You may even receive your own blessing some day.

 

So now I invite you: lift up your container of water – and if you’ve brought just one for your family, all of you touch it together – lift up your water and bless it. Fill it up with your best prayers and visions for our world, saturate it with your you-ness and then, when you’re ready, stand up, walk it up to the front and let it go. Ushers are here to help you if you need it.

 

[Water ceremony]

 

This water we have made into holy water. May all whom it touches receive the blessing and the love of this gathered community.

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