Sunday, November 1, 2026 || All Saints A || Revelation 7:9-17

God has blessed us, on this Feast of All Saints, to have the opportunity to share in the sacrament of Baptism today. A sacrament is a window into the deeper reality of God that undergirds all of Creation. The sacrament of Baptism helps us see this deeper reality by proclaiming the belovedness of every child of God and charging the people of the Church to nurture this beloved identity. Baptism also helps us see God’s desire to bring all of Creation back into right relationship by offering forgiveness for every way we might distort our relationships. Finally, Baptism is a ritual cleansing with water, a literal bath that invigorates us to serve God in this world: loving our neighbors as ourselves, working for justice and peace, and safeguarding creation for future generations. Since Baptism involves water, I thought we’d spend our sermon time talking about water this morning – water, this necessity for life that makes up the majority of our bodies, that we pour into our waterbottles every day, that we bathe in, swim in, splash in, and gaze upon as it stretches to the distant horizon.

Water. For us modern Americans, water is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. We take long showers, we let it run while we brush our teeth, we spray it on our lawns, we fill balloons with it and chuck them at each other. But even here, in the modern United States, there are places where water is dangerous: places like Flint, Michigan, where lead in the water has caused so much pain and hardship; places where companies dump chemicals into rivers, which literally catch on fire as a result; places where oil has spilled from ships, displaced the water, and ruined ecosystems. Over the course of history and even still today, we are in the vast minority of people who have access to safe and clean water.

Our ease of access to water makes it hard for us to enter into water’s prime place in the language of the Bible. Limited access to water was a major challenge in the life of biblical people. They lived in a desert climate. Droughts parched the land, causing famine and death. Rain came seldom and wells were prized locations. So I invite you to imagine your way into the biblical mindset of needing to know, as a matter of life and death, where your water was going to come from.

As you imagine this, here’s an illustration from Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic Dune. The Duke has just taken over colonial leadership of Arrakis, the desert planet at the center of the galaxy’s economy. Water is so scarce on Arrakis that the natives wear special suits, which reclaim every bit of water that leaves their bodies. But the Duke has come from a lush planet of forests and oceans. He has no experience with the scarcity of water. In his first meeting with the native housekeeper, he is affronted when she spits on the ground at his feet. But an advisor says to him that the housekeeper has highly honored him by giving him the gift of her personal water. What would be an insult on the ocean world is a sign of respect on the desert one.

This is the mindset I want you to be in for the rest of this sermon. There is very little water anywhere. The days are hot, the sun blazing, the ground dusty. And in this parched setting, we read the heavenly vision of the Book of Revelation:

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,nor any scorching heat;
for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life…

The Lamb – that is, Christ – will guide them to springs of the water of life. Can you see the overwhelming, paradigm-shifting promise in these words? For people with little access to literal water, the promise of infinite springs of figurative water must have hit hard. This promise sounds very much like the one Jesus makes to the Samaritan woman at the well: “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

I love that translation of “gushing,” like a geyser. No one in Jesus’ world could imagine water doing such a thing. The Greek word in the original text means to “jump” or “leap” and is used only two other times in the entire New Testament. Both times are when the disciples meet people who are unable to walk and who then leap for joy upon being healed in the name of Jesus Christ.

That is the power of the water of life. When we bathe in this water, God releases us from everything that holds us back from being the people God calls us to be. We embrace the life that truly is life: a life of deep, meaningful, and mutual relationships; a life of service to God’s reign of justice and peace; a life embracing our unique constellations of gifts from God that we can use to bless the world.

Unlike water in the desert, the springs of the water of life are always nearby. Wherever we find ourselves, we are like the Ethiopian eunuch who says to Philip on the desert road: “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36) The answer to this rhetorical question is a profound, “Nothing!” Wherever we find ourselves, we will be near a well, where so many of the heroes of ancient Israel found their partners and continued God’s promise to Abraham to make him a father of the nations. Wherever we find ourselves, we walk through the land of Isaiah’s prophecy: “For waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water” (Isaiah 35:7).

And today, we find ourselves here at this beautiful baptismal font, where in a few minutes we will pour water. Then we will bless the water. Then we will splash it on a beloved forehead as a sign of God’s love and grace. Truly, this is a window into the deep reality of God that undergirds Creation. This building block of life, a simple molecule, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, is the symbol for God’s promise to that desert people. And water is a promise for us, a window through which we see the deep reality of God’s presence in Creation. The water of life springs up in our souls, irrigating us for service to God in this world and eternal life in the next. Thanks be to God.