Exodus 2:1-10
Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews' children.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
It has been said that the Bible is dripping wet. From the primeval water in the first chapter of Scripture at creation to the river of the water of life in the last chapter of Scripture in paradise, there is water, water everywhere. So often is water also in union with God's saving acts of deliverance.
The Noahic flood corresponds to baptism, the sacrament that saves you. (1 Peter 3:18-22) The crossing of the Red Sea delivered God's people from slavery and death to freedom as they were “baptized … in the sea.” (1 Cor. 10:2) Water flowed in the dessert from the Rock which was Christ, quenching the people’s thirst. (1 Cor. 10:4) Israel passed through water to enter the holy land. Cleansing from sin and idolatry God works through the sprinkling of water (Ezek. 36:25). Jesus ascribes the saving of the woman of Samaria to the water of life (John 4:14) The man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years is delivered and healed in the pool of Bethesda (John 5:2-9).
Water, water everywhere.
The Nile River was to be the watery grave of Israel’s infant sons. As we have seen recently in the Japanese tsunami, water can be too powerful for a child to withstand. Water can sweep even the strongest and greatest away. But water at God's direction delivers.
Upon the waters of the Nile God gave Moses a tiny ark. Compared to the one constructed by Noah with its massive length of 300 cubits, a width of 50 and height of 30, this small craft of Moses’ was a mere wisp of driftwood. Yet Moses was saved, not on account of the size of the vessel, but due to the mercy of God.
Hiromitsu Shinkawa is a modern day Moses, swept away along with his house ten miles out to sea by the tsunami. There he was found clinging to a fragment of his roof and was rescued, due again to the mercy of God.
I wonder if Pharaoh’s daughter realized just how momentous was the name she bestowed on this castaway upon the waters. She named him Moses because “I drew him out of the water.” The great name of Moses invokes God's deliverance again through water.
We Christians were given our names in association with water, not the water of a tsunami or the water of one of the great rivers of the world like the Nile, but the water of Holy Baptism. That water, baptismal water of itself, is simple water no different than what is used to hose down a nuclear reactor or sprinkle your lawn.
But to this water God has added the Word of His promise, “Baptism now saves you.”
Baptism binds us to Christ, a far greater adoption than that even of Moses who was taken into the palace of a king’s daughter. By our Christian water baptism we are received into the very Kingdom of God. The baptized are united to Christ and his baptism, not only that of the Jordan River but of what Jesus calls his “baptism” of distress, the anguish of Calvary where water again flowed—flowed from the pierced side of our Lord.
He, Jesus Christ, came by water and blood (1 John 5:6), the testimony of Jesus’ baptism and crucifixion which reveal the love of God for the salvation of the world.
By water we are saved. In Luther’s Flood Prayer we confess, “Through the Baptism in the Jordan of Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, You sanctified and instituted all waters to be a blessed flood and a lavish washing away of sin.” That water by which we were given the new birth is a rescue and deliverance reminiscent of Moses, yet greater even than his.
So, if ever someone belittles your faith in Holy Baptism, or calls it only a sign of your obedience to God rather than God's actual rescue of you—calling you “all wet” for your faith in this water and Word, take it as a tribute and praise God that you are — drippin’ wet.
