A sermon for South Yarra Baptist Church
Sunday March 8, 2026
In today's readings, I was struck by the theme of water...
"Where can we find water in the wilderness?" the Israelites complain to Moses -
"even slavery is better than dying of thirst!"
A woman said to Jesus,
"Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get living water?"
Both scenes are a bit dramatic - they move from the ordinary to the miraculous, from the secular to the spiritual. Both stories play with symbolism. Where there is water, there is life!
I love the story-telling in both of these...
"we may as well be in Egypt - you have brought us to a place of death"
And -
"you have no bucket!" classic.
[for the next section see bibleproject.com/videos/vocab-insight-dam-blood/]
The Hebrew term, DAM, means liquid life. "The DAM is the life." Deuteronomy 12:23
Sometimes, it is translated as blood, but it is more than that. The word is found within the related words of A-DAM (Human) and A-DAM-AH (ground). ADAMAH is the ground and from the ground the Human (A-DAM) is made. When DAM is outside of the creature, it means death. DAM is meant to be embodied to be life.
In the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, Jesus IS the bucket! He is the embodiment of life.
For people around the world of every age and enviornment, water is life.
Access to drinkable water means possibility. It is ordinary. It is also life.
When I travel, I often say I come from the driest inhabited continent, where we all learn to swim at an early age. As Aussies, living in a land of bushfired, droughts and floods, beaches and deserts, we are aware of how precious water is. In outback and rural settings, we are mindful of the water tanks. Even in urban areas, we can face water restrictions and we never leave a leaky tap for long.
This week, we have seen images of Katherine and the Daly River in the Northern Territory in flood.
Water can be beautiful and terrible, sometimes both at the same time. Water is delicate and powerful. A small leak in the roof will find any crack or low passage. Waters come from above and below. We need to drink water. We can also drown in it. We testify to discipleship in the act of baptism - being rebirthed in the water, dying and rising to new life. It is both mudane and sacred.
When I am in the field, moving well beyond the places where tourists go, I carry water filter bottles. In the Pacific, I see AusAid water tanks in many countries. In parts of Africa and Asia, I see wells and irrigation systems developed through partnerships with churches and aid agencies. Many of the other missionaries I travel with look for the mission schools and hospitals.
My first question is usually about water.
With clear water, life can flourish. Without it, illness and poverty can dominate. Flowing water means it is more likely to be clearn. Stagnant water can mean all sorts of diseases - cholera, typhoid, ziki, Hep A - mosquitoes and parasites - dengue fever and malaria.
I am 61 years young. Being an Aussie, I prefer to be called by my first name, amelia. One of the programmes I run is called the Training in Mission (TIM) programme for a dozen young adults from around the world. They come together for 6 months of formation to become globally-aware mission-oriented people.
I have had to let them call me Auntie or Aunty Amelia. They feel uncomfortable calling me by my first name. They are used to calling older people Mam or Rev or Dr... but not by their first name. Initially, I still introduced myself as Amelia, then some of them explained. At 61, I am positively ancient. Most of them don't really know people over 50, or if they do, they do not get to have conversations with them. Around the world, most developed nation leaders are over 55. Most majority world leaders are 10-15 years younger. A lot of my work is with churches developing people in their 20s and 30s to take up major leadership in their societies.
[find Tuvalu and Kiribati on a world map]
Some of these young people come from places like Kiribati and Tuvalu... in the middle of the vast Pacific. Both of these countries consist of multiple low-lying coral islands and ring-islands or atolls, characterized by water scarcity. I am reminded of Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the words: "Water, water everywhere... and not a drop to drink!"
Freshwater in Tuvalu primarily relies on rainwater harvesting via roof catchments and storage tanks, supplemented by limited, often brackish, groundwater. Due to the absence of rivers and streams, residents collect rain in household tanks. During severe droughts, desalination plants are used and the government manages water rations to ensure supply.
Kiribati has suffered the loss of its groundwater lenses. These are freshwater lenses (or bubbles) that float on the top of saltwater found beneath the surface of the atolls. Contamination from septic systems and over-extraction mean that wells are often brackish and Kiribati is increasingly dependent on foreign-developed desalination plants.
"The sea is his" said the Psalmist...
Pasifika theologians ask: "When we build desalination plants, what happens to the salt and minerals? How does the balance of Moana life change? What happens to the reefs and sea-life when we alter the ocean? What happens when we do "land reclamation" in places like Singapore, building more and more concrete city where there was once mangroves and fish?"
The current Tuvaluan Minister for Home Affairs, Climate. Change and the Environment, is Rev Dr Maina Talia. He did hus PhD in Australia and moved from being a Church Minister to representing Tuvalu at COP and the UN. He is still preaching, jusy not within the Church!
Part of the work of mission has been to decolonize mission. What does that mean?
Throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the attactiveness of "mission" for receivers of missionaries was that they would bring practical help to improve lives. Education and healthcare, tending to people's needs, has opened up conversations that have seen physical and spiritual engagement go hand-in-hand. The flipside to that strategy was that gifts of love were not made unconditionally. In many parts of the world, receiving the gospel (and its political and economic influences), were conditional to receiving aid. Missionaries were sponsored by people who also wanted economic and political control over nations, leading to forms of colonization that meant the disappearance of language, culture and independence. Land acquisition became more important than the life-flourishing of God's creatures in God's creation.
What we see now, in many countries that were "missioned" and colonized, is a history of subjugation and oppression of indigenous peoples and the migration of non-traditional "landowners" who took the wealth back to the colonizer nations, building their own economies. This has led to missionary themes of justice and reparations, such as the Legacies of Slavery Movement, that seeks to renew life in places and communities that wer impacted by the Trans-Atlantic slavetrade.
When the woman at the well talks with Jesus about worshipping on the mountain or in Jerusalem, we hear an ancient story of how religion has sometimes has been coerced by where power is located. The mountain represented the Northern Kingdom and Jerusalem represented the Southern seat of power. Access to holy places is dominated by powers. But Jesus talks of situating worship in Spirit and in Truth - not just in place or historic identity. This is a stretching... a bit like you, not placing worship in a building, but in many simultaneous places (and even time-zones)!
How do we get to the point of stretching how we live faithful lives?
Let me tall you about four young women: Taobe, Waiena, Rikee and Tatai...
Taobe is a young woman who did a World Communion of Reformed Churches internship in Germany before coming to the Council for World Mission Training in Mission programme for 6 months in the Philippines and Jamaica. She now has a Diploma in Mission and a Diploma in Ministry. Her goal is to be a global leader for Kiribati people, as they get their story into the world.
Rikee and Tatai are both women Pastors working in congregations in Kiribati. Rikee is the Presbytery Chairperson and Tata is recently ordained. Usually in Kiribati, the women get a better education that the men, because if the weather is good, the boys will skip school and go fishing. Rikee is committed to to staying on Kiribati while there are still people there who need pastoring. Tatai is committed to staying while there is still land to be tended. Both regard this as their spiritual calling.
Waiena is currently doing a PhD in Mission History at Pacific Communities University in Suva, Fiji. Why do we sponsor a (very expensive) PhD in history when the current and future needs are so great? Waiena is trying to write her nation's history while Kiribati is still there. For those who migrate, her writing may be the record of their identity - possibly yhe only written record by a Kiribati person, rather than outside anthropologists' observations. She is under pressure to record the stories of the Kiribati people before their country disappears.
One of the obstacles that prevented this kind of work in the past was the idea from simplistic missionary Sunday School lessons that taught that the rainbow tells us that God will never send another flood, so God will save us and we need not fear the ocean-rise. We have had to work painstakingly with pastors and students to reframe the undertsnding that sea-level rise is not from God, but from the sin of humanity. With that in mind, Tuvaluans have already planned for mass migration, and Kiribati people are starting to see what is likely to be in store for them.
Coral-planting
Mangrove-planting
To buy time for migrations, mitigation programmes are part of today's mission work for the churches: Coral planting and Mangrove planting. Participating in planting the corals and mangroves in the Pacific Ocean brings home the reality of climate crisis to people who come from urban and rural areas from other parts of the world.
So, how does a changing view of water impact people in other places?
Context changes everything.
How water is experienced in the desert is different from in the ocean. Yet, when people encounter the other experiences of water, they become conscious of a common humanity as they make meaning in their differences. They learn to adapt their thinking.
For people who had not experienced it before, hitting a rock and locating a spring, was unthinkable. Spending 40 years in the desert, and adapting to different conditions, prepared the Israelites for the transition from life in Egypt to life in Canaan. It was almost as if two generations of memories and traditions needed to fade into memory, for the people to adapt to the new circumstances.
We are offered a LIFE to drink living water... to adapt to the Jesus Way, instead of the world's way. We do not get to carry the tank or the bucket to control and possess the water. We get to drink directly from God's own life-giving, so that we can be part of the irrigation system to share life in the world.
When Jesus died, water and blood came out. The pouring out of the DAM, the water of life, means that there is no longer a holding together of the ground (the A-DAM-AH) in the person. Later, in the ongoing resurrection, the sharing of the body and blood, is a sharing of the DAM - the cup of Life!
As we come to share in Communion, we see this as a receiving of life, a sharing, and building life as community, and a calling to share life beyond us. We are meant to be present to LIFE itself. In the face of so much sorrow and death in the world, our calling is so important. So, I invite you today, to recommit yourselves to life-flourishing, life in abundance, sife shared in God's mission in the world.