Since ancient Christendom, the fluvial baptism of Christ has been celebrated in the Feast of Epiphany, of Theophany: acknowledging that moment when disciples bore witness to the trinitarian revelation… in a river. The disciples knew well of the Spirit hovering over the waters whilst out of chaos came cosmos, knew that waters flooded Noah’s world and drowned Pharaoh’s soldiers, and knew of the bitter waters of Marah that were sweetened.  A desert people so parched for the Water of Life… soon they would watch their teacher walk on water, still the sea, and -- like the prophets -- send wounded to water for healing. Yet the Godhead ‘so loved the cosmos’ that this immersion of Christ in the Jordan was not merely a moment for humans, but for all of Creation. Water of Life required by all. And so, in some art of ancient Christendom all creation strains in anticipation, in mutual participation of this watershed moment, in bearing witness to something that will change everything. Including the River itself: that body that holds, that washes over and around, the One Who Saves.

 

Is this something we have forgotten: that humans are co-recipients, co-participators? Are we attending, as the Psalmist urges, to the speechless voices that “go out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world”?  or are we -- worse than not attending -- impeding those voices? How can humans better co-operate as co-creations, navigate an antiphonal way of worship in this diverse cosmos? How might we -- in a century of increasing flood and drought and pollution -- better traverse these increasingly urgent theological questions? How can art help us become better practitioners, better disciples, better witnesses to the God of all of Creation? Can it deepen our understanding of our commission, slake our thirst for inclusion, show us better how to gather at the river to remember what we’ve forgotten… so that we might love the Cosmos too?

 

Let everyone who hears say ‘Come’;

Let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes

take the water of life as a gift.

Rev 22:17