by Mary-Kate Burns ’16

Last summer, my brother and I went camping in Zion National Park. A tram brought us on a winding road through the park and dropped us at the head of the West Rim Trail. We snapped happily naive “before” pictures, then set off on the dirt path. For six miles, we burned our quads along switchbacks and lost our breath at overviews of pure sandstone and sky. The terrain mercifully leveled into desert forest before arriving at a clearing of dirt and rock, our home for the evening. We pitched the tent, ate large salamis and cans of beans, played cards on top of an uneven stump, and waited for the sun to set.

An overgrown trail led us from our campsite west through the brush. We followed it to the edge of the rim, and the sight on the horizon made my stomach churn. That morning, the whiteboard at the backcountry desk had reported a 30% chance of precipitation for the evening. As a massive cloud carved its path through the mighty sky toward our insignificant nylon tent, it was clear the underdog had won out this night.

The storm roared toward us like a predator, slashing claws of lightning through the dark sky. We could not escape. We were on top of a mountain without cell phone service, a daunting six-mile hike from even the sparsest civilization. The rain pummeled the sides of the tent, which started caving in on us. My brother braced his arms against the flimsy walls, but pools of rainwater encroached on us from under the tarp. After every lightning strike, I braced myself for the alarmingly close crash of thunder. Zion normally gets 12 inches of rain per year –we received a quarter of that in three hours. The next morning, we were relieved to see the sun, miraculously and mundanely, rising like clockwork. We hiked out to find sections of the trail completely washed away and half of the park closed.

I had never felt so certain that I was going to die as I did on top of that mountain. There is something scary about water, and it’s not just modern man’s fear that it will ruin his iPhone XS-Max132GB. Humanity has an ancient, primordial fear of water. We need only look to the Bible to corroborate our fears:

In Genesis, we see water flood the earth and wipe out all of creation with the exception of eight people and an ark-full of animals (Genesis 8:17).

In Exodus, the Lord hurls Pharaoh’s army into the midst of the sea. And, “not a single one of them escaped” (Exodus 14:28).

King David’s Psalms praise God, who can “still the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples” (Psalm 65:7).

Mark gives an account of a violent squall, which terrifies Christ’s disciples. “Waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’” (Mark 4:37-38).

Perish, hurl, tumult—these words are a far cry from pastoral images of calm waters and verdant pastures. As we approach Easter, how do we square these violent and untamed images of water with those baptismal images of cute babies in white dresses, trickles of water running sweetly down their foreheads?

Last year, I attended my first Easter Vigil at a church in the inner-city of Washington DC, where I lived as a missionary. The Mass was beautiful. There were candles, incense, and, to my surprise, a large kiddie pool inflated in the back of the church. That evening, seventeen children changed into t-shirts and swimming trunks and clambered into the knee-deep waters. The priest proceeded to dump buckets of water over their heads in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

To baptize means to “plunge” or “immerse.” When we are plunged into the baptismal waters, we are plunged into Christ’s own burial. The water of the sea represents the mystery of the cross, and the three submersions parallel Jesus’ three-day descent into Hell. In the common contemporary rite of the sacrament, we seem to have lost something of Baptism’s initial drama. Yet for the disciples of John the Baptist, who were plunged into the waters of the Jordan, water was more than just a symbol of death. Most of them probably did not know how to swim! To place themselves in John’s hands was an act of trust.

The water we encounter most days is controlled and reliable. We have domesticated water in kitchen faucets, garden hoses, and shower heads. But still, we are given occasional reminders that water is beyond our control. Some are wonderful, like white-capped waves pounding against a rocky shoreline. Others are horrible, like hurricanes and tsunamis that wreak devastation.

Perhaps this is the reason why water is so frightening—why I felt death was so imminent on top of that mountain in Zion National Park. Our encounters with the overwhelming power of water force us to confront our own vulnerability. The storm threw into question my easy and familiar relation to water. We can erect walls, dams, and monitoring systems to protect ourselves from water, but we remain at its mercy.

If water is vast and powerful beyond our comprehension, how much more so is God? God alone has the power to still the seas, to calm the roaring of the waves. And yet how often we think we can control God, as well! We domesticate Christ by confining him to small spheres of our lives and reducing him to the role of a benevolent teacher. We think we would be better off if we had more control. But living in Christ is the spiritual equivalent of camping on a mountain top with no cellphone service during a storm.

In this vulnerable position, Jesus calls us to have courage, to “be not afraid”—because we have hope.

If the cross had been the end of Jesus’ story, he would have been a blip in history—just some nut job who claimed he was divine and then was killed. Jesus’ death is significant because he rose again. He defeated death. Likewise, if the waters of baptism only symbolized death, it would be a useless sacrament. We don’t plunge babies into fonts and let them sink. We pull them out again! The baptized rise from the waters of death and are born into a new life. As in the Bible, water is the source of death, but there is always something on the other side: a new covenant after the flood, freedom after the Red Sea, eternal life after the Crucifixion.

Just as we are surrounded by water, our world is shot through with baptismal grace. We can hide from that grace—from what is powerful and unfathomable—and limit the world to the knowable, the safe, and the mundane. But that is its own form of death. Alternatively, we can stand exposed before the storm. Can we learn to lovingly accept what is beyond our control? To dive into deep waters?

Plunging ourselves into Christ’s death may sound horrifying, and to the world, it surely sounds insane. But we have reason to hope. When Jesus died, he gave us this promise: we will weather the night’s harsh storm to see the sun rise again upon a transformed terrain. 

Image Credit:

Paul Gorbould, Virgin River Rocks, via Flickr(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Daniel Ladenhauf, Dry Campground, via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Fr. Lawrence Lew, Op, Easter Vigil, via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Pe_Wu, Ocean Waves, via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)