Living Water

Baptism as a Way of Life, 2nd Edition

Klara Tammany

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781640654600
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

The second edition of a classic designed for baptismal preparation and relevant to all Christians.

A program for adult Episcopalians that can easily be adapted to other denominations, one-on-one spiritual mentoring, children, young adult, or intergenerational groups, and even to individuals for private meditation.

The eight group sessions in this book focus repeatedly on water, first as a natural element necessary to life, then as a symbolic element necessary to spirituality. Gradually, through prayer, song, scripture, silence, poetry, visual arts, storytelling, group discussion, and personal reflection, water—as a baptismal element—gains ascendancy. No longer merely occasional refreshment, Living Water inundates, becoming life's very medium.

July 18
I found our nest! It is on the leeward side of a tiny island on the other side of the lake, by a marshy, undeveloped area. I was out in the kayak going around the shore. Just around a bend, was surprised by the sight of the nest with the loon on it, right in front of me! The loon had her neck pulled down level with the ground, hiding behind the grasses. I wish I had remembered to take a camera! It is late to be nesting. Guess it’s a second try this year.

Session Two

Do you believe in God the Father?
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?

Gathering

Arrange a collection of crosses around the bowl of water.
Be sure to have at least one for each person.

OPENING SONG: Glory to God

This is a song for two groups to sing in two parts that almost, but not quite, echo one another.

Sing it through at least three times.

Glory to God;

Praise to the Son;

Love to the Spirit;

Three and yet One.

— John L. Bell, Iona Community, Wonder, Love, and Praise, #821

JOHN 4:1–30, 39–42 The Samaritan Woman at the Well

This story works well as a dramatic reading, with different readers for the narrator, the Samaritan woman, Jesus, the disciples, the Samaritans.

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard,

“Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”

—although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—

he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria.

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar,

near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey,

was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her,

“Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him,

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

(Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her,

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

The woman said to him,

“Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.

Where do you get that living water?

Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well,

and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

Jesus said to her,

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,

but 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.”

The woman said to him,

“Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty

or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus said to her,

“Go, call your husband, and come back.”

The woman answered him,

“I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her,

“You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;

for you have had five husbands,

and the one you have now is not your husband.

What you have said is true!”

The woman said to him,

“Sir, I see that you are a prophet.

Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain,

but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus said to her,

“Woman, believe me,

the hour is coming when you will worship the Father

neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know,

for salvation is from the Jews.

But the hour is coming, and is now here,

when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,

for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit,

and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him,

“I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ).

“When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”

Jesus said to her,

“I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Just then his disciples came.

They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman,

but no one said, “What do you want?” or,

“Why are you speaking with her?”

Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city.

She said to the people,

“Come and see a man who told me everything

I have ever done!

He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

They left the city and were on their way to him.

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the

woman’s testimony,

“He told me everything I have ever done.”

So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him

to stay with them;

and he stayed there two days.

And many believed because of his word.

They said to the woman,

“It is no longer because of what you said that we believe,

for we have heard for ourselves,

and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

PSALM 63:1–8

At the end of each sentence or phrase followed by a line space, have the group speak together “O God, you are my God.”

O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you, my ...