Sweet Has Christ Made the Bitter Waters

At the Easter Vigil, we heard again how our spiritual fathers crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. The readings for the days immediately following Easter continue the narrative; freed from bondage, on the other side of the Red Sea they found themselves in a wilderness. They grew thirsty, but the waters they came to were bitter. They called the place Marah – Hebrew for “bitter.”

The people complained, blaming Moses and Aaron for their problems. But the Lord showed Moses a tree. When the tree was cast into the bitter waters of Marah, the waters were made sweet.

That event was a type, a biblical foreshadowing of what we celebrate today on this important, but often neglected, feast – the Annunciation. Marah—bitter waters—are made sweet by a tree. The blessed virgin to whom Gabriel comes is named Mary. Like every woman, her maternal waters are bitter, for every child born of woman is born under the law, born under the curse; we are sinful from the time we are conceived in our mother’s bitter womb.

But Mary – the woman of bitterness – is not like other women in her childbearing. Her Child is not born of blood, nor of the will of a husband, nor of the will of the flesh; her Child is born of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit. Her bitter waters are made sweet by grace, by the Word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit that overshadows her and brings about the conception, the incarnation of the Son of God.

He was born for the purpose of coming to that tree, to bearing the awful load of the cross. By that wood, by that wonderful tree, the bitter waters are made sweet; human nature is in Him redeemed, restored. It was for this reason that He was born – that He might take man’s bitterness, lostness, sinfulness, anger, sorrow, and dismay, and by means of that tree, convert the bitterness to sweetness. The sweet thing about Easter is not the chocolate and candy, but the resurrection. By the wood of the cross, human nature is brought to the resurrection, prepared for the Ascension, where our own High Priest goes with His blood into the Holy Place, and our human nature is brought into the presence of the Heavenly Father, the Living God.

So they all hang together – conception, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension. All actions by our loving God designed to turn the bitterness of our world, the bitterness of our lives, the bitterness of our hearts, into sweetness. That sweetness we taste in the blessed Sacrament. In that holy, wondrous food and drink, the wood of the cross is cast upon the bitter waters of our souls, and they are made sweet – cleansed, restored, forgiven. 

Happy annunciation day! Merry Christmas! Blessed Easter! Alleluia! He is conceived! He is born! He is crucified! He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

~Pastor E, March 25, 2008

I have been trying to take this in for a while now, oft longing for it read to me so that it could fall upon my ears not in the stumbling voice with which I read, hesitant in trying to find the meaning or the proper emphasis, but with a voice of understanding and confidence.

It is an example of a portion of the Gospel that is elusive to me.  I mean, when I hear my life is hidden in Christ, I know this to be true, but I do not really understand it.  Here, surely, I know that Christ has made our life sweet, but what does this really mean?  What does it mean that He took our humanity before the Father, but a humanity that is whole and pure and without blemish or spot?  And what does it really mean that He was fully human in the fully-human-yet-fully-god confession of our faith?

I know this sounds incredibly stupid, but, while I cannot quite wrap my mind around the concept, I have come to the astonishing (for me at least) conclusion that the sweet, sweet Gospel is not about faith at all, at least not about human faith.  The new parish pastor has a broken record with me:  stop looking at your faith.  He ought to just make up business cards and hand one out to me each time I see him.  Uhm, excuse me, Pastor, sir, but my entire Christian life, apart from this wild journey into Confessional Lutheranism, has been precisely about my faith.  How in the bloody world can you tell me to ignore it?

He is not saying that faith does not matter, I am sure.  But that my faith does not amount to a hill of beans.  The other day someone tried to tell me the same thing, but I did not understand much of what he was saying and my confusion made me more upset than I already was.  It sounded to me that he was saying that it didn't matter if I read the bible morning, noon, and night.  Doing so would not strengthen my faith.  But I cannot believe this was what he was trying to tell me.  Why can I not understand this?

Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus.  This is all you get in confessional Lutheranism.  Oh, to be sure, the Law in all its terrible, crushing, death is there, for if we had not the Law, beneath which we fail so miserably for we (in Adam) chose sin and death over life, there would be no need for Jesus.

In thumbing through the stacks and stacks of bible study notebooks from years on end, I am not finding Jesus much.  Just notes and notes and notes about all the "commands" He gave me to live and how I might do so and where I am failing and how I might be more successful at my faith.

How, in this moment, is it that Jesus makes my bitter waters sweet?  How, in my wretched heart, my weak and weary heart, my confused and dense heart, can I actually be declared faithful?

SIGH.

Lord, I am Yours.  Save me!