O my, how cold the water was, and O, how VERY wet it felt. How it sang in his ears as he went down, down, down! How bright and welcome the sun looked as he rose to the surface coughing and spluttering!
Thus Kenneth Grahame, in The Wind and the Willows, describes the Mole’s dunking when he tumbles from an overturned boat. In Noah’s case it was the world that keeled over and the boat that sailed upright. Either way, the experience disoriented those involved.
After forty days as flotsam, Noah’s menagerie gets grounded once again and God signs on the refracted line of reliable sunlight. The rainbow remains as a fixed promise in a fickle world.
When the hands of John plunged Jesus below Jordan, how cold the water was, and how very wet it felt as it sang in his ears of the sin of those he had come to save. How bright the sun looked as he rose to the surface.
When the current of death rolled over Christ at Calvary, how cold the grave was, and how very damp it felt as it sang in his ears of centuries of defeat. Yet he dove to the lowest depth and harrowed Hell itself, and how very bright the light blazed from the Arimathean’s tomb as he rose shouting in triumph!
Peter welds all three experiences into one as he makes the death of Christ retroactive to the worst sinners on record, and the resurrection of Christ an ark sufficiently large to save even those who remained outside. The parallels are inexact: Noah’s “baptism” took forty disorienting days; Jesus’ baptism initiated them. Noah stayed dry while the world got wet; Jesus got wet to keep the world afloat. The parallels are inexact but the poetry is impeccable: Jesus saves; in baptism we join Jesus; the cold, wet water sings in our ears for the forty days of Lent as we await the brightness of Easter’s light.
Just when the Mole felt that all was lost, Grahame tells us that,
Then a firm paw gripped him by the back of his neck. It was the Rat, and he was evidently laughing – the Mole could FEEL him laughing, right down his arm and through his paw, and so into his – the Mole's – neck.
Take some time to enter the water this year, getting in touch with the tragic fact that the wages of sin is death. Do not be afraid to dive deep. At your lowest point the rainbow promises that a wounded hand will grip the scruff of your neck and you will feel the Lord laughing right down his arm and through his hand and so into your very soul as he hauls you up to life and light.
In Lenten Joy,
Doug
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