Matthew 8:27: And the men marveled, saying, What kind of man is this, that even the winds and sea obey Him?

Water has a complex significance in the Bible. On the one hand, water is essential to life. Without water, plants dry and die. Without water, human life withers and fades away. The biblical picture of an ideal world is Eden, always described as a well-watered place, and redemption is often pictured as the Lord pouring out water in dry places to make them fertile. Water is life.

Water is also death.

In the days of Noah, the whole world drowns in water, and at the Exodus Pharaoh and his armies drown in the sea. David often describes the hordes of enemies that surround him as waves of water from which he needs to be rescued, and the boat that Jonah was sailing in almost capsized until Jonah was tossed out and floated to the depths of the mountains. Water is life; water is also death.

Of course, these two apparently contradictory meanings of water often come together in baptismal passages. The waters that drowned the wicked of the world that then was also sprinkled Noah and his family as they floated in safety to a new creation. The same water that drowned Pharaoh and his armies became a means for rescue for Israel. Jonah went to the depths of the sea, but the Lord brought him back to dry land in a dramatic image of death and resurrection. In these baptismal passages, the waters of death become the waters of life. Death becomes the passage to new life, because of the Lord who rules the wind and the waves.

From the first pages of Scripture, the Lord is revealed as the Lord of the waters. Creation is a hydraulic project. Yahweh creates a water-world, and then spends the first half of the creation hauling water around, first hauling some up to the sky and then dividing the waters from the dry land. To say that Yahweh is the Lord of the waters is to say He is the Lord of life and death, the Lord who brings life through death.

That’s what is happening to your daughter today. As she passes under the waters, she is passing through the Red Sea, going through the flood. As she passes under the waters, she is being rescued from death in her father Adam and being brought into the abundant life of the Last Adam, her brother Jesus. And this happens because Jesus is active here at this baptism. Jesus is Yahweh, the one who rules the winds and the waves, the one who calms storms, the one who delivers from the waters of death and gives the water of life, which is His Spirit.

That happens here once for all. Catherine passes through the waters to the other side. But this event today is also a promise that she can hold to throughout her life. She has passed through the waters of death, she has crossed in the storm, and she has reached safe haven. And she can be confident that no storm will come that will undo that. She will still experience storms, that is guaranteed. But no storm will harm her, because she is with Jesus, because Jesus, the true Baal, the Lord of the storm, is with her.