Baptism and Mikvah

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Juli Belian

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale

December 8, 2024—2 ADVENT YEAR C

And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. – Luke 3:3

We may think of the baptism of John as something new in its time, something kind of weird and radical, but ritual immersion has been a part of Judaism since at least the time of Moses. Exodus records God commanding Moses to build a basin in the temple where the priests were required to wash their hands and feet before they offered sacrifices of atonement, “lest they die.” The priests had to be ritually clean to serve at the tabernacle, and all worshippers who had become ritually unclean had to restore their relationship with God and their community by immersing their whole body in fresh, ritually clean water before entering the temple. Orthodox and Conservative Jews today, and even Reform or Reconstructionist Jews, still immerse in a mikvah before or after important life events, while Chasidim men immerse themselves daily before prayers. The place in which they immerse themselves, as I said, is called a mikvah, and it is perhaps the most crucial part of any Jewish community, so important that Rabbi Lesches advises that a synagogue should secure a mikvah before any other physical property, even selling Torah rolls or other precious items to fund its construction.

Those of us who have Jewish friends or know something about the practices of our Jewish brothers and sisters may know that a mikvah is built into the ground as an integral part of the synagogue or temple building. Mikvot (plural for mikvah) look rather like very large bathtubs, but they are not meant for bathing for physical cleaning. In fact, a worshipper must clean themselves physically before being allowed to step into the waters of the mikvah, which is there to purify them spiritually. If we were to view pictures of mikvot, all shiny with mosaics, it still might be reasonable for us to think that John is introducing something very different here with his energetic dunking of folks in the Jordan River. Reasonable, but wrong.

The mikvah we know of – tiled and solidly built into the ground – is only one way that a person can satisfy the requirement of ritual immersion. You can use any of several kinds of water sources. Least preferred is the water of pits, the water of cisterns, the water of ditches, the water of caverns. It still can count – it’s water from a natural source – but it is not moving; it has simply collected in a vessel. Somewhat better is immersing yourself in a place like that while the rain is still falling from the sky, so that the water is still gathering when you immerse yourself.

One step further up are waters collected in a large cistern, large enough to hold more than one person, allowing “persons to immerse themselves and immerse others.” In second place is water in a fountain; the motion of the fountain waters cleanses the still water you add to the fountain. But the very best water for purifying oneself, for a proper ritual bath or mikvah, is living water, which is to say, water that runs freely, such as rivers or the ocean.

Once we know this, we know that John is working within a well-established cultural environment, where those to whom he declares the coming kingdom are saturated with comprehension of what he is doing and what it means. We, however, are still pretty dry, familiar only with the shallow meanings of the ritual. But the word itself will give us more to sink into if we are willing.

The root for the word mikvah is qavah. This root underlies words that refer to “collections” or “gatherings,” of any things; it is not specific to water. It can refer to a collection of water, or of soldiers and horses. It can refer to a caravan or a drove – to anything that gathers together. It is also the root of the word tikveh, which literally refers to a cord that attaches things together, and as a verb, it is used specifically to describe the twisting together of wool fibers into yarn, a process usually done in those days in community, a process that takes time and patience.

Tikvah and mikvah are also words used throughout the Hebrew Bible for “hope.” Thus, a mikvah or ritual immersion is not so much about the place where a community gathers for a dunking but is more about that which binds them together, like wool felts, as they patiently prepare for that which is to come.

Having learned these things, my reading into the requirements for a mikvah became much more interesting, even poetic, as the rules governing the gathering of water took on extra layers of meaning. Listen with me to some of these now, recalling at every point that for “water,” we can hear “hope”:

·       The water must flow naturally from its source, supplied by gravity. It cannot be pumped or carried by human hand.

·       Common water from a tap cannot be used as the source, because the flow is not natural, but even that which is not natural can be used to top the water up to a suitable level.

·       The water must not be permitted to pass through any vessel which could stop its flow.

·       If pipes are used to direct the rains into the mikvah, they must be straight, they cannot be made of anything unclean, and they must be open at both ends, allowing the waters to rush in of their own accord.

·       When you enter the mikvah, there must be no barrier between you and the water.

·       It must be you – only you – you naked and unadorned – who steps into the water of our community, the waters of our hope.

·       You must wear no clothes or jewelry, no makeup or nail polish, no contact lenses or glasses, no grooming products on your hair or skin.

·       You must carefully wash, removing calluses and dead skin.

·       You must clean your mouth thoroughly.

·       Every bit of you must be immersed, and so you must loose your hair and comb it thoroughly to permit the water to come between every strand of hair.

·       When you step into the water, submerge yourself in it until your entire body is under the water, your hair floating around you.

·       When you emerge, praise the God who commands us to do this.

·       Having blessed God, submerge yourself again, as many times as you wish.

Then you are bound to us, felted to be part of us, like a fiber twisted into a heavy yarn, aligned with us and with God as we wait. We gather ourselves and bind ourselves to God’s word, we align ourselves with God, and bound together in this way, we wait for God in confidence and hope – in our mikvah.

And our hope, our water, is the Lord, without whom we die like desiccated trees on an empty bank. God is not a cistern full of still water, God is the living waters that rush of their own accord from above us and all around us. We who draw our hope from God draw our buckets from the wells of living water; we will never be dried out but will always have fresh water flowing upon fresh water. We immerse ourselves in Jesus, the hope of Israel, our mikvah of living water, springing always into eternal life.

As the prophets have said, can any of the worthless idols of the nations, anyone on that list of governors and rulers with which Luke opens Chapter 3, or any of our rulers today, cause rain, or can the heavens give showers of themselves? God alone is our hope: Our fountain, our downpour, our living water, our mikvah. And John is a voice crying in the wilderness to make the pipes straight, because soon there is coming a flood from God, a flood which will reduce the mountains to nothing and fill the valleys until the whole world is a rushing tumult of hope: a mikvah.

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam asher kidishanu b’mitvotav v’tzivanu al hatvilah.” And let the people say, Amen.