Earth Day Sunday 2003: Waters of Life: Enough for All

April 27, 2003 is also Rural Life Sunday. Please feel free to combine these resources and themes along with our Earth Day Sunday resources.

Waters of Life

Fresh water is one of the earth’s most precious resources. While there is plenty of water to meet human need, it is often distributed unevenly. Fresh water comprises about 2.5 percent of the world’s total volume of water. Overuse and water quality issues continually threaten existing freshwater supplies. Good water management plays a vital role in realizing the abundance of the earth’s freshwater supply.

Through the Earth Day Sunday 2003 materials, learn how you and your congregation can be a part of good water management so that all people will have access to fresh, safe water. Sermon starters, a Call to Worship, and background information are available online so that you can take action to protect the waters of life and help provide enough for all.

Sermon Starters

Water is so abundant on this planet that some believe the Earth should be called the “water” planet. In the account of Eden in Genesis 2, a river flows out of Eden to water the garden. Life and water are overflowing. God blows moist breath into the clay to bring the human to life. Water and earth are combined by God to make us humans.

Throughout the stories of the Hebrew Bible water plays a key role. When Hagar and Ishmael were sent into the desert to die. The angel of the LORD finds Hagar a spring. God opens Hagar’s eyes and she saw the well of water at Beer-lahai-roi (Genesis 21:19). There is enough water for all if we just look.

One of the first treaties or covenants between humans in the Bible is a water-use compact. After Abraham complains to King Abimelech about access to a well, they swear an oath about access to the well’s water and name the well — Beersheba — the “well of the oath” (Genesis 21:25-34).

God’s economy is always an economy of abundance, but some circumstances require more planning.

After the Israelites follow Moses into the desert, they doubt God’s abundance and complain to Moses that they are being brought into the wilderness to die of thirst. First, they complain of bitter water at Marah (Genesis 15: 24), and then, despite God having turned the water sweet and leading them directly to Elim, a place of 12 springs, they still complain that there is no water when they come to Horeb. Moses strikes the rock with his shaft and waters flow out in both the Numbers 20 and the Exodus 17 version of the story. In the Numbers 20 version, though, Moses is punished with not seeing the Promised Land, because he did not give God the credit for bringing the water from the rock.

The abundance of Exodus and Numbers has a simple formula. Worship God above all and you will have all that you need. “You shall worship God and I will bless your bread and your water” Exodus 23:25. Numbers 24:7 promises, “water shall flow from his [Israel’s] buckets and his offspring shall have abundant water.”

Many Psalms and Proverbs remind us of God’s bountiful gift of water and our need to share that gift. Proverbs reminds us that the one who gives water will get water. Proverbs 25:21 directs us to give food and drink to even our enemies: “and if they are thirsty give them water to drink.”

For Jesus, sharing God’s gifts was often exemplified by the use of water. In Matthew 10:42 he says “who ever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I say to you, none of these will lose their reward.”

Despite the abundance of water on the Earth, we humans are doing a rather poor job of sharing the abundance. Concern over the pollution of freshwater and many efforts to limit access to fresh water has led the United Nations to declare 2003 “The Year of Freshwater.”

According to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights water is not just an economic commodity. On November 28, 2002, the Committee declared that access to water is a human right. The committee defined water as a limited natural resource and a public commodity fundamental to life and health.

“The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, affordable, physically accessible, safe and acceptable water for personal and domestic uses,” states the Committee document. This is a modern secular way of recognizing that water does not come from our own private ventures, but is provided by God for all persons. Those that declare water to be best provided by private efforts are repeating Moses’ heresy of not recognizing God as giver of water.

Today, some 1.1 billion people do not have regular access to clean safe drinking water and some 2.4 billion do not have adequate sanitation or sewage, according to the United Nations.

The nations of the world gathered for the Millennium Summit in 2000 and again for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002. At both of these summits, the leaders of the nations of the world committed themselves to reducing by half the numbers of people with out sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015.

The World Bank estimates that up to $870 billion will be needed over the next 10 years to improve access for safe water and sanitation in developing countries. In the absence of international direct funding to improve water access in third world countries, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are demanding that countries privatize water supplies, hoping that the private sector will supply the funds that rich nations refuse to supply. Many business people see that this will not work. A United Methodist businessman at the World Summit on Sustainable development told the US delegation, “As much as I might like to work in Africa on these problems, I am in business to make money and I can’t see how I can make money doing this, there is still a role for the US government. I support the US doing more.”

According to the World Council of Churches, 80 percent of the disease in poor countries of the world is related to poor drinking water and sanitation. Six thousand children a day will contract diseases linked to unhealthy water. By 2025, half of the world’s poorest countries will face moderate to severe water shortages unless the Millennium and World Summit Development Goals are met.

Forty percent of the world’s population goes thirsty every year, but there are stark differences in water use. In the United States, water use continues to climb, but in East Africa water use per capita has halved in the last 30 years. In East Africa, women and children now walk an average of 21 minutes for each trip to collect water.

In Matthew 25, Jesus elaborates on the comments made in Matthew 10 about providing a child with a cold drink of water. In the 25th Chapter of Matthew, Jesus declares that one of the ways both individuals and nations will be judged is by whether we have provided water and other services to the least, the poorest members of the human community. The stakes are high. Those who do fulfill this command are promised eternal life. Those who turn away give themselves eternal punishment.

Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10b), but his other sayings make clear that he meant this as combined spiritual and physical reality. He came not to reject the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill their vision. If we are to follow Jesus, we to will work to fulfill that vision.

While we give God thanks for our daily bread (and water) we share God’s blessings with all.

Let all who thirst, come to the water! Though you have no money come, receive grain and eat.” — Isaiah 55:1

Download the PDF version of the Sermon starters section

Call To Worship

Our help is in the name of the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory that is due the holy name;
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over the mighty waters. —Psalm 29

Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord, my God, you are very great.
You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills,
giving drink to every wild animal;
the wild asses quench their thirst.
By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
they sing among the branches.
From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
—Psalm 104: 1, 10-13

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.”
And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”
And let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes
take the water of life as a gift.
— Revelation 22:17

Download the PDF version of the call to worship section

• 80 percent of disease in two-thirds of the world is related to poor drinking water and sanitation.
• One-third of the world’s households must use water sources outside the home. Girls and women in East Africa now walk an average of 21 minutes from home just to get water.
• The world is running out of water. Half the world’s poorest countries will face moderate to severe water shortages by the year 2025.
• Around the world there is a cumulative pollution of aquifers and water sources by agricultural, industrial and mining waste.
• Reduction in water-retention capacity of the earth’s soil is due to 80% of the forests of the world being destroyed.
• Poor management of water resources has led to degradation of the environment and loss of natural resources on which people in rural and remote areas depend for livelihood.
• Excessive consumption in the North, and wasteful overuse, especially by agribusiness, has significantly depleted the world’s water resources. One toilet flush uses as much water as the average person in a developing country uses for a whole day’s drinking, cooking, washing and cleaning!
• Effects of global warming, such as rising sea levels and altered
  seasonal patterns, are having a debilitating impact on freshwater
  resources.

Water Quality

The General Asembly speaks about water qaulity
202nd General Assembly (1990)

Contamination of waterways and groundwater has become a major focus of environmental concern and action. To get a manageable handle on this large subject, the Eco-Justice Task Force decided to focus on two examples: the case of the Puget Sound and water problems particular to Pennsylvania. The Puget Sound Symposium was co-sponsored by the Eco-Justice Task Force of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Commission for Church in Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Pacific Lutheran University, the Washington State Department of Ecology, the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority, and the Puget Sound National Bank. The Pennsylvania symposium was jointly sponsored by the Eco-Justice Task Force, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and eight presbyteries and two synods from the tri-state area. Both events were notable for their integration of scientific, economic, political, and ethical perspectives to produce a holistic overview of the water problems in their regions.

The Puget Sound case illustrates the kinds of problems that are found in relation to countless other bays and watersheds in the nation and throughout the world. The growth of population in the Puget Sound basin (soon to be three million), the various kinds of development accompanying it, and the use of polluting technologies have led to the pollution of the sound and to a major loss of wetlands.

Three classes of contaminants affect the sound: synthetic organic chemicals, inorganic chemicals, and the biological contaminants that come mostly from sewage. About 20 percent of these contaminants eventually reach the open ocean, but most are deposited in sediments in the sound.

The main sources of “point” pollution (from specific, identifiable points of discharge) are municipal sewage treatment plants, industries, and “combined sewers” (which carry both sewage and storm water and overflow when their capacity is exceeded). “Non point” or “runoff” sources of pollution are numerous and dispersed—e.g., soil erosion, water runoff containing pesticide and herbicide residues, failed septic systems, landfill leachate, and spillages and illegal discharges from boats.

In areas of high density and industrial activity, such as the Puget Sound watershed, the detrimental effects of pollution keep mounting. Scientifically, much remains unknown about the seriousness of the damage done or that which is likely to occur. Nor can scientists say definitely when “clean” water is clean enough. The hard political-economic fact is that it is expensive to keep water clean and even more expensive to restore it to an acceptable state.

But the detrimental effects of deteriorating water quality demand that action be taken. So hard questions are raised about drawing lines and making trade-offs (slower development for more protection?) and about who should pay and what measures will work. While everyone agrees that education is part of the solution, there is disagreement over the relative merits of using regulations or price incentives (i.e., charging polluters for polluting, so that they have an incentive to do otherwise). Underlying all these measures are questions of justice and concern for creation—the welfare of the nonhuman, the claims of future generations, and the strong inclination of the powerful to reap benefits for themselves, while transferring burdens to the weak and the unborn.

This case study shows the need for the church at all levels, national to local, to support through education and influence on public policy a vigorous campaign to improve water quality throughout the nation.

Therefore, the 202nd General Assembly (1990) recommends:

1. Increased federal, state, local, and private funding for the investigation of air, water, and ground contamination, to include basic scientific research, the establishment of baselines for data, and the monitoring of specific problems.
2. The pursuit of a three-pronged strategy—education, regulation, and economic incentives—to combat environmental pollution.
3. Greater coordination of legal jurisdictions, reliance on the concept of watershed or groundwater basin in identifying the jurisdictions to be coordinated, and the use of integrated approaches in planning and action.
4. Placing the burden of proof that water quality is not degraded on those who discharge or introduce potentially harmful substances to the environment.

1. The vigorous protection of remaining wetlands through the enforcement of existing laws.
2. Increased funding for the conversion of municipal sewage plants that provide only primary treatment (50 percent removal of suspended solids and metals) to facilities that provide secondary treatment (85 to 95 percent removal), and for the elimination of combined sewer systems and storm runoff in urban areas.
3. Tighter restrictions on point sources of water pollution and illegal dumping.
4. Increased efforts to address the problem of pollution from urban and rural runoff.
5. Research on methods of preventing and controlling ground water contamination.
6. Consistent application of national water quality standards.
7. Continued study and greater control of acid rain and airborne contaminants that enter surface water, in coordination with air quality authorities.
8. Increased federal funding for national estuary planning and action.
9. The upgrading of municipal water systems.

Earth Day Archives

• 2006 - Katrina and Environmental Justice
• 2005 - Sacred Oceans and Seas
• 2004 - Life-giving breath of God
• 2003 - Waters of Life: Enough for All
• 2002 - Protection of God's Creatures
• 2001 - Celebrating the Year of the Child