By Derek Olsen
The season of Easter represents a liturgical season in full flower, often literally as well as figuratively. There are a number of special liturgical items that appear only in the Great Fifty Days. One of my favorites is one that didn’t make it into the Prayer Book—and I’ve never really understood why not.
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer consistently highlights the place of Baptism within the Christian life. In comparison with prior prayer books and with earlier liturgical traditions, Baptism is restored to equality with Eucharist as the two great sacraments given to us by Christ in the Gospels, the two Dominical Sacraments. Given this focus, I’m mystified why we’ve never chosen to incorporate the Rite of Sprinkling, a standard feature of the western historic liturgy which, by means of the celebrant sprinkling the congregation with blessed water before the start of the service proper, serves as a reminder of Baptism at the beginning of a festal Eucharist.
During most of the year, the Rite of Sprinkling is accompanied by a chant known as the Asperges me (“Cleanse me”) which quotes Psalm 51, and makes reference to both our Baptismal cleansing and our on-going need for God’s cleansing grace. Within the Easter season, though, the proper chant is the Vidi aquam (“I saw water”)—and this is the text I’d like to turn to today.
The Vidi aquam is a brief chant that derives its power not just by what it says but where it comes from and from interconnections generally left unspoken. Like many of the traditional chants at Eucharist, it consists of an antiphon paired with a psalm verse:
Antiphon: I saw water proceeding out of the temple, from the right side thereof, alleluia;
And all people, wherever the waters shall come, shall be healed, and all shall say, alleluia, alleluia.
Ps 118:1: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his mercy endures forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and will be forever. Amen.
Antiphon (repeated): I saw water proceeding out of the temple, from the right side thereof, alleluia;
And all people, wherever the waters shall come, shall be healed, and all shall say, alleluia, alleluia.
The antiphon gives us one level of meaning because of where in Scripture it is drawn and the biblical events that it recalls. A second level of meaning is added when we consider the Church’s interpretation of the verse and its application to Christ. A third level appears as the antiphon interacts with the psalm. A fourth level of meaning—and the last I’ll discuss here but hardly the last level of meaning—occurs as this chant relates to the ritual action that occurs while it is being sung.
The antiphon text is a paraphrase that hits some key points in Ezekiel 47:1-12. I’ve always had a fantasy that Ezekiel was the major prophet who, when he was in high school, would have been voted “most likely to use hallucinogenic drugs.” In the words of one commentator, Ezekiel is characterized by “bizarre visions and equally bizarre behavior.” Given his strange behavior, his contemporaries may well have judged him prophetic by reason of insanity—if this were the case, however, the most likely cause would be post-traumatic stress due to the harrowing events through which he lived. Although Ezekiel was a priest of the Temple in Jerusalem, his prophetic ministry took place far away in Babylon where he was taken after the first Babylonian capture of Jerusalem in 597 BC. Despite his religious and political warnings, a second revolt in 587 BC caused both Jerusalem and his beloved Temple to be burned to the ground and utterly destroyed by the vengeful armies of Babylon and its allies.
Ezekiel’s book falls rather neatly into three sections. Chapters 1-24 are generally prophecies of doom warning the inhabitants of Jerusalem what will happen if they don’t get their act together; clearly these date before the second disastrous revolt. Chapters 25-32 are oracles against foreign nations. Chapters 33-48 are from the period after the destruction of Jerusalem. Whereas the earlier prophecies were dire warnings, this section communicates God’s intention to save and restore the people of Israel. The capstone of this section is chapters 40-48 where an angel leads the prophet on a visionary tour of a newly restored and rebuilt Jerusalem dominated by a grander, rebuilt, Temple where the glory of the Lord once more settles. At the center of this vision is a stream of water that pours out of the Holy of Holies, flows out of the east side of the Temple, increasing as it goes, bringing life and flourishing to all it touches and—in a grand reversal of the natural state of things—turns the Dead Sea into a living sea filled with fish of all kinds and bounded by forests of fruiting trees and plants with supernatural powers of sustenance and healing. The water of the river of God recreates Eden in what was formerly desolate desert.
Theologically, Ezekiel’s vision is a prediction of the restoration of Israel as a religious community. More than that, though, it connects the restoration of the Temple to the restoration of the Land. Ezekiel’s vision may begin conceptually with a straightforward simile—the presence of God is like cleansing and life-giving water in the desert –but the vision creates a metaphor that, in its color and luster, transcends the banality of the simile, raising it to a new and more vibrant key. Recalling this stream, the antiphon then speaks with new freshness:
Antiphon: I saw water proceeding out of the temple, from the right side thereof, alleluia;
And all people, wherever the waters shall come, shall be healed, and all shall say, alleluia, alleluia.
A second level of meaning is introduced, though, if we notice the choice of words in the antiphon. Ezekiel had been using a lot of architectural figures and language in his visionary tour, and states several times that the water comes from the east side. At one point there is a clarification on the water’s direction which is rendered by the Vulgate and the King James as proceeding from “the right side of the Temple” which most modern English versions choose to translate as “the south side of the Temple.” (The Hebrew word can take both meanings.) We tend to apply fixed-direction words like “south” to buildings while relative-direction words like “right” are dependent upon how a person stands. Or hangs.
Many times in the New Testament, Jesus—and the Church as his mystical Body—is identified with the New Temple (see Matt 26:61, John 2:19-22, 1 Cor 3:16, Rev 21:22, and that’s just a start). Given this identification, early Christian interpreters could not fail to find in Ezekiel’s vision a direct connection with John 19:34 where blood and water flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Jesus. While John is not explicit about what this flow means, the same interpreters traditionally understood it sacramentally, most often connecting the blood and water to Baptism. (See, for example, the third verse of the Pange Lingua, hymn 165 and 166 in our hymnal.) Thus, the antiphon’s summary of Ezekiel can equally be understood as a reference to the sacramental healing flood that flowed from Christ himself on the cross.
When the words of the antiphon are overlaid with John’s story, the theological meaning deepens. The Christian interpretation asserts that Ezekiel’s vision has been fulfilled in the incarnation of Christ and that the religious community has been refigured in all those who have been given new life through God’s sacramental waters. Our Baptism has cleansed us and healed us. And the antiphon’s original Latin phrase for “be healed” (salvi facti sunt) can equally be translated as “be saved.” Truly, we are saved by God’s grace in our Baptism and incorporated into the mystical Body of Christ which is the Church. In Baptism, we become the people who shall say alleluia.
A third level of meaning is introduced by the psalm verse. This passage may come across as almost commonplace—but I suggest that’s part of the point. This phrase extolling the goodness of God, and especially its final refrain, “his mercy endures for ever” is one of the most repeated liturgical phrases in the Bible. However, it particularly appears at the dedications of temples: it punctuated worship at the Davidic establishment of the Tabernacle in Jerusalem (1 Chr 16:34), at the dedication of the first Temple (2 Chr 5:13), and at the laying of the foundation of the second Temple (Ezra 3:11). The implication by its use here is that each Christian gathering stands in continuity with the on-going worship of God. Just as God’s mercy endures for ever, so the community gathered in God’s sight endures as a by-product of that mercy. As the antiphon joins the psalm verse, the ideas of restoration, cleansing, salvation and the praise of God by the covenant community meld together:
Antiphon: I saw water proceeding out of the temple, from the right side thereof, alleluia;
And all people, wherever the waters shall come, shall be healed, and all shall say, alleluia, alleluia.
Ps 118:1: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his mercy endures forever.
A fourth level of meaning cements the sacramental image as the ritual act is combined with the chant. The priest uses water, either the very water blessed in Baptisms or water blessed with similar words, to sprinkle the congregation with a device called an aspergillium which looks a bit like an asparagus even though the words are etymologically unrelated. (Plant branches are sometimes used too; my fellow writer Sam Candler prefers Atlanta’s dogwood branches over the more traditional hyssop.) The relationship between the water flowing from the Temple, the water flowing from Christ, and the water flowing from the font are inextricably linked. In the hurled water droplets, the Vidi aquam becomes a tangible as well as an auditory reminder that Easter is our preeminent Baptismal season where we celebrate our own inclusion into the covenant community.
While the Rite of Sprinkling fails to appear in the present Book of Common Prayer, it is not without its fans in the Episcopal Church. Anglo-Catholics, of course, have continued its use for years but its connection with the church’s recovery of Baptismal theology has not gone unnoticed. Even that most Protestant of liturgical guides, Howard Galley’s Ceremonies of the Eucharist, commends its use during the Easter season. Whether your community chooses to use it or not, I commend the Vidi aquam to you in this season of Easter as a sacramental reminder of the enduring love of the God who invites us through Baptism to share in his own resurrection life.
Derek Olsen recently finished his Ph.D. in New Testament at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.