2017-08-14
Brooke Strong
The lectionary readings the last few weeks have been from the gospel of Matthew. After a time of Jesus teaching using many parables, he then got the news that his cousin John, the one who had baptized him, had been beheaded by Herod. When he heard this, Jesus tried to go off on his own, but crowds saw him and followed him. So he taught and cured and then found himself surrounded by a multitude of over 5000 hungry people, whom he fed with 2 loaves of bread and 5 fish. With all this, we are now at a point in the gospel where Jesus and his disciples are tired, in fact, they’re beyond tired. They are mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted. The disciples are also scared. They have seen what happens to prophets like John the Baptist, and they sense that Jesus will likely face a similar fate.
So it is in this frame of mind that we find them in this passage, which comes directly after the feeding of the multitude.
Sermon on Matthew 14:22-33
Since our gospel this morning is, in a way, a ghost story, I thought I’d start by sharing one of my ghost stories with you. When one of our daughters was four years old, all of a sudden one night, as we were putting her to bed, she told us she was afraid of ghosts. She said that she would not be able to go to sleep because surely after we left, ghosts would come out from under her bed, or from inside her closet, or from above her head and who knows what would happen. We had no idea where this fear came from, but we did know well enough not to try to logic her out of it. If a four year old believes ghosts are going to come into her room, no amount of reason will convince her otherwise! I was very fortunate, however, because we just happened to have had a can of ghost repellent in the house. I got the aerosol can, the one labeled “GLADE” – which everyone knows stands for: “Ghosts leave and depart expediently” – and sprayed a few squirts into the air. She was mollified, her room smelled great, and she fell into a deep, untroubled sleep. We used it every night for a few weeks until she came to the conclusion that the ghosts were gone and weren’t going to bother her anymore.
Ghosts can be very scary for children, and also for adults it would seem. The disciples in the boat on the sea had dealt bravely enough with the battering of the wind and the waves, but the ghostlike figure walking across the water and approaching them was more than they could handle. When this ghost said to them, “Take heart - It is I”, they realized that they recognized the voice. The very thing that frightened them was not a ghost at all, but turned out to be Jesus himself.
Jesus allays their fears with the reassuring words, “Take heart,” and continues to walk towards them. This would have been enough to grant them safe passage with him to the other side of the sea. But then Peter, maybe still unsure in the dim light of morning that it was really Jesus, maybe still not able to truly take to heart Jesus’ words of reassurance, whatever the reason – Peter puts out a challenge to this ghost. Prove it. "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." Over and over in the scriptures, Peter is portrayed as one who is impetuous, spontaneous, even fool-hearted. Or is it possible that he is actually whole-hearted in his devotion to Jesus, passionate in his longing to be held and reassured by his Savior in his fatigue and fear?
Maybe you can relate to Peter’s impulsiveness, and then to his panic. His first steps out of the boat are sure. He actually begins walking on the water toward Jesus. And then suddenly as he realizes what he has committed to, and it dawns on him what he is actually doing, so he loses heart, loses confidence, loses faith in himself and in his Lord, and begins to sink.
This is a pattern of behavior I can relate to. There have been plenty of times in my life where I have jumped into doing something with a zeal and passion because I felt, deep inside, that it was something God was calling me to do. It required stepping out of the safety of my sheltering boat, as it were, and walking into the turbulent waves. And like Peter, I made an enthusiastic commitment, proceeding in faith, only to then look around after those first few steps taken and ask in terror, “Oh my God, what have I done? I am going to drown.”
About a year ago, I had this experience. I was asked to teach a class for the Northeast Ohio School of Ministry, which offers courses locally for those wanting to become authorized ministers. The dean of the school, who is a dear friend of mine, asked me if I would teach the “Rites and Sacraments” class. I am not quite as impulsive as Peter, so I did not say “Yes” right away. Because I had before never taught a class where I needed to put together a syllabus, a curriculum, and an assessment tool, I prayed about it, sought counsel from trusted friends, and was assured that I could do it. So in the end, I really felt this was a calling, and I agreed.
It was all fine and good until I actually started to put it together, and came to realize all that I didn’t know. I had to learn new material, to rethink my own theology, and to question things that until that point, I had been sure of. These became for me very scary waters to navigate. For nearly the whole week before the class was to start, I barely slept. I was up at night worrying about not knowing answers to questions students would ask, about being exposed as a fraud who knew nothing about the topic. I was seriously questioning what in the world I had been thinking when I had said “Yes.”
A few days before class started, I shared with my formerly ghost fearing daughter (who is now a very wise adult) my fears about teaching. She gave me wise counsel about what she now does to cast away her fears. She said to remember that I had done all the work and preparation that I could, advised me to focus on my gifts, and then to articulate my intentions in teaching the class. She also suggested to me that I make an altar of sorts, and put on it symbols of what it was that I really hoped for as I began this venture. So I found objects to represent the wisdom I wanted to share, the confidence I hoped to exude, the faith in Christ I wished to cling to. In other words, she called me to remember “who I was and whose I was.” All this helped me to take heart in my decision, to let go of my fears, to get a few nights of sleep, and to teach the class successfully.
This is just one example of a time when I stepped out of my comfort zone in seeking to respond to what I believed was a prompting from God. It is not the only time when I have done this, when I have lost heart and found myself floundering. When this happened to Peter, Jesus said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?" But I love the Message translation of what Jesus says. The author Eugene Peterson captures it beautifully by having Jesus say “Faint-heart, what got into you?” Because I don’t think Peter had little faith, but rather that he had just let it grow faint.
When Jesus approached the boat, he told the terrified disciples to “take heart,” which was perhaps a way of calling them into whole-hearted living. Rev. David Lose says, “… I think this [whole-hearted living] is still God’s desire for us. God desires, that is, that we trust that God is with us and for us and thereby live with courage and hope, taking chances, risking ourselves in relationship, seeking the welfare of the individuals and community around us, all the while remembering that even when we overlook God’s presence yet God is always there, sometimes to encourage us to overcome our fears, sometimes sending us out ahead, and sometimes reaching out to grab hold of us in forgiveness, mercy, comfort, and grace.”1
Jesus is there telling the disciples, and us, to take heart when we become faint hearted. He is there, calling us to whole-hearted living. But this kind of living takes courage. The word “courage,” in fact, comes from the Latin “cor” or the French “couer” – both of which mean “heart.” Living whole-heartedly is what faith is all about, being courageous enough to live out of our heart, in spite of, or even in the midst of, our fears.
So does Jesus call us to do things as impetuous and impromptu as jumping out of a boat and trying to walk on water? How do we know when we are to step out of our relative safety and step into the scary storms? What is worth that kind of courage, that kind of whole-hearted passion?
As I was working on this sermon yesterday – and I admit – this morning, I was also following the news – feeling frightened, beaten and battered by what I was seeing, especially the “Unite the Right” demonstration and the counter-protests in Virginia. I watched the videos of the counter-demonstrators chanting “Love is stronger than hate” and I fully take to heart that message. And in the midst of writing this sermon, I received a text from Rev. Judy Bagley-Bonner, a former pastor here at Federated. She was letting me know about Kristin Szakos, the voice on Council who called for the removal of the Confederate statues in Charlottesville, VA, is a former Federated Church member, who was nurtured here in the 70’s in her youth. What is it that inspires her, and inspires so many, plenty of whom are not in a racial, ethnic, social, or religious affiliation that is under attack, what is it that inspires them and gives them the passion and conviction to stand with those who are being threatened? What inspires them to gather in counter-protest, despite fear of danger and even death? Did they respond to the voice of God calling them into this scary storm? And if so, where did they get the courage to step out into it, even at the risk of being in over their heads, of drowning?
I would have to conclude that it is their faith. Because living a life of faith isn’t just a head thing - knowing scripture, believing teachings, proclaiming truths. It’s a heart thing. If whole hearted faith calls us to live whole-heartedly as followers of Jesus, then we need to pay attention to that heart, because that is the place we are most likely to encounter Jesus, and to hear his call.
And maybe this is precisely how we can know what we are being called to. What is it that makes your heart race, makes your heart hurt, makes your heart break? Yesterday for me it was the divisiveness, hatred and violence that I witnessed. And I believe that paying attention to what is happening in our hearts is a good indication of paying attention to the call of Jesus. I want that courage to act in a whole-hearted way to hear that call, to follow that call, and to take action.
Because faith is not a head-thing only, but also not a heart thing only. Faith is a verb, requiring action. As Rev. Sarah Dylan says, “faith is about doing. A faithful person eventually gets to the point at which s/he can say to God, "I don't know where you're going, but I know that wherever it is, I'd rather be drowning with you than be crowned by somebody else.” She continues, “…. faith is like that function of the heart that gets blood to hands and feet… faith starts with action, with taking a step, with taking a risk.”2
Whole hearted faith pumps blood from our hearts into our bodies, prompting us to take action, to perhaps even put ourselves in harm’s way. It calls us to open our hearts in compassion and care for those who are hurting, to join our hearts with and for those who are treated unjustly, and when those hearts of ours grow faint, to reach out to Jesus in faith. Although this faith does not guarantee safety, it asks us to nevertheless to take courage from the one who beckons us, and who will always be there, even when we get in over our heads.
We care called to hear the voice of Jesus, to take risks, to step into stormy seas. As I related earlier, taking a chance on teaching a class was risky for me, but it wasn’t perilous. And quite honestly, I would much rather ignore Jesus’ voice, much rather keep Jesus at bay as a somewhat ghostly presence, nearly invisible, if I thought he was calling me into something dangerous. But I also realize that if I do that, that if I ignore his voice, I may never know whole-hearted living.
Methodist Bishop Will Willimon says “…if in the dead of night, or maybe just before dawn, you should hear a voice, calling your name, a strange voice calling you to rise up, to sail forth, to risk the storm, to defy the waves, there is a good chance that voice could belong to none other than the one who is your very Lord and Savior.”3
That is our challenge – that is our call – to listen for this voice. So let open our ears and our hearts, let us trust in this one who sometimes calms our fears in the storms, but other times calls us into those very storms, promising to walk the waters with us as we do that which we are most afraid to do. And may we seek to take to heart the call of our Savior, so that we can live out that call whole-heartedly. Amen.
1http://www.davidlose.net/2014/08/pentecost-9a-whole-hearted-faith/
2http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2005/08/proper_14_year_.html
3http://day1.org/950-how_you_will_know_if_its_jesus