I have to tell you that I come to you today deeply disturbed. You see, I finished writing my sermon yesterday morning at 10:30. It was a good sermon. I was happy with it. I thought that I understood the gospel message, and I even thought that I had communicated the gospel message effectively.
After the sermon, I made a couple of phone calls, got cleaned up, and went to a family wedding in the afternoon. We stayed for the reception, talked with family, ate a good meal, had fun, and got home a little later than we had planned.
I went over the sermon again to make sure that I was still satisfied, wrote up the prayers of the day for a couple of weeks, and went to bed. When I got up this morning, I turned on the radio to listen to the news, and I knew that my sermon was no longer appropriate.
(Pause) I don’t even know where to begin now. Well, let’s do it this way.
We are in the midst of a series of stories in Scripture starting with Jesus telling that the Kingdom of Heaven is like…. Jesus presented several different models of what that kingdom might look like, and we explored some of them together. We visited with Herod at his birthday party and witnessed the beheading of John the Baptist and the passing of the torch from John to Jesus as the Kingdom of Heaven ministry entered the world in a new way. We saw Jesus go off to be by himself, to consider the consequences of the ministry he is embarking on. Clearly, the implications of this ministry are that suffering and even the loss of life is possible, even probable. Certainly, this ministry cost John his life.
And we saw the people, for one reason or another, leave the cities and follow Jesus out into the wilderness where they enter into a new faith community relationship of caring- and eating-fellowship. Following this new community formation, Jesus sends his disciples away in a boat on the sea, he dismisses the crowds, sending them back to the places from which they have come, and then he completes what it is that he was going to do in the first place—Jesus goes up onto the mountain to pray.
The rest of this story looks almost like a common ghost story, a story one might tell around a campfire at Boy Scout or Girl Scout camp or, maybe Bible camp, or around the fireplace on a dark and stormy night. As such we often treat this story in a disbelieving way.
We make jokes about it. You know the joke about the three guys who go out fishing? Yes, two of them get out of the boat and run back and forth between the boat and shore without any trouble, but the third person drowns because he doesn’t know where the stepping stones are?
When I was over in the Holy Lands in the mid 90’s, a company was contracting to build a concrete runway that would go out into the sea of Galilee, six inches below the surface, so that they could re-enact this story of Jesus walking on the water.
Yes, we say that this account in the Gospel of Matthew is just a ghost story, and we don’t need to believe it. We are more sophisticated; we are more knowledgeable; we are more intellectually advanced than the people of that time; and we do not suffer from the same superstitious nonsense of the first century. We are not otherwise occupied or consumed with ghosts in our lives. Scientifically, we can prove that the surface tension of water is not great enough to support the mass and weight of a human being.
Yet, we have plenty of ghosts in our lives today. We have all kinds of ghosts that haunt us. My mom was plagued by one of the most destructive ghosts, the ghost of woulda-coulda-shoulda. She suffered under the torments of “If only I had …, the “I should have done this, or that”, or the self-recrimination ghost of “I should have said that” and “I wish I had had the courage to say….” Indeed, she spent a great amount of her life regretting what she had not done. There were times that these ghosts prevented her from seeing all of the things she had accomplished.
Today, we, with the disciples, sit, in our boat in terror, crying out, “It’s a ghost!” We find ourselves unable, too frightened, to get out of our boat to do what is needed—walk to Christ on the water. We let the ghost of “What would the neighbors think or say” get in the way of acting. Yes, we all live with ghosts that come and challenge us to dare not get out of the boat and walk on the sea, even as we see Jesus there, beyond our safety zone, calling us to, “Come. Come out onto the seas of chaos; dare to tread upon those seas; and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, into the new way of living, into the new way of knowing the world, where people stand up for God’s word in our world.”
Last night when I went to bed, I was pleased with my sermon. But, when I woke up this morning, I heard what had been going on in Charlottesville and our national inability to address that kind of anger, and I was dismayed. This has got to stop! It has to end! How hard is it to say, “This cannot be?”
We cannot continue to quietly stand by in a world that promotes the privilege of some at the expense of others. We cannot continue to support the behavior of people who put fire to sanctuaries. As I think about the mosque where arson recently damaged the study of the imam and the low level of ire it generated, I wonder whether the response would have been different if the fire had been set in the Crystal Cathedral? I can only imagine what the coverage across the country would have been and the furor and the finger-pointing resulting from an incident like that. Yet somehow, because it is a mosque, the coverage is dropped early in the news-cycle. This has got to stop! It has to end! How hard is it to say, “This cannot be?”
Sixty-five years ago, when white supremacists bombed the 16th Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing children in the basement, there was greater awareness of that event in Europe than there was in our own country. Certainly, the news was released here, but it was glossed over as part of the greater civil unrest of the time. We cannot continue to let behaviors like this go without our notice and our care. This has got to stop! It has to end! How hard is it to say, “This cannot be?”
We cannot continue to pass and support laws that oppress targeted communities; that put these people at a disadvantage, placing people in a legal system that says It is easier to go to jail, to admit guilt for something you didn’t do, and thereby surrender your rights as an individual, than to stand up for them, simply because you can’t afford the legal representation that might vindicate you. After all, the sentence of the lesser crime is shorter than the consequences of the crime you are being charged with should you be convicted. Besides that, the public defenders’ office is over-burdened, the court system is over-scheduled, and waiting for trial may actually take longer than going to jail in the first place because you don’t have enough money to make bail. Plead guilty. It makes the whole system move more smoothly. This has got to stop! It has to end! How hard is it to say, “This cannot be?”
We are in a world that allows bullying comments to be thrown around even at national levels without concern for the consequences to the people. This has got to stop! It has to end! How hard is it to say, “This cannot be?”
Indeed, the storms of war rage around us, the storms of discontent rage within us, and we are terrified. So, we have found safety in a boat and are afraid to acknowledge the one we see is the one we claim and cling to in faith because the implications of this ministry are that suffering and even the loss of life is possible, even probable. Instead we claim the one standing in the distance is a ghost, not our savior.
From our reading today, we hear that Peter, seeing Jesus walking on the sea, says, “If it is you, then command me ….” That little word if is so big in this reading today. I know I bring up Greek often, but today this word in Greek makes a big difference. This word in Greek is ean, and it can be translated in two ways—if and since.
This week, in particular, I think that we need to pay attention to the fact that those who translated the NRSV version of the Bible, the one we are reading from, have chosen to translate ean as if. But, this if statement, concerning who Jesus is, is a weak statement. It says, “I’m not sure who Jesus is. Therefore Jesus, you must do something to prove to me that you are worthy of my trust. Until then, I am going to sit here safely in my boat until you prove to me that you are God.”
But, if ean is not if, but since, then we hear Peter’s statement differently. “Since it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Using if, rather than since, in how we translate ean, captures our crisis of faith in the world today. We, like Peter, continue to challenge God, saying, “If you are the son of God, then, ….” “If you have importance in my life, ….” How different our lives might be if we were able to say, “Since it is you, then ….”
We are challenged in this time and place to consider who this Jesus is who calls to us to come. We are challenged to claim him, to cry out to him; to go out onto the waters, onto the waters of chaos; to bring a voice of reason and calm, to bring a rational voice, into the decision-making conversation process; to bring some sanity back into the world we live in. It is into this world of chaos that Jesus says, “Come”, and it is important that we hear and heed Christ’s call because we live in a world of hate and hyperbolic angst. Okay, that last is just me, I mean to say exaggerated fear.
We need to claim the one who is standing out beyond our safety zone, who continues to call us out, understanding that yes, when you confront power, there may be consequences, some of them may even be life-threatening. Yet, it is the place Christ continues to call us, calls us to take those first few steps.
Imagine the difference between if and since as we take those first few steps out of the boat. If our statement is if, then we are still wondering if it is Jesus, and we will be looking to ourselves for confidence, but, if our statement is since, claiming Christ in our lives and walking on those chaos waters, yes, then, when those mighty winds blow and we can see the wind of God’s creating kingdom in the world, we may know fear, and we may hesitate and sink. We may cry out, “Lord, save us!” But, we cry out with the assurance and knowledge that Jesus’ hand is there to grasp us and hold on to us and raise us up—even as we doubt—for this is our story. We can cry out in confidence because we have been in these waters before. We have been to the baptismal font. We have drowned and died to our sinful selves. We have been raised up in Christ. Christ’s hand has already reached out to hold us before we dared to come to Jesus walking on the waters. That saving hand is tested, and it is ours in all crises.
“Since it is you, Lord,” we ask, “where is it that you want us to go?”, no longer wondering whether this is the Christ. “Since it is you, Lord, we are willing to get out of our boats of safety to walk on the waters, those waters that create new life, new ways, new walks.”
So, we come, come to this place, claiming Christ as our savior and claiming our own willingness and desire to stay safe in our boat. We come saying, “Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name.”
And, when we find the courage to step out onto the waters, we will find a new boat to get into. The winds will calm, and we will find ourselves on the lands of Gennesaret with a new ministry ahead of us, where the people will gather and say, “If we can only touch the fringe of his cloak, we might know new wholeness.”
Today I tell you that Christ has called us out onto the waters of chaos, the waters of discontent, to show us the possibilities of the kingdom of heaven and he is getting into the boat with us for the sake of the kingdom. But this is not the boat of fear and uncertainty. It is a new boat of confidence and courage—a new boat, with a new direction, and a new way to go. Indeed, we are heading for shore, and it is right outside our door.
May we know the peace and the love and the support of the one who continues to call to us, “Come”, and may we have the courage to get out of our boats and go.
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