Crossings

A Sermon by Jeffrey K. Krehbiel

19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 10, 2008

Text: Matthew 14:22-23

When Peter noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” (vs. 30)

Church of the Pilgrims

2201 P Street NW

Washington, DC 20037

(202) 387-6612

www.ChurchOfThePilgrims.org

S o why did the disciples cross the lake? Well, to get to the other side, of course. Only, in this instance, they did so because Jesus told them to. According to Matthew, while Jesus stayed on the shoreline, he made them get in to the boat by themselves, after which he went up the mountain by himself to pray. And it is while they are in the boat, alone, far from shore, that the winds kick up.

      So maybe Matthew wasn’t writing about Jesus and the disciples as much as he was writing about his own community. The word Matthew uses to describe the disciples in the boat being “battered by the waves,” means “tortured” or “tormented,” a word usually applied to people, not to a boat. This was the reality that the early Christians knew well. They were out in the world proclaiming the gospel at Jesus’ command, facing hostility at every turn, often wondering where exactly Jesus was in the midst of the storms they were facing. It’s no accident that one of the early symbols for the church was a boat, and that this section of the sanctuary in which we are now sitting– called the “nave”– comes from the Latin word for ship.

      Or maybe Matthew was writing this story for us. When the winds kick up, when the waves get rough, when the sea is at its worst, every Christian has asked, at one point or another, where is Jesus now? For ancient peoples the sea itself was a symbol of chaos, of the darkness of death, of the powers of evil that threaten life. According to the Bible, only God has the power to keep the forces of chaos at bay. So Jesus comes to them in the midst of the sea, in the midst of the storm, and says, “Take heart, it is I; do no be afraid.”

W e find parts of this same story in the gospels of Mark and John, yet only Matthew includes the part about Peter getting out of the boat. It’s not entirely clear what Peter had in mind. Was he testing Jesus? Testing himself? Was he not sure if it was really Jesus coming toward them? Or was he just happy to get out of the boat and escape the uncertain fate of the other disciples? And when Jesus says, “Why did you doubt?,” did he mean, why did Peter doubt Jesus, or why did he doubt himself? Or was Peter’s problem that he should have stayed in the boat, and not doubted that Jesus would come to them in the storm?

      “You of little faith,” Jesus asks Peter, “why did you doubt?” “You of little faith” is the phrase Jesus always uses to describe the disciples. He doesn’t use it to describe unbelievers, but only those who believe, though perhaps not sufficiently. And the word “doubt” here does not mean scepticism, but vacillation. It’s the same word Matthew uses later when Jesus appears to the disciples on the day of resurrection. When they saw Jesus on Easter day, “they worshiped him,” Matthew tells us, “and they doubted” (Matt 28:17). Doubt is not something that is in opposition to faith, but co-exists at one in the same moment. In Matthew, disciples are people who worship and doubt at the same time.

      So Peter is the archetype, struggling with faith and doubt all at once, courageous enough to get out of the boat and risk walking on the sea to be with Jesus, but not quite confident enough to keep his eyes on Jesus instead of the waves that threatened to engulf him. There are two ways to interpret what happened to Peter at this moment. On the one hand, Peter– whose nick-name is “the rock”– sank into the sea like a stone. On the other hand, as he was sinking, Peter had sufficient faith to cry out, “Lord, save me!” As Richard Jensen puts it, the person of faith is not the one who is able to walk on water. Only Jesus can do that. The person of faith is one who cries out to Jesus in the time of need.      New Testament scholar Eugene Boring puts it in this way:

      The message is not, “If he had enough faith, he could have walked on the water,” just as the message to us is not, “If we had enough faith, we could overcome all our problems in spectacular ways.”... What if the message of this text were, “If he had enough faith, he would have believed the word of Jesus that came to him in the boat as mediating the presence and reality of God?” Faith is not being able to walk on the water... but daring to believe, in the face of all the evidence, that God is with us in the boat, made real in the community of faith as it makes its way through the storm, battered by the waves.

Y et I can’t help noticing that it was Jesus who sent them out on to the water in the first place. That’s the part we need to hold on to. It’s not that every difficult moment we have in life is something that God desires for us. I don’t believe that. Bad things happen to all of us, and it is not necessarily a part of God’s plan. But the Spirit at work in our lives has a way of pushing us out beyond our comfort zone, into the deep, away from shore, into uncharted territory. Sometimes the waves that batter us the most happen precisely when we are trying to follow Jesus most closely. As Brian Stoffregen puts it, if the church is a ship, it is not intended to stay tied up to the dock. Stoffregen notes too that the storm doesn’t stop the moment Jesus appears on the scene. Jesus appears to them in the midst of the storm and says, “Do not be afraid.” I am persuaded that this is when our faith becomes real to us. Not when the storms in our life cease, but when we discover Jesus standing with us in the midst of it.

      So here we are full circle– lifting up again the themes we heard that first Sunday of our Pentecost season, and have heard again and again these past several weeks as members and friends have shared how the Spirit is at work in their lives. I can’t help but noticing how the most moving stories were from those who managed to see the Spirit at work in the most difficult of circumstances. Sometimes the Spirit pushes, sometimes the Spirit comforts, sometimes the Spirit sends us out, sometimes the Spirit tells us to stay right where we are. It’s that moment of revelation and discovery when we know, as The Indigo Girls put it, “That’s where I need to go.”

      “You of little faith,” of course, describes us as well. Faith and doubt all mixed together at the same time. Or, as Martin Luther famously put it, simul justus et peccator, “simultaneously saint and sinner.” We don’t have to walk on water. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work, at least not for me. But it is enough, at our time to need, to cry out, “Lord, save me.” That is where the life of faith begins.                                     ✞

© 2008 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel