August 10, 2008 - "Walking on Water"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 13
August 10, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

WALKING ON WATER

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b;
Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

When I called Andrea this week to ask if she would read the scripture lesson in worship, I told her it was the story of Jesus and Peter walking on water, and since that is what we are expecting her to do, it was only appropriate that she read the text. And she still agreed to do so. Andrea, I’m just kidding. Mostly.

It is quite an interesting story, this walking on water adventure. It raises questions in many a modern mind. And most of us are familiar with the explanations offered to make the story more believable: Jesus was really walking on the shore, or he was walking where the water was shallow, or (my favorite) he knew where the rocks were.

New Testament scholar Eugene Boring (an unfortunate name for a scholar) puts forth a rather interesting way to look at this story. He calls us to think of this story from a post-Easter perspective as a resurrection appearance of Jesus strategically placed by Matthew at the very center of his gospel. There are notable similarities between this story and other resurrection appearances in the gospels:

There are the disciples out in the boat seeing Jesus on the shore and Peter jumping out of the boat to come to Jesus.

There is the feeling that Jesus is a ghost just like his appearance to the disciples on Easter evening.

We have the disciples worshiping Jesus, which they do at the end of Matthew’s gospel when Jesus utters the Great Commission.

Even those familiar Easter words: “Do not be afraid; it is I.” [1]

We don’t always know exactly how to read the miracle stories in the gospels. But if we could, let us for this morning suspend disbelief and simply enter into the story and listen for God’s word to us.

Following the feeding of the 5000, Jesus tells the disciples to get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side. He wants to get away for awhile and pray. Even Jesus needed to pray. So he sends the disciples away and dismisses the crowd. Night falls, and he is finally alone.

But he’s not alone for long. The text doesn’t even tell us he is able to begin praying before a storm has arisen. And he looks out across the lake and sees the disciples’ boat is far from shore and being literally tortured by the waves with the wind against them.

What we have here, says Tom Long, is a symbolic picture of the church - disciples in a boat, called by God, and sent out on to a dangerous, unpredictable sea. The boat is battered by waves and fights the wind as it struggles toward a difficult landfall. How often the church finds itself working and struggling to be faithful in perilous times! [2]

So here are the disciples being tossed around the sea in the middle of a storm. Then Jesus comes to them. But it says he comes to them “early in the morning,” and that the storm began “when evening came.”

Did Jesus leave them out there awhile before going to rescue them? Did Jesus need to pray longer in order to have the strength to save them? Or does “early in the morning” mean something else?

I don’t know what you hear, and I could be making more of it than is really there, but it sounds like Easter to me. Especially following a scene where bread had been broken and shared. “Early in the morning” could be Matthew’s way of speaking life and divine presence in the face of fear and death.

Whatever it may mean, “early in the morning” is a time when it is still dark. It fact, it is the darkest hour of the night.

In the monastic rhythm of daily prayer called the Service of the Hours, the first prayer of the day is called Vigils. Monks walk under the stars in the pre-dawn dark to the church. It is also known as Matins, the night-watch, the times, says Brother David Stendle-Rast, of “learning to trust the darkness.” [3]

You ever been in those kinds of storms where you’ve had to learn to trust the darkness? You’ve been told that Jesus is always there, but sometimes it’s too dark to see and you just have to trust. Scary times.

When Jesus gets close enough to the disciples’ boat, they see him, but they think it’s a ghost, and they cry out in fear. Wouldn’t you? I mean, who’s expecting to see somebody out in the middle of the lake without a boat?

And Jesus, who knows their fear, says to them, “Take heart. Do not be afraid. I AM.”

Just as God named himself to Moses in the burning bush, so Jesus identifies himself as the great “I AM,” the “I AM” who, the psalmist says, “provides a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters” (Ps 77:19).

In the person of Jesus, God is walking on the waters, present in the midst of storms to save us through the storms.

And Peter, who always has the initial courageous impulse to go where no one has gone before, says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”

And Jesus says, “Come on.”

And for a moment, Peter is able to walk toward his Lord on the wind-blown waters. It’s yet another picture of what discipleship is all about - obeying Jesus, acting courageously, moving toward Jesus confidently even in the teeth of a storm.

Peter is often criticized for having little faith, but he does ask Jesus to command him to come to him. Peter begins his journey across the water toward Jesus with the recognition that this is not something he can do on his own initiative. Peter’s faith is little, but he at least is beginning to recognize that faith is obedience. [4] And so he takes a step of faith no one else is willing to take toward the Christ who calls him.

Some of you have taken that step. You have left what is known and risked your life to serve God in Russia, Israel, Japan, Costa Rica, Thailand, America. May Say shared her faith story with us last Wednesday night. She told how she felt called to be a missionary. She initially did not want to leave Thailand and come to America. But she told God that if God wanted her to be a missionary to America, she would go. And here she is, along with many Karen brothers and sisters, being the presence of Christ to Crescent Hill Baptist Church and the city of Louisville and in places all over the world.

When I think of what we are trying to do here - live in community together as brothers and sisters in Christ - despite barriers of language and culture - it is astounding. You should hear people throughout CBF and other friends of mine when they hear of what we are doing.

Yes, it would be much easier for us to worship and serve God separately as two different congregations, each of us in our own language. But our efforts to worship and serve together give witness to the unity of the Body of Christ, and in the process of a unity that God is joining together, we are enriched and changed in ways that would be impossible otherwise. We have stepped out of the security of the boat, moving in faith toward Jesus.

And as long as we keep our eyes focused on the One who calls us to risk ourselves in faith, we may just find ourselves walking on water, taking part in the miraculous work of God among us.

The other option is to give in to the fear of the wind and sink like a rock. Or worse, just stay in the boat, too afraid to risk ourselves at all. Or worse than that, never get in the boat to begin with.

Peter is to be commended for his willingness and courage to do only what could be done with God’s help. But he is also a reminder that we must not give in to the fear around us. Peter does not begin to sink and then become frightened; he becomes frightened and then begins to sink.

As he begins to sink, he cries for help and Jesus reaches out his hand to lift him up. When Jesus catches him, he asks Peter why he doubted. I don’t think this was a blaming or shaming word. I think Jesus, like any good teacher, wanted Peter to learn from this experience so that he could grow. And by the looks of Peter preaching at Pentecost I think it worked. Soon Jesus will rename Simon as Peter and declare that “on this rock” that at the moment was sinking, Jesus’ church will be built. But first he failed.

Herman Melville said, “[The one] who has never failed somewhere, that [person] cannot be great. Failure is the test of greatness.”

And yet, we do not often see failure as a step on the road to greatness. But if Melville is right, I don’t know about you, but it gives me new hope.

In writing about this story, Barbara Brown Taylor says we might think it would have been a better story if the disciples had all gotten out of the boat and walked on water. But she says that would not have rang as true as this version of risk and failure. The truth about us, she says, is that we obey and fear, we walk and sink, we believe and doubt. Our faith and our doubt exist in us at the same time. [5] Even after Pentecost, Peter will fail again.

Jesus lifts Peter in all his faith and doubt and leads him back to the boat with the other disciples. And once Jesus gets in the boat with them, the wind calms and ceases.

It is hard to read the gospels and not realize that we are called to live risky lives that lead to a cross and include failure. Everything is risky, whether we stay in the boat or get out of the boat. And the fear will never go away as long as we seek to follow Jesus.

The most common command in scripture - do you know it? - is “Fear not; do not be afraid.” I think “fear not” appears so much in scripture because fear is the number one reason we are tempted to avoid doing what God asks us to do.

Many of us learned about fear in our families. What did Mom say when you went outside to play or left for school? It is the rare mom who says, “Take risks today, sweetheart. Embrace danger. Look just one way when you cross the street.” Moms want us to be safe.

But not Jesus. He sends us out in a boat that seems small and frail with great ocean water swelling all around us. Duke ethicist Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way: “Often the church finds herself far from shore and threatened by strong winds and waves. Those in the boat often fail to understand that they are meant to be far from shore and that to be threatened by a storm is not unusual. If the church is faithful she will always be far from shore. And at times we will be commanded to leave the safety of the boat to walk on water.” [6]

At times we may be called to do extraordinary things that call us to risk something big for something good. Things that may seem foolish to us and to the rest of the world, but a calling from God nevertheless.

And every time we get out of the boat, our God gets a little bigger and our faith a little stronger.

We would do well to ask ourselves as a congregation: What are we doing that we could not do apart from the power of God?

We can even ask ourselves on a personal level: What am I doing that I could not do apart from the power of God?

Imagine at the end of your life watching a video of all that God might have done with your life if you had followed and trusted.

Imagine at our church’s bicentennial, a hundred years from now, our descendants watching a video of all God might have done through our church if we had followed and trusted.

The way we live as individuals and as a congregation is a consequence of the size of our God. For many of us our God is too small.

There is a word for the process by which human beings come to perceive the greatness and strength of God. It is called worship. It is what the disciples did when Jesus got into the boat with them and calmed the storm. We need to worship because without it we can forget that we have a Big God beside us and live in fear. We need to worship because without it we can forget God’s calling and begin to live in a spirit of self-preoccupation and self-preservation. [7]

When people and churches get out of the boat, they are never quite the same. Their worship is never quite the same. Their world is never quite the same. Whether they sink or swim, something will have changed. Jesus is still looking for people who will dare to trust him, who will refuse to allow their fear to have the final word, who refuse to be deterred by failure. [8]

Do you want to be safe or brave? You simply cannot be both.

If we choose bravery and pray for God’s Spirit to plunge us on with hope and courage, let us do so with God’s word spoken through the prophet Isaiah carved into the side our boat and written upon our hearts:

When you pass through the waters I will be with you,
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
For I am the Lord your God, your Savior.
I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name.

And you are mine.
Amen.

_____________________________

1. Eugene Boring, “Matthew,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, Abingdon, 1995, 329
2. Thomas G. Long, Matthew, Westminster John Knox, 1997, 166
3. Quoted in sermon by H. Stephen Shoemaker, “Walking on Water,” May 4, 2008
4. Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Press, 2006, 141
5. Barbara Brown Taylor, “Saved by Doubt,” The Seeds of Heaven, Westminster John Knox, 2004, 60
6. Hauerwas, 141
7. John Ortberg, If You Want to Walk on Water You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, Zondervan, 2001, 194, 196
8. Ibid., 202-203