Our calling INTO the Tumult.

Matthew 14:22-33 (NIV)

(22) Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd.

(23) After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,

(24) but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

(25) During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.

(26) When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

(27) But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

(28) “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

(29) “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

(30) But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

(31) Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

(32) And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.

(33) Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

As is my custom, I always read over my sermon with Eimy the night before. I felt good about it last night, and I thought Eimy would too. At least I thought she would give me the benefit of the doubt. You see, yesterday Eimy celebrated a milestone. Seven years of marriage with me, and she hasn’t killed me yet. That is definitely longer than I had anticipated. I am not an easy person to live with. So I read through the sermon and looked at her and she was shaking her head, which is generally not a good sign. Too much, she says. It’s too risky. You are pointing out the 800 pound gorilla. Are you sure you want to do that? This is the first time I have gotten that reaction from her. Yet, I am going to try it. I am going to try it for a couple of reasons. This week has been a difficult week for me. There has been a lot going on in my mind. I have had some conversations with some people that made me think about things in a different light. I have been here for a little over a year now, and I really enjoy serving both Grace and St. Paul’s churches. I have learned a lot, I have made a lot of new friends, and I have really started to understand my calling in a way that makes it easier for me to grasp mentally. It is not an easy thing to understand a calling from God. It is not easy to make major changes to one’s life and the lives of one’s family based on a call that many times doesn’t feel concrete. No one gets a postcard from God saying here is what I want you to do. However, if understanding God’s call is difficult, acting upon it is sometimes near impossible, and that is what we are talking about today.

Any fan of literature will tell you how, throughout history, water has been used symbolically thousands of times. Across cultures, across languages, the use of water in stories has been used to mean a whole myriad of things. Generally, it symbolizes that which is difficult or dangerous. Indeed, it can be deadly. However, it has also been used to symbolize a major change of life, a rebirth, a symbol of changing one thing for another. It has also come to symbolize cleansing, literally cleansing that which is dirty, or figuratively cleansing a person, a spirit, a soul. In today’s story, each of these meanings can be seen.

Walking on the water. Jesus is walking on the water. This is a story that we have heard hundreds if not thousands of times throughout our life. It is one of the miracles that Jesus performs that we point out to non-believers. It is something we hold on to in our times of struggle, at those times when we feel our faith is weak. Our Lord walked across the water.

Many of you will remember the debate that came about a few years ago and to some extent still continues. The words, “under God” in our pledge of allegiance. We argued about whether this was an unfair or illegal imposition of religion into a secular, nonreligious America. Many may have heard some comment and defend “under God” as a phrase that didn’t refer to a Christian God or any other specific God but rather in a generic way. It is a reference to a God that one can make mean whatever they want it to mean. A recognition of a higher power. Now, I am not giving my own opinion about this particular debate, as my opinion is irrelevant today.

However, it brings up an interesting point. Do we understand God to be generic? If our God is generic, how can we recognize him? If you were to meet God on the street, would you recognize him? If you were to meet Jesus on the street, would you recognize him? If you could recognize him, how would you do that? Keep in mind that we really don’t know what Jesus actually looked like. The portraits that we have of him were painted hundreds of years after his death. While the artists’ intentions were good, their facts were not always that concrete. Most of our portraits show a European looking white male. There is one thing we do know about Jesus. He was NOT a European white male. So what we know about what Christ looked like is guided by what we know he DIDN’T look like. We don’t know what he DID look like.

Our scripture today tells of Jesus’ own disciples not recognizing him. They are afraid. Wouldn’t you be? They are in a boat, wind against them, driving far out to sea. At early dawn, they see a terrifying sight. A figure walking towards them on the sea!!!!! “It’s a ghost!” they exclaim. But then the figure speaks to them. “Take heart, it is I, don’t be afraid.” Yet, even then, they still weren’t sure that it was Jesus.

We know the rest of the story. Peter asks Jesus to command him out on the water as well. He does, Peter starts to walk and as long as his eyes are kept on Jesus, he is fine. However, the moment he realizes what he is doing, he begins to sink and Jesus must save him.

There is an old hymn many of you know by heart. It starts out, “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.” Jesus calls the disciples a lot. We start this great gospel story with him calling a group of very ordinary people to drop their fishing nets, to leave their families, to venture forth with him on a perilous sea called discipleship. “I will teach you to catch people,” he says. As the journey continues, we realize, he is now saying, “I am going to teach you to carry a cross.”

Jesus is calling the disciples and us in many ways. There is another old hymn that you know as well that says, “Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea, in our joys and in our sorrows, ‘Christian come and follow me.”

But in today’s story, Jesus isn’t simply calling us over the tumult. He isn’t calling us out of the tumult. Today, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus calls Peter out of the boat and onto the waves. Jesus is calling him, and us, INTO the tumult.

We, as a people, have trouble with this. Not just us, but we, as a religion, have trouble with this. We journey about on our boats, thinking that we are on this journey that Christ has called us to. But then, the waves start getting rough. The wind starts howling around us. Sometimes, the boat is rocking, but the weather is still ok. We have a problem with rocking boats.

Years ago, when my mother was in high school, she enjoyed acting in the musicals that they would put on each year. One year the musical that they did was Guys and Dolls. There is a song in that play that no doubt is also familiar to many of you. “I dreamed last night I was on a boat to heaven.” The song goes on and there are some problems on the boat. But it’s ok, because the passengers know right from wrong. Each time the dreamer tried to make the passengers do something wrong, they warned him, “Sit Down, you’re rockin’ the boat!”

We don’t like rocking boats. We don’t like our own little world to be clouded with things that make us feel uneasy. Our intentions are good. After all, we are Christians, and since we are Christians, we know what God thinks. We know what God wants us to do. We know how to keep the boat from rocking.

But, in doing that, we miss something miraculous. When Peter was sinking, he called Jesus to save him. Jesus did, and helped him back into the boat. He stilled the wind and the waves. But think about it, if Peter had not ventured forth, had he not obeyed the call to walk on the water, then he never would have had the great opportunity to recognize the miraculous ability of Jesus and he never would have had the opportunity to be pulled from the raging waves and saved by Jesus.

So many of us, too many of us, simply splash around in the safe shallows of our faith and because of that we have too few opportunities to test and deepen our faith. In today’s story we learn that if we want to be close to Jesus, we have to venture forth out on the sea, we have to prove his promises through trusting his promises, through risk and venture.

Let’s be honest for a moment. What is at the root of this story? One thing in particular. That thing is fear. Fear is the thing that rocks the boat. Fear is the thing that makes us think twice about asking Jesus to call us out of the boat onto the water. Fear is what holds us back in answering the call to come to Him. And fear is something that each and every one of us deals with daily, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. More than that, fear is something that this church, and every church struggles with every single day. We don’t talk about it openly. We feel we can’t talk about it openly because doing so forces us to put a name to that fear. Putting a name to that fear can open us up to criticism, to danger, to failure, to judgment. We have a hard time doing that.

We talk so much about the needs around us in this church and in this city. We discuss ways that we can act as individuals or as a church to counter some negative forces in our culture or in our community. Sometimes we attempt some of these things, and sometimes we don’t. It is all because of fear. We want to stay in the shallow water because if Jesus asks us to get out of the boat, at least we will only our legs wet, we won’t drown. Our faith is not deep enough to answer that call yet.

Let’s be specific. Let’s be specific not just to Grace or St. Paul’s, but let’s be specific to the USA, or to Pennsylvania, or to York. What are our fears? A few come to mind.

1)            Racism – We are afraid of people who don’t have the same color of skin as we do. We don’t say this out loud because it isn’t politically correct. But, let us admit it, we are afraid to interact with people whose skin tone is different than our own. We see it in how we are afraid to sit outside on the stoop of the church and greet passersby. We see it in how we are afraid to walk down the street and invite our neighbors to church. We might say it is because they might say no. And they might. But I posit the real fear that we have is that they might say yes. The fear is not fear of rejection, but rather the fear is a fear of acceptance. If they come to worship with us, we have to sit with them. That makes us uncomfortable, because they are different.

2)            Fear of the foreigners – We are afraid of those who come from different lands. We talk constantly about how we live in a free country. We are proud of this free country. We are proud of those who have fought to keep it a free country. We are proud that people around the world risk their lives to come here and live freely like us. Yet, when they come here, we ostracize them. We move to neighborhoods where we are less likely to have them as neighbors. We complain that they speak a different language. We complain that they listen to music that we can’t dance to. We speak the language of acceptance, but we live the lives of rejection. We fear that if too many more people come our society will change. We justify this fear by saying that it isn’t the people we dislike, it is that they want to change how we do things. But, let’s be honest, the reality is, we don’t want anyone telling us that we need to change. We don’t want any influences in our life, in our society, in our culture, that we don’t have any control over.

3)            Fear of different ideas – We fear those who disagree with us. When I was growing up, and no doubt it is the same for many of you. We had neighbors who might not have agreed with us politically. Maybe they put a banner up in their yard for a politician we were not going to vote for. What happened, they voted for their guy, we voted for ours, and we continued to be neighbors. Helping each other out, loaning a cup of sugar when one was needed, watering their flowers if they were out of town. Nowadays, I get the feeling that if my neighbor disagrees with me politically, he considers me an enemy. Look at the debates lately about national politics, or even state politics. With a proposed tax on companies that want to drill for natural gas, or with an inability for those we elect to put our society first and come to a decision and instead to try to make a point with a debate on a debt ceiling at the cost of an entire economy. A mentality of you are either my friend or my foe, there is no in between. If I am a Republican and you are a Democrat, we can’t be friends. How did we get to this?

These are just a few of the fears that we have that we don’t talk about. Well, today, we are talking about them. We are talking about them because we need to talk about them. It is about time that we stand up, take our feet and walk out of the boat, onto the waves and trust that our faith is deep enough and strong enough to hold us above the water. We know that, with our eyes on the living Christ, the one right next to us, we will not sink. And we know that, if and when we do start to worry, start to fear, and start to sink, all we need to do is yell out, “Jesus, Save Me!” and he will be right there, at our side, pulling us up from the deep, so once again we can stand eye to eye with Him and with each other. Because until we can do that, until we can have a faith that is strong enough to stop hating each other, we can’t answer that call.

Even more than that, until we have a faith strong enough that we can start really loving each other, we can’t answer the call.