Sunday,
August 8, 1999
Rev. Julia Jarvis
" How Much Faith do we Need"
Matthew 14:22-33
As you
can tell, we nave switched the order of worship a bit so
we can fully benefit from the different way we will be
reading scripture todlay. When I was a campus minister in
Normal, IL I met up with several benedictine nuns who
taught me a way to react scriptures called the Lectio
Divina which was started by the Benedictines in the 6th
century. As you can see in your bulletin there are four
different phases of reading, the scripture will be read
four different times and you will reflect on the text
differently each time as instructed by the bulletin. So
you can first have a better understanding of the Matthew
text, I would tike to first snare some of my own
reflections of the text. Before I begin join me in
prayer.
Prayer
Text reading
My mom always worried that I would lose my faith when I decided to go to a progressive Baptist seminary. Maybe she was right, I'll never forget the time at seminary I first started questioning the literal belief in miracles. And it started at seminary, it was a beautiful fall afternoon and I was sitting on a small hill overlooking seminary watching a tag football game. I was a first year student and was lucky enough to be sitting by Don Flowers, a handsome seminarian in his last year. As we watched the game we somehow got into a discussion of miracles. Don proceeded to tell that the immaculate conception was a myth and that the Hebrew word for virgin really was maiden. I remember distinctly my heart started to throb in my throat and my head began to spin. I tried to argue with him aware of the fact that the belief he was dispelling was so important to my own faith. How could Don possibly believe in Jesus if he didn't believe Mary was a virgin? But he did call himself a Christian and he seemed to live out his faith honestly and lovingly. Maybe, I thought, it doesn't make a difference whether Mary was a virgin or not. My definition of faith began to slowly change on that day. I was slowly learning that it didn't matter what I believed in but who I believed in.
Which brings us to our text this morning -- Jesus and Peter walking on the water, to my church as a youth there was so much emphasis on the specific miracle, that I had very little memory about what occurred around the miraculous event. Some of us who see things literally are easily awed by Jesus' ability to defy gravity, missing the opportunity of trying to understand the deeper meaning. Some of us also try to find rational explanations -- like it was probably an optical illusion considering it was during the fourth watch (which in Roman time was between 3-6 a.m.) Jesus was probably walking through the surf in the shallows of the northern end of the lake.
However we try to interpret this story, searching for rational explanations out or trusting that Jesus indeed defies gravity or that it never happened, somehow misses the point the gospel writer was trying to make.
Scholars' best guess as to when the Gospel of Matthew was written was around 10 years or so after the destruction of the Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The church was going through a great deal of persecution, rejection and poverty. It is possible the churches hopes of Jesus' immediate return and the success of this new movement were drowning in despair. God's presence must have felt far away from them.
It's likely that Matthew is using this text to encourage the church to remain faithful arid united during this tumultuous time. N.T. scholars state that most likely the boat in this text symbolizes the church being battered and tortured by the seas of chaos. The sea itself in biblical times connotes the forces of chaos representing alt the anxieties and dark powers that threaten the goodness of order, in this story, the sea is not only battering the boat, but it is also a barrier between Jesus and the disciples. Yet Jesus defies nature and comes to them. He walks over the power of chaos, calms the winds. Jesus is conquering the chaos - his presence is bigger than all the persecution, darkness, anxiety that the disciples or we could ever encounter. Jesus is charged with the power of God to shepherd and care for God's people. Whether or not we feel God's presence in the midst of our dark storms, God is there in the shadows, the darkness, to hold us when we call God's name. The singer Leonard Cohen sings, 'There are cracks, cracks in everything, and that's now the light gets in." (Annie Lamott's book, pg. 39-40). The light of God comes through best in the cracks of our lives.
So here comes Jesus, and Peter starts climbing out of the boat saying, "If it is really you, Lord, command me to come to you on the water. I want to walk on the water too!" And Jesus says, "Come." So Peter climbs out of the boat leaving the community to test his own faith maybe or to test God's love for him. I'm guessing several of us at one time in our adult lives have left the church. Maybe out of boredom, out of anger--maybe we thought we could make it on our own. I know that I left for several years. But when my life got too much to handle and t felt myself sinking, I came back. I missed the blue and gray hairs, the baby and middle-aged hairs, the songs, the smells and ail the potluck dinners. I missed the light through the cracks. My Aunt Jeanne lives in the Carolina's. She used to constantly complain about her Southern Baptist church. Once when I was visiting her, I said, "Aunt Jeanne why don't you just leave that church?" She looked at me as if I was crazy and she said, "Because when I am sick they bring me my favorite jello salad." This is the church at its most elemental! This is what I missed.
And maybe Peter discovered he couldn't do it on his own but before he sank completely Jesus lifted him up back into the boat. Then he said to Peter - "Oh you of little faith." Was Jesus saying to Peter if he had enough faith he would nave been able to walk on the water? To us this text might say if we have enough faith we can overcome all our problems.
What if the message were: Faith isn't being able to walk on the water-only God can do that - but daring to believe God is in the boat with us. Belief in God's presence is what our faith calls us to. And it is finding that presence in each other. This presence is wonderfully illustrated in writer Annie Lammott's book, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts On Faith. Annie describes a miracle which happened in her little Presbyterian church in Northern California.
"One of the newest members of our church is a man named Ken Nelson. Ken is a gay man who is dying of AIDS and is disintegrating before our very eyes. Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but when he smiles, he is radiant. There is a woman in the choir named Ranola who is large and beautiful and jovial and black and as devout as can be, who has been a little standoffish towards Ken. She has always looked at him with confusion when she looks at him at all. She was raised in the south by Baptists who taught her that his way of life was an abomination. It is hard for her to break though this. I think she and a few others at church are afraid of catching the disease. But Kenny has come to church almost every week for the last year and won almost everyone over. He finally missed a couple of Sundays when he got too weak and then a month ago he was back weighing almost no pounds, his face even more lopsided as if he'd had a stroke. Still during the prayers of the people, he talked joyously of his life and his decline and of grace and redemption. So on this particular Sunday we sang "Jacob's Ladder" which goes "Every rung goes higher, higher" while ironically Kenny couldn't even stand up. But he sang away sitting down with the hymnal in his lap. And then we sang our second hymn "His Eye is on the Sparrow." The pianist was playing and the whole congregation had risen - only Ken remain seated. "Why should I feel discouraged?" Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment and then her face began to melt and contort like his and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up - lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang." This is one of the best miracles I have heard in a long time. The miracle of judgmental walls crumbling down and love pouring through the cracks.
So now much faith do we need to have. I don't know...maybe enough to fix a favorite jello salad for a shut-in in the church; maybe enough to befriend someone here who is completely different from you; maybe enough to believe that where two or three or gathered -- God is with us Emmanuel.
As we further reflect on this passage, I pray you will find a word, a phrase that will touch you with the loving presence of God and carry you through today.
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