Pentecost 10A (lectionary 19A)
Text: Matthew 14:22-33
Sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
August 9, 2020
Stepping Out, Over the Water
The apostle Peter is the teacher-pleaser. Almost every time Jesus asks a question Peter’s hand is up and he’s fairly hopping up and down; he’s that kid you hated back in 6th grade: “Ooh! Ooh! Pick me!” So it is that when Jesus approaches the disciples’ boat, walking on the water, it’s the overeager Peter who wants to walk on the water too. He asks Jesus, “Ooh! Ooh! Command me to come to you!”
Even if this story was not as familiar to you as it is, you would know already where this one is headed. Peter gets out, takes a few shaky steps, and then he panics because the wind, and the storm, and the waves are still raging around him. Peter sinks. Jesus, that old fisher of men himself, fishes him out. They make it back to the boat and the storm, miraculously, ceases to rage.
And it’s at this point that I imagine Peter,
• wet and water-logged,
• traumatized by his near drowning,
• humiliated for being told he had so little faith,
I imagine Peter looking up at Jesus to say: “Okay, Jesus. But couldn’t you have made this a little easier? If after all you have the power to make the storm cease, couldn’t you have taken care of that before I stepped out of the boat?”
Yeah, Peter, there is always an easier way, but the easier way is never the way of faith. If faith was the easier way, you could have just stayed in the boat. But your original instinct was right: faith is what calls you to step out into this world. Faith is the step out of an old way, into a scary, life-transforming, world-changing way of new life. The good news is that the Kingdom of God has come near, but near as it is the Kingdom of God is nevertheless a world of difference from the world you live in now, and it’s the step of faith that’ll take you onto the bridge from here to there.
Faith is the bridge between sharp contrasts.
• Faith is hope in the face of despair.
• It is love in the face of hatred.
• It is beauty, in the face of ugliness; that is why the arts – the visual arts, and dance, and music – speak to us of faith.
• Faith is justice in the face of injustice.
• It is courage in the face of fear.
• Faith is life, in the face of pandemic.
Faith is that dynamic, spirited force that moves us to step out of the boat even into a dangerous world; that bridges us from the place we are, to the Kingdom of God that has come near, to the place we oughta be.
Which is why faith is so difficult. Faith is hard because it is supposed to move us, because it is supposed to change us. Faith is supposed to better us and open us, deepen us and mature us. And what I describe right there is not an easy journey to make. In fact, it’s the most difficult, most intimidating, most risk-filled journey we will ever take because it means again and again stepping out of the safety of the boat into the wind and the waves and the storm.
“Lord, if it is you – if it’s really you – command me to come to you on the water.”
When we think of proof of the existence of God, usually we think of God’s love, of the kind of blessed assurance that means Jesus is mine. Not here. “Lord, if it is you, I’ll know it when you command me to risk my life, to tempt death, to walk across the swirling depth of every threatening thing I’ve ever known.”
Lord, if it’s you, command me to jump off that cliff, walk that wire, take that plunge that I’ve been so afraid of. Lord, if it’s you, you’ll know that place in me where I just don’t want to go, and right there is where you’ll push me in. And that’s how I’ll know it’s you. Jesus. That is, if it’s you.
Do you remember the shootings five years ago, the nine people murdered by a white supremacist at a Bible study in the church basement in Charleston, South Carolina? The nation was inspired by the incredible faith witness as, one after another, family members of those murdered spoke at the arraignment and told the shooter, “We forgive you.”
One thing that happened then has always stuck with me, though. It was a TV interview with the parents of one of those killed, when the reporter asked them, “Will you be going to church this weekend, to seek solace in your faith?”
The father replied, “Solace? No. We won’t be going to church. At least not now. Because we’re Christians, and we know what Jesus commands about forgiveness, and frankly, we’re just not ready for that yet. It’ll be some time,” the father said, “before we’ll want to be with Jesus.”
And I thought, man, that is a guy who knows Jesus, and who knows the step of faith, all too well. Lord, if it’s you, you’re going to command me out of this boat, aren’t you? Lord, if it’s you, you’re going to invite me to let go of old-life stuff that I’d really rather hang onto right now, and into a new life that is way, way too different. Oh, that’s no filmy, diaphanous ghost, as the disciples first supposed, coming across the water to me with this forgiveness stuff. Naw, Jesus, when I hear what you command, that’s when it gets all too real.
So if in the dead of night, maybe early in the morning just before dawn, you find yourself awake as we often do because of some storm that has brewed up in your life. And you get this nagging sense that the reason the noise of the wind in your head just won’t stop, the reason you keep cycling it over and over again, is because you hear a voice in the storm calling out to say that things should be different. It’s somebody calling your name, a strange voice calling you to rise up, to risk the storm, to defy the waves. It’s somebody calling you to maybe the last place that you’d ever want to go. There’s a good chance, seems to me, that voice could belong to none other than the one who is your very Lord and Savior.
You know what? All too often, your god is nothing but a tame and domesticated projection of yourself. Admit it: that god you believe in agrees with you and affirms what you are doing a suspiciously great percentage of the time. Until, that is – until that moment when you experience God calling you to something that, actually, you would rather not.
Because, I mean, when that happens – who else would dare to call an ordinary, not very spectacularly faithful person like you to such high adventure, to such risk and such struggle, and in the end to such victory?
Who would dare to call you to step out of the boat, and dare to risk, and dare to dream, and dare to build a better world? I think you know who. If it’s you, Lord, … command me to come to you, over the water.”