Sermon: Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

I’m from Northern Michigan, so I grew up on the waters of Lake Michigan. Now, Lake Michigan is not a turbulent sea, but it does have its fair share of storms. Plus, it is cold and sometimes scary, which led me, as a child, to both love spending time on our boat and also find myself gripped with fear every time I had to make that first step on to it.
Now for any of you with some boating experience, you might be aware of the problem with keeping one leg on land and one leg on the boat. Even if you are conflicted or scared, decision time doesn’t work to well if you are trying to make it as your legs drift farther and farther apart. There is a rather famous family story in the Petersen household of the time I did just that. I would often get scared as I made that leap into the boat, but on this particular late summer day, fear paralyzed me. So as I stood with a leg on the pier and a leg in the boat, things started to move farther and farther and farther apart. I could hear my Father yelling at me- get in or get out, but it was like everything was in slow motion. Until, of course, reality came speeding at me and I dropped, fully clothed into the chilly waters of Lake Michigan.
So when I hear this familiar story from the gospel of Matthew my heart goes out to the disciple Peter. He and the other disciples have been in the boat all night, following Jesus’ command that they push off and go to the other side. Jesus is not with them, so they have been in this rickety old boat all by themselves. The night has not been calm, their tiny craft has been battered back and forth by the waves. The rain has poured in, they were smack in the middle of a big storm. They aren’t closer to where they are going and they are far from where they have been. And so they are afraid. And I hear that. They are afraid because they waves aren’t getting any calmer and their boat isn’t getting any closer to dry land. They are afraid because they have been left on their own, and Jesus doesn’t seem to be interested in calming this storm.
So in the middle of the pouring rain, they look out on the water, and they see a figure walking towards them. And, now, if they didn’t know what fear was, they really know what it is all about because surely a ghost is walking on the water towards them. What was bad has now moved quickly into worse, because not only is there a storm but there is a ghost headed in their direction. So with one voice, those wind-battered, rain-beaten disciples cry out in fear.
And then they hear,“It is I, do not be afraid.”
Do they recognize his voice? Can they tell it is Jesus? I imagine they are looking back and forth at one another- squinting their eyes, wiping the rain from their faces in hopes of getting some confirmation, the man walking on water is Jesus. Always quick to respond, Peter cries out, “You know what- if it is you, Jesus, if it is you, call me out onto the water- make me walk to you.” And that ghostly figure says, “come.”
In this story, Peter is often cast as the hero or the antithesis of what it means to be a person of faith. As a hero, we flock to Peter because when faced with making the decision between land and water, Peter chooses water. Plenty of people hold up Peter as the man who had enough faith to trust that God could do anything, even make him walk on water. He is a hero because he dared to do the impossible believing that God would save him. And, at the same time, Peter is often cast as the disciple we don’t want to mimic. Yes, we might follow him out on to the water, but, we, we would have enough faith to keep our eyes focused on Jesus and not waver. Peter just lets fear get the best of him, he lets the wind and the waves take over and he doesn’t believe. So, we don’t want to be anything like him, because we want to be people of faith, who don’t doubt, who don’t take their eyes off their savior.
But the people I really wonder about in our text for today are the people who I would have been huddled with, the rest of those disciples in the bottom of the boat. Because sometimes I really can’t make that tough decision between boat and water, and I end up finding myself feeling more and more stretched apart. I want to be like the risk taking Peter who was willing to jump out of the boat and rush towards the ghostly figure of his savior- but I often find myself feeling as if I am in the bottom of the boat- not sure if the person I hear calling me is Jesus, or something else entirely.
Churches are often built to look like the interior of ships. The nave, or central part of the church, comes from the latin word for ship. It makes sense to me, because sometimes I wonder if we aren’t like those disciples paddling until our hands are calloused and bruised in order to get to where the Lord has told us to go. I wonder if we aren’t like those disciples, rain soaked and tired as we navigate our way through this life. And some of us find ourselves feeling a lot like Peter on that fateful morning, ready and willing to take a leap of faith, to run towards the place where Jesus is calling us, because we have all the hope and the passion and the faith that our God can make us do things that defy what seems possible. And some of us find ourselves shaking on the bottom of the boat, because we don’t know whether that guy out there is seeking to do us harm or good.
But wherever we are, in the bottom of the boat or skiing on the water, what we know from our text is that the rains and the wind don’t cease. Peter walks towards Jesus, takes that giant leap of faith, and the rain doesn’t stop, the waves don’t get any smaller. That leap of faith starts to seem like a bad decision when he realizes that his step didn’t calm the storm. He begins to sink when he looks around him only to discover that even for taking a giant step of faith the world around him didn’t appear to change much. The wind and the rains don’t cease for the people of God, and the perspective is much the same in the boat and out of it.
I don’t think the faith we are looking for is found exclusively surfing the waves. I don’t think the kind of faith we are searching for is only in the bottom of the boat. I think the kind of faith we are looking for is in that decision time between staying on land or getting into the water. Because whether we are hanging back in the boat or running at full speed towards Jesus, he is still coming towards us. He is still meeting us in the middle of the storm, as we continue to push forward trying to get to where he told us to go. He is still coming towards us when we are rain soaked and wind beaten. He still meets us, calls out to us, and tells us not to be afraid.
Because the rains still come down and the winds still push us in every direction, no matter how we try to get to him. The waves are not stilled, the winds are not silenced as we decide between boat and water. We still carry fear in our hearts whether it keeps us stuck in our ship or leaves us sinking in the waves. But, because of who our God is, God keeps coming to us. God keeps meeting us in our boat, keeps climbing in, sometimes dragging one of us behind, but keeping us together, despite the storm. God keeps coming down, because that is what God does. We can’t get to God, God gets to us. We can’t get to God, we can’t calm the storm, but our God can. Our God can meet us no matter how bad the circumstances, can whisper to us, do not be afraid, and can finally calm the storm that has been sending us in every direction.
And so that leaves us with only one thing left. To look around in our boat. To see what God has done. And to fall down and worship, seeing that it was never a ghost coming towards us, it was the very son of God. Amen and thanks be to God.