A Proper 14 19 Ord
BFC 2017
Matthew 14:22-33
August 13, 2017
In
many historical churches, you all would be sitting in what is called the “nave”
of the church, the long narrow center leading from a narthex at the back up to
the chancel. Nave comes from the Latin navis, meaning boat or ship. The New England
Church I pastored in New Hampshire
The
sea, in Scriptural meaning, found way back in the first creation story of
Genesis, was a symbol of chaos, a potentially life-threatening spirit. Found within the great chaos of the sea was
an even more terrifying sea monster, the Leviathan, always threatening. Only in God’s creating and re-creating action
to provide a boundary is the chaos kept at bay.
Jesus
walks out not onto the water, but onto the sea, the place of chaos, a threat to
life, and full of terrifying creatures.
The most important part, however, is that as our boat or ship is
buffeted by the waves and weather, we know that Jesus is out on the sea with
us. There are also other people in the
boat with us. Community and solidarity with
the Divine and with each other created and re-created are what keep the chaos
at bay.
Note the
disciples’ reaction upon seeing Jesus. As
the boat is battered and the wind moves against them in necessary ways, the
disciples think Jesus might be a ghost. They
do not shout for joy upon seeing Jesus or show relief, they are “terrified”,
the same word that might be used for a sea that is stirred up or agitated. The chaos and unraveling happening around
them is what they experience on the inside.
And Jesus does not immediately still the storm. He says, “Take heart. It is I.
Do not be afraid.” Lest we think
he might be merely a ghost or absent, Jesus is the one person who does not let
the outer circumstances dictate his inner disposition. The disciples are not showing the same inner
peace.[2]
Eugene
Boring writes that faith is not about walking on the sea, for Scripture details
it is only God who does that, faith is “but daring to
believe, in the face of all the evidence, that God is with us in the boat, made
real in the community of faith as it makes its way through the storm, battered
by the waves.”[3]
The great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh relates that a
lotus, the symbol of Buddhist enlightenment grows and unfolds not on pristine marble,
but in the messiness and muck of the mud.
In the same way, we should recognize that chaos and suffering are a part
of life. When we do not run away from
the suffering that is before us, but show ourselves willing to enter into it,
we learn how to be compassionate and understanding people. So suffering, he believes, is a necessary
part of the Kingdom of God.[4] As we become more compassionate and
understanding people, suffering dissipates not only in our lives but in the
lives of others around us. “Take heart.”
Or, “Be courageous. It is I. Do not be afraid.”
Way back in 1999, M. Night Shyamalan’s had his breakthrough
as a writer and director with his movie, The
Sixth Sense. The
Sixth Sense is a movie with an incredible, surprise ending, causing the
viewer to re-think everything they saw throughout the movie. It begins as a horror movie. It ends as a prophetic tale with much the
same message as our gospel story. A
small boy, Cole Sear, relates that he sees dead people, and he would do
anything to avoid their presence in his life.
He is quite naturally terrified of people with axes in their heads,
bullet wounds through their backs, vomiting radiator fluid. Only when Cole confronts his fear, does he
recognize that the terrifying ghosts are really teachers with messages of
concern and care for the living.
When
we are able to name our fears and confront them, we recognize that our fears
and struggles may be entreating us to courage and solidarity even in the
chaos. When we are afraid, however, when
we are afraid, everything looks like a ghost.
Even Jesus. And in Charlottesville,
or on the campus of the University of Virginia, Jesus as a middle-eastern,
politically revolutionary peasant, who he actually was, creates quite a bit of
fear. There are many who fear joining hands and
building community and solidarity with the real Jesus.
By joining together in this crazy journey called
Christianity, you agree to hop in the boat, sail with us on the ship that is
the sea of chaos and suffering. What we
seek to do, on this common voyage, is share in our suffering so that compassion
and understanding might grow. We seek to share our fears so that we might
acknowledge God’s presence with us as we walk through them. And, good friends, we not only experience
individual fears but common fears for our life as a congregation and church. Life for local churches, life in our world
with the specter of climate change, nuclear war, and people who see hate as the
good news, sure reflects a world stirred up and agitated around us. And it is
difficult not to be terrified about what the future holds for us.
As
by the name we gave the committee tasked with helping us thinking about the
future of our church building, we know that our congregation and local church
is at a crossroads. We cannot be who we
were and continue. Mainline, downtown
churches all over the country are learning that difficult lesson.
So
here is what I propose. I propose that,
after a minute of meditation over those fears and struggles you sense deep
within you, you might come forward, one at a time, and name those fears and struggles
and then drop them in the sea of God’s presence to know that we are all on this
boat together. It is an important
Biblical tradition that says as we name our fears, struggles, and demons, we
show our power over them in solidarity and community with one another. As we watch those fears and struggles
dissolve and dissipate, we show our faith once again in a God in Christ who did
not let his fears and struggles dictate his course of action and his courage. This is not to say these fears and struggles
go away. Rather, Jesus walked out into
the center of chaos and tribulation.
What we do is we say we are willing to engage them, willing to begin,
believing that God joins in solidarity and community with us as we do so. We walk out onto the sea. And, lo and behold, Christ is with us.
So
let us take a minute for meditation.
Take heart. Do not be afraid.
I will begin. I
invite you to come forward at this time.
And we shall navigate this way
together. Perhaps we might learn that
the ghosts we fear are really teaching us something about who we can be and
will be with God’s presence.
In reflecting on what the events in Virginia call from us
as Christians, activist and author Ken Sehested wrote from Asheville, North
Carolina:
We
live, as the author of Hebrews commended, in
unverifiable assurance of things hoped for, by the conviction of things not
seen, still a distance away from what is promised (11:1, 39).
Persistence is among our highest virtues.
If you know anything about restorative justice, you know the goal of
truthtelling is not to decide who to blame and how to punish them. It is to
learn who has been harmed, and how; and who must be involved, in what ways, to
heal the wound. The horizon is not retribution but restitution, restoration,
reconciliation.
I like the procedural outline my friend Nibs Stroupe identifies, with six
stages: recognition, resistance, resilience, reparations, reconciliation and
recovery.
I would add a premise to this procedure: Every one of us has
a part to play; but few will be convenient or comfortable.
Another poet, Maya Angelou, gets the last word.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with
courage, need not be lived again.”[5]
Getting on this boat,
this ship, is not easy. It is to steer
out into the chaos and tribulation. Some
of us may get seasick along the way. We
may even encounter sea monsters. But we
have Christ’s presence mediated through this church. Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins,
today we once again covenant to be a part of the Christian Church. Many of our churches were built to remind us
that, as a community, we were meant to be a ship. And ships . . . ships were built to be at
sea. Amen.
[1] Brian P. Stoffregen,
“Matthew 14.22-33, Proper 14-Year A,” Exegetical
Notes at CrossMarks Christian Resources,
http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt14x22.htm.
[2] David Ewart, “Year A,
Pentecost 8, August 7, 2011” Holy
Textures http://www.holytextures.com/2011/05/matthew-14-22-33-year-a-pentecost-august-7-august-13-proper-14-ordinary-19-sermon.html. “When the
disciples see Jesus walking on the sea, they are not relieved, do not shout for
joy expecting that Jesus has come to rescue them from the storm (also caused by
spirits). Instead, they are terrified. The word used here for
"terrified" can also be used to describe a sea that has been agitated
and stirred up. In other words, the disciples' inner state is now a perfect
reflection of their outer circumstances.”
[4] “Interview with Thich Nhat
Hanh,” On Being with Krista Tippett,
September 26, 2013. http://www.onbeing.org/program/thich-nhat-hanh-on-mindfulness-suffering-and-engaged-buddhism/transcript/5991#main_content
[5] Ken Sehested, “We are
Charlottesville,” prayer & politiks,
August 12, 2017. http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/blog/2017/08/12/we-are-charlottesville.2776686.
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