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August 10, 2008 sermon

Riding the Storm
(Isaiah 58: 11-14; Psalm 133; Matthew 14: 22-33)

Reverend Minister Sally Harris

Giver of Life and love this I pray: for stillness to hear the song of Your Spirit.
For vision to see the shape of Your dreaming.
For wisdom to touch the depths of Your creating.
For courage to take the paths our souls have always known. Amen

What happens when you encounter stormy weather? How do you ride out the storm? Imagine traveling down the highway and suddenly you are overtaken by a severe thunderstorm. Are you one that grips the steering wheel tightly determined to drive on through? Or do you want to stop in the middle of the storm and share the experience with someone? Talk through your feelings, make a plan, work through some process as a way of defusing the intensity of the stormy experience. Perhaps you seek to escape the fierceness of the storm by changing the subject; reading a book, somehow leaving the situation, if not physically, mentally - hoping it will just go away. Then there are of course the thrill seekers: the ones who jump right in the middle of the storm, the ones who engage extreme sports and enter fear factor contests - the tornado chasers, hurricane hustlers, storm-seekers. Where do we find ourselves when stormy seas happen, when chaos reigns, when life gets out of control?

This morning our gospel story calls to mind the time when the disciples encountered stormy weather. It is a story told with great care, rich in detail and meaning. In the beginning we learn that Jesus, amid the pressures of his ministry, finds the time and place to pray. Seeking solitude he makes deliberate plans sending the disciples off into a boat and dismissing the crowds. While Jesus finds the quiet center the disciples finds themselves in the center of a storm. As the sun sets Jesus sits alone conversing with the creator, seeking peace in the midst of the hectic schedule of an itinerant preacher. As the sun sets the disciples struggle against chaotic waves and wild winds, seeking calm in the midst of stormy seas. It wasn't until early the next morning that Jesus came walking like an aberration toward the battered boat through the wind and the waves. As the disciples cried out in fear Jesus reassured them with calming words: "Take heart, it is I; have no fear." And then we hear again the familiar legend of Peter's grand gesture of walking on the water.

There is a story from the Zen Buddhist tradition about the disciple who thought he could improve his chances of enlightenment by seeking it on his own. So the want-to-be enlightened disciple bid farewell to the community in the monastery, took the ferry across the river, and went to live in a cave high in the hills all by himself. There he mediated non-stop for twenty-five years. At the end of that time, he emerged from the cave, stretched his arms above his head, like a person awaking from a long sleep and made his way down to the river. Without even pausing to test the temperature first, the disciple stepped out on the water and proceeded to walk across it toward the monastery he had left a quarter of a century ago. Two monks who were doing their laundry that morning saw him coming across the river. "Who is that?" one of them asked. The other replied, "That is the old man who has spent twenty-five years meditating in a cave. Now look at him! He can walk on water!" "What a pity," the first monk said. "The ferry only costs a quarter."

And so we hear the most famous water-walking story of the Christian tradition. It is the story of Peter attempting to meet Jesus on the stormy seas of Galilee. Peter did not prepare for twenty-five years to do it. He did not practice at all, as far as anyone knows. He simply saw Jesus out on the water; heard Jesus reassure the community that all was well and asked Jesus to command him to come.

I guess Peter decided to run something of a vision test here, calling out to the ghostly form that if he really is the Lord, “then command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus does. And Peter steps out on the water like an Olympic hopeful on the balance beam, laying each foot down on the water without a tremor. Then the wind gusts, the waves rise, he loses focus and down he goes, while everyone in the boat watches helplessly.

History has laid a great burden on Peter at this point in the story, and perhaps it is this that so weighs him down in the water, rather than the seeming failure of faith that many interpreters have attached to him. When Jesus catches Peter and pulls him into the boat, saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” we have tended to hear these as words of rebuke. As a consequence, we sometimes carry around the cumbersome notion that if we just had enough faith, if we could, by force of will, generate a critical mass of it, a magical measure of it, we could fix whatever is wrong with us. That is a terrible load to carry by ourselves, and I don’t think that is what Jesus intends.

Let us hear instead Jesus’ words to Peter as words of encouragement, not of harsh rebuke. Words that are gentle and good-natured. Words acknowledging Peter’s courage in stepping out of the boat. And there is also a clear invitation and challenge that Jesus extends to his soggy friend. Jesus recognizes Peter. Every step of the way, on sea and on land, he sees him for who he is: reckless, impulsive, devoted, always good-hearted though not always clear-headed. Jesus wants Peter to be able to see him, to recognize both who he is and who he is calling Peter to become. Jesus knows that Peter’s sight is incomplete, that his vision will falter, that he is still learning to see. But he is learning.

In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard describes what happened when eye surgeons began to perform the first successful operations to remove cataracts. For many of those who had been born with blindness, the experience was terrifying in the beginning. Their brains had never learned how to process and make sense of the images that now confronted their eyes. Shapes appeared flat, meaningless, fearsome. One young man, raised in what was then called an asylum for the blind, threatened to tear his eyes out. A newly sighted girl walked around for two weeks with her eyes closed. (sited from Marius von Senden’s book Space and Sight).

Gradually, Dillard says, many of them passed through their fright and began to work with what their eyes were trying to tell them. She describes one man who, trying to develop his depth perception, would toss a shoe out in front of himself. He would estimate how far away the shoe was, walk toward it, pick it up, toss it again. Slowly, he began to see. When Peter got out of the boat, perhaps it was his way of tossing a shoe, testing his depth perception there on the waters, feeling his way toward the one whom he was still learning to recognize and to know. Peter faltered but did not fail, and when he returns to the other disciples, he carries a new piece of vision with him. Matthew tells us that when Jesus and Peter get into the boat, the wind ceases, and those in the boat worship Jesus, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” For this moment, at least, in this space of calm on a once-contrary sea, they pass through the darkness, and they see.

Yesterday, in the cloudy skies of the morning, the sea was calm as I stood on a boat with a grieving family who had tragically lost their son, their brother, their uncle, nephew and cousin. On a gray day the sea was tranquil and peacefully received the ashes of a life torn by chaos. In that moment of grief as flowers were thrown to embrace the ashes there seemed to be the presence of the Christ once again stilling the stormy sea and bringing peace beyond our human understanding. Afterwards many commented on the tranquility in the midst of this confusing loss. Eyes saw beyond the tragedy to an embracing presence.

How do we ride out the storms that life brings to us? Where do we recognize the presence of Christ in the midst of our days? How might God be challenging us to deepen our vision and stretch our sight? Can we recognize the holy in places of chaos as well as calm? By whatever ways it comes to us—by touch and sight and sound and all our senses—may we recognize the presence of the Christ who continually reaches out for us.

[resource: Jan Richardson]

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