SPEAKER_00: In the name of the one holy and living God, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_00: Well, last week we had the famous miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.
SPEAKER_00: This week's gospel passage immediately follows that one: the walking on the water.
SPEAKER_00: So the hits just keep on coming.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had attempted to withdraw by himself for a spell before the feeding of the 5,000, and afterwards he attempts to do so again.
SPEAKER_00: And while this won't figure specifically into my message that I'm preaching today, I think it's of note that it appears he is trying to withdraw to grieve, because the passage just before the feeding of the 5,000 is when he's gotten word that his cousin John the Baptist has been executed by a plot by Herod Antipas.
SPEAKER_00: So it brings some layers to his compassionate generosity that he offers to the people, knowing that his spirit was so aggrieved.
SPEAKER_00: But after he preaches and feeds the people, he sends the disciples on ahead without him.
SPEAKER_00: A storm kicks up as they're trying to cross the Sea of Galilee, making it difficult.
SPEAKER_00: And to be clear, the tiny boats that they would have sailed in the first century had every right to make folks fearful in a storm.
SPEAKER_00: They were rustic and small, fairly shallow.
SPEAKER_00: So if waves began, you would have to wonder if you're going to capsize.
SPEAKER_00: And in the midst of all that, Jesus had finally had the alone time to pray that he had been trying to get all day.
SPEAKER_00: And as morning rose, he decided it was time to go meet his friends, and to do so apparently by the most expeditious path possible, straight across the sea to their boat.
SPEAKER_00: Now, unlike last week, when I talked about a potential explanation or humanization of Jesus' miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, this week I really don't know if I have anything.
SPEAKER_00: Walking on water is outside scope when it comes to normalizing something.
SPEAKER_00: And clearly it was for the disciples too, because they kind of freaked out a little by this, because of this figure walking across the water toward their boat.
SPEAKER_00: It's a ghost, they said.
SPEAKER_00: And because I've been practicing it in Spanish this week, es un fantasma.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hears and replies, Take heart, do not fear.
SPEAKER_00: It is I.
SPEAKER_00: Enter my favorite disciple, Peter, in grand fashion, as usual.
SPEAKER_00: If it's you, command me to come to you on the water.
SPEAKER_00: He can't just take Jesus' word for it.
SPEAKER_00: And for whatever reason, that was the evidence he needed.
SPEAKER_00: I want to do it too.
SPEAKER_00: God bless Peter.
SPEAKER_00: He's so impulsive and rash.
SPEAKER_00: I probably like him because I can be that way too sometimes, but he also turns out to be deeply faithful, so I'm always hoping that I have both too.
SPEAKER_00: But I digress.
SPEAKER_00: The delight is that Jesus believes in Peter and has no qualms in saying, in response to Peter's demand, come.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter steps out of the boat and he starts to walk.
SPEAKER_00: But after a few steps, he looks down, realizes what he's doing is beyond human capacity to understand, and the doubts crash over him like the very waves, and he starts to sink.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, save me! And Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: He reaches down and pulls him out and puts him back in the boat, saying, You of little faith, why did you doubt?
SPEAKER_00: I think we tend to look at this as sort of a harsh scolding, but I tend to read it softer than that.
SPEAKER_00: More of a gentle chiding.
SPEAKER_00: Because Peter doesn't need scolding while he's in his fear.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't need a lesson in faith.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he had it greatly enough to step out of the boat in the first place, which is more than any of the others did.
SPEAKER_00: And so he faltered, because humans falter sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: And here's one of the vital things about this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't judge him or let him drown or make a mockery of him because he faltered.
SPEAKER_00: When Peter cried out to him, Jesus just reached out his hand.
SPEAKER_00: He was there.
SPEAKER_00: The doubts didn't win.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: There's a real sense in today's world of Christianity that we are not supposed to let doubt in, that we are not supposed to acknowledge those feelings about our life or our faith, that that would somehow make us less faithful or less devout or less of a believer somehow.
SPEAKER_00: But there's nothing more human than doubt.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing more human than the questions that plague us about this world and about our place in it.
SPEAKER_00: Where do we belong?
SPEAKER_00: How do we move forward?
SPEAKER_00: What does it all mean?
SPEAKER_00: Who is God in any of this?
SPEAKER_00: And how will I know how to follow Jesus in my life?
SPEAKER_00: Is anyone really listening when I pray?
SPEAKER_00: It feels like those doubts that keep battering us about are the very storm that those disciples sat in.
SPEAKER_00: They were in fear and uncertainty.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know quite what to do except to keep pressing on.
SPEAKER_00: And in the midst of that, they experienced this fright of a lifetime of someone walking across the water toward them.
SPEAKER_00: In the most unexpected place, Jesus showed up.
SPEAKER_00: How often, when we are in fear, do we look with suspicion or terror?
SPEAKER_00: When it's really someone coming toward us with a helping hand, when it's really someone who would help and who would hold us up if we just cry out to them.
SPEAKER_00: And when have we been the one to extend our hand to someone when they've been in need?
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps this is how we enter the miracle as we entered the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 last week.
SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't have to be only the fear of a great storm on a sea that shakes us up.
SPEAKER_00: It's all the parts of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Family members aging or getting sick or dying.
SPEAKER_00: Jobs lost or tenuous, trying to make ends meet in this economy, fighting again and again for civil rights that should simply be codified, but someone keeps trying to take them away again and again.
SPEAKER_00: There is much to fear all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Can we reach out our hands to those who are afraid now?
SPEAKER_00: To the poor, the immigrant, the LGBTQ community, the women, all those who are being targeted?
SPEAKER_00: And that hand we reach out to them can look like directly assisting them or communally advocating for them too.
SPEAKER_00: And on the other side of the coin, can we bring ourselves to cry out in need to those we see coming toward us?
SPEAKER_00: They, we, are all Christ bearers, after all.
SPEAKER_00: We carry Him within ourselves, which is what draws us together in this place, week after week.
SPEAKER_00: The kinship of carrying the sacred within and wanting to be strengthened and restored by others who look for that sacred within ourselves, too.
SPEAKER_00: As I talked about last week, it's another reminder that we owe each other everything.
SPEAKER_00: That community and reaching out our hands is the only way forward in a world that would dehumanize and divide.
SPEAKER_00: Can we reach out in our need because we know that it's always both and when we need to help and when we need help ourselves?
SPEAKER_00: And we can't let our pride stop us from asking for help.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we forget our strength or forget our courage, or when we look down at the utterly unbelievable circumstances we're in, and we start to sink, we have to remember to reach out, to grab a hand, to borrow the courage of someone else for a little while.
SPEAKER_00: They won't scold us, they won't punish us.
SPEAKER_00: They'll simply ask gently, why did you doubt?
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: But even asking that gentle question will not stop them from helping us.
SPEAKER_00: And it should not stop us from helping others too, from reaching out our hand to those who falter, because we all falter sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Peter, the disciple whose name means the rock.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one on whom Jesus built the church, his witness, his impetuous, rash, bold, fearless and fearful, second-guessing, but also deeply faithful Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't build the church on the example of someone who never questioned.
SPEAKER_00: Peter questioned everything.
SPEAKER_00: He doubted things all the time.
SPEAKER_00: He got grandiose and too big for his britches, but he also declared Jesus the Messiah early and often.
SPEAKER_00: He pledged allegiance to Jesus repeatedly.
SPEAKER_00: He declared his love for Jesus over and over.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Peter steps out of the boat and he sinks.
SPEAKER_00: Peter cries out for help and is saved.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is all of us.
SPEAKER_00: It is our everyday faltering human example on which the church is built.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we're perfect and undoubting or unquestioning, but because faith without any question isn't faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's unexamined, it's untried, and therefore has no grounding when the waves get the strongest.
SPEAKER_00: Which is to say bring your whole self, your faith, your doubts, your questions, your fears, bring them all to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Cry out to him with all of it.
SPEAKER_00: Look for the hand reaching out to you in the darkness of your storms, because it is there.
SPEAKER_00: It will always be there.
SPEAKER_00: And doing so will teach us to listen for the voices of those crying out to him that we might be able to help too, especially in our hurting world right now.
SPEAKER_00: It's making us able to listen and act.
SPEAKER_00: And thanks be to God for that, because we have work to do in the midst of our storms.
SPEAKER_00: So get in the boat, beloved.
SPEAKER_00: Start rowing.
SPEAKER_00: So do not be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: He will always reach out his hand when we call upon him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.