Sermon on July 26, 2009
Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,
given by Rev. Stuart Schlegel
The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share Christ's love in the world. We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to others.
Sermon
The bible lessons for today give a wealth of material for a preacher to talk about. I have lots to say about David and Bathsheba, but I think most of us have heard that sermon again and again. Similarly, the feeding of the multitudes. What I want to focus on is that short paragraph at the end of our gospel lesson this morning, where John tells about another of Jesus' very well known miracles—his walking on water. It was the night after the feeding of the five thousand, and the disciples, dead tired, were out in a boat on the lake. The winds and rough sea were high, and the disciples were afraid when they saw Jesus walking toward them on the water. Jesus said, "It is I; do not be afraid." And then the wind ceased, and the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
Now, as with the feeding of the five thousand earlier in our gospel, John is again describing a miracle. What I like to call "a genuine, non-scientifically possible, nature-bending, something-big-is-going-on-here sort of miracle"! This posed no problem whatsoever for John’s readers and hearers. In those days, people understood the world in such a way that divine miracles like walking on water or calming the storms or multiplying bread and fish were entirely possible and even commonplace. Nowadays, of course, the world-view is dramatically different and most people do not believe that nature can be bent by divine miracles. That's why the miracle John is describing here is not just familiar. It is famous!
There are a whole lot of folks these days that are just about totally ignorant of the Bible—but they do know that Jesus is supposed to have walked on water. And, most of them think that this is clear-cut evidence of how silly and impossible the whole bible story is. So modern non-fundamentalist Christians tend to be a little defensive about miracles in general, and water-walking in particular! There are, of course, those who explain the miracle away. You know: Jesus wasn't really walking on the water, only by the water. Or, John and the other evangelists made up the whole thing. Or something like that. But what we should try hard to understand is that John, when he talks about miracles or anything else in his gospel, is not trying to write history. He is proclaiming gospel good news. And so to explain some element of his story away is just simply to miss his point.
What this story clearly meant to John was that Jesus was the Messiah. Walking on water, calming the storm, changing water into wine, multiplying the bread and the fish, raising Lazerus—all those miracles that John describes—were meant to proclaim that Jesus was no ordinary fellow, but that he acted with the authority of God and was therefore the complete master of the forces of nature. It is interesting, I think, that in many religious traditions stories are told of profoundly holy people being able to walk on water. This is precisely John’s point. Jesus is the Holy One. The Messiah. The long-awaited Christ.
John has several themes in this little story. One of them is captured in those few words of Jesus as he approaches the boat. "It is I," he says. Do not be afraid." That is what I want to focus on this morning. Take heart, as Mark says in his version of the story. Have faith. Do not be afraid.
Fear about what is happening, or is about to happen, is a huge part of every person's life. Who among us has never been afraid? Some of people's fears have tremendously important social consequences. I think there is little doubt that racism, in all its ugliness, is based on fear. Sexism, homophobia and all of those other ugly sorts of things, surely come out, at least in part, of deep-seated fears. Racism, sexism and homophobia are indeed ugly, but it is very human to be afraid. Fear is a part of every person's life.
Some people, of course, are much more fearful and anxious than others. But we all experience the childhood fear of the dark, the adolescent fear that we won't be popular, the adult fears of many, many sorts. We fear that we will lose our job or our spouse or our looks. We fear that our health will fail, that we will be robbed, and so forth. Our lives can so easily seem like a wind-swept lake, full of risks at work and at home, in our relationships or in our tasks, indeed wherever the world impinges on us and is full of uncertainty. Perhaps, beneath all of these, is that primal human anxiety that this world may not be really meaningful and that our lives may be just so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. All of this is just a piece of simply being alive. And so John is talking to all of us, when he portrays Jesus as subduing the angry wind and saying, "Don't be afraid. Take heart. I will be in the boat right along with you. Have faith and trust. You are not alone."
We are called to live in trust, in faith, partly because it is so wonderfully healing of fear. I think that what really gets us, in almost every situation of fear, is a variation on one great theme. It is that things will not turn out the way we want them to. We are afraid that, as with the wind and the sea, we are not in control. And, if we cannot make things turn out the way we want them to, then the future is unknown and scary. The more things are resistant to our will the more anxious we are apt to become and the more we will want to exercise control. This is when we need to heed the common bumper sticker, and "let go and let God." We need to have faith. "Faith" is a word we hear all the time in Church, but we are often quite unclear about its meaning. Faith—one cannot stress enough—is not primarily a matter of intellectual beliefs in this or that doctrine. It is not a matter of what we think about things like creeds or dogmas or biblical miracles. Faith, for us Christians, is much more a kind of trusting stance toward life, toward reality, toward the future. It is very close to, and essential to, hope. It is a kind of inner trust that God is love and that this God of tender love and constant grace is always going to be a part of our future. To be afraid that things will not go the way we want them to and that this would be utterly disastrous—is, precisely, to lack faith.
I'm sure that you all know the so-called "serenity prayer": "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." It is a good prayer. Serenity really does hinge on letting go of—and accepting—things that we cannot control. And this is where faith and trust come in. Can you trust in a future that will be fundamentally OK for you, even if things don't turn out the way that you would have them turn out? Jesus said, "Don't be anxious for tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself." Why? Because, whatever happens, the love of God will never abandon you, will never leave your life. Can you trust that? That God's love will always be there for you, no matter what, and that the future can still be full of hope. Because if you can trust and believe that then you can let go of control of things to come and then serenity is possible today. Perhaps, only then is serenity possible today.
Please do not get me wrong. We are not talking Pollyanna, pie in the sky stuff here. No human life is without moments of almost unbearable pain. God knows, my life has not been—and I know your lives are no different. Things may go terribly wrong tomorrow. The loved one may leave. The business may hit terribly tough times. The diagnosis may be the worst of news. But, through it all, life really doesn't have to lose its meaning. Awful things may happen, but out of all the ashes and all the wreckage, some good can be found and some fine growth can take place. From the depths of disaster can come pearls of great price. Are you able to believe that? Then, with the disciples in the wind-driven boat, take heart and do not be afraid. I believe it with all my heart and all my soul, because I have seen new life come out of disaster and heartbreak and death over and over again, in my own life and in the lives of others.
A woman I know tells an interesting little story. When she was young, she had a male friend who would always greet people with, "What's the word?" It was his own way of saying, "Hello! How's it going? How 'ya doing?" "Hi, Sue," he would say, "What's the word?" She remembers that she would usually just say "Hi!" in return. But, once in a while, for the fun of it, she would take his question literally. He'd say, "What's the word?" and she would reply, "Rain," or "Exhaustion," or some such thing. He would just smile and go on. But Sue said that one day she replied, "Courage." Her friend stopped short, got a big grin on his face, and said, "That's exactly right!" Sue said that she was delighted to get the word correct, but she didn't know why "courage" should be the word. And then one day she was reading today's gospel lesson in her Jerusalem Bible, where the translation has Jesus saying, "Courage! It is I." That passage may or may not have had anything to do with her friend's response. Probably not. But Sue said that it was suddenly clear to her. "Courage" really is the word, because Jesus—for us Christians—really is the Word. The Word of God who became flesh. And his word for all of us, who would live our lives in faith and hope is, "Don't be afraid. Courage. No matter what comes, no matter how tough life gets to be for you, trust and have hope. No matter how terrible the wind and the sea become for you, trust, hope, and take courage. Because,” Jesus says, “I will be with you in the boat."
Amen.