Out in the Storm(s)
Last week’s Gospel reading told us about the most public of Jesus’ miracles. Next week’s Gospel reading will also be a very pubic miracle story. But today’s reading tells us of a miracle story reserved for only the inner circle of Jesus, the 12 apostles. Because of that, I see today’s Gospel story as a parable. It is a story of creation – the formation of a community called the church. After all, it was those 12 disciples that marked the beginning of the church. Let’s see how the Gospel of Matthew does it. Maybe I’ll be reading too much into this miracle story, but better to read too much than too little.
Immediately after the feeding of the 5,000 that we heard about last Sunday, Jesus told his disciples to get into the boat and cross over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee – actually a lake – about 10 miles across. He stayed behind to pray. But he came to them in the middle of the night when they were struggling with a storm at sea. He walks toward them on the water. They are startled, but he calms their fear with the sound of his voice. And then Peter asks if he can come to Jesus. “Come,” says Jesus. And the rest you just heard.
“O man of little faith,” Jesus says to Peter. When he storm is raging, when there is darkness and confusion all around you, why do you try to come to me on your own strength? Don’t you know that you will be terrified and overcome?
He tells us also: Don’t try to come to Jesus on our own, trusting in our own strength and wisdom. Come to him together with others of God’s people, any of God’s people! He comes to us alone. But we don’t go to him alone. We need each other. That’s what church means. He sends us out into the storm, but he is with us in the storm.
Did you notice what Jesus did after he sent the disciples away? He stayed behind to pray alone. Mark this about Jesus. He observed all the community prayers of his people and always gave thanks at meals; he was an observant Jew. But he preferred to go off by himself to enter personal communion with his Father; and he made his Father to be our Father as well.
There is worship and there is prayer. The two go together, but they also exist separately. Here we are this morning in worship, communal prayer. But each of us should follow the example of Jesus and set time apart for personal communion with God our Father. Without communal worship, our personal prayers can easily devolve into just selfish asking – give me this and give me that. But without personal prayer, participation in communal worship can easily become mechanical, rote repetition.
Take Communion. Yes, each of us receives it separately. But have we lost the communal aspect of the original practice, indeed the social dimension? Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11: So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. Do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? Certainly not in this matter!
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Do you see the connection Paul established between the Lord’s Supper – what we call Communion – and the social responsibility to each other? Are we missing a big message when we make communion simply our own personal piety and sanctification? Have we lost the social dimension that tells us – that tells the church – to go out into the poverty of this world? Poverty, sickness, suffering, pandemic – these also are storms on which Jesus walks.
What about Baptism? That too we have made a private ritual. But what did we hear a few weeks ago from Paul’s letter to the Galatians? For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. How can one who is baptized into Christ be a racist or treat women as lower than men, or display any other kind of gender or economic prejudice? Or any prejudice whatsoever? How can anyone baptized into Christ hate immigrants? Jesus walks where there is prejudice and racism. He looks at us. Will we walk with him in all those stormy areas where he walks?
Jesus taught by every word he spoke and every parable. He also taught with every miracle. Last week, he told his disciples, “you give them something to eat.” Next week, he will say to his disciples who could not heal the boy, “this thing only comes out with prayer and fasting” – in other words, by self-emptying. He was not talking about fasting from food – which is what we have turned fasting into, again losing the bigger social dimension of what fasting meant to Jesus and to the Bible. That is the message today: Peter, you’re too full of yourself. You’re too full, too heavy with what’s inside you. That’s why you’re sinking!
Lighten up, he was telling Peter, and he is telling us the same today! Focus on Jesus, don’t be a loner, work with others, with your fellow disciples. You’re part of a community. You are a community! He speaks to the church today: Church, you are too full of your self-importance; too full of your traditions and attachments to a past that no longer exists. We are stuck. We are stuck in a thousand years ago. Not two thousand years ago; we would be doing just fine if that were so. No, we’re stuck in a thousand years ago, in the middle of the Byzantine empire. Well we are not an imperial church anymore. We are the church that’s out in the storm. And we are called to let go and to learn how to be in this new world That’s the challenge I hear in Peter’s attempt to walk on the water.