"Storm Warning" - Sermon from August 7, 2011

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

August 7, 2011

“Storm Warning”

Psalm105:1-6; 16-22, 45b

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:2-33

 ^“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14You remember our gospel story last week?  Jesus feeds the multitude with five loaves and two fishes.  The Bible says everybody eats their fill, a rare event for any in those days.  After gathering the leftovers – Jesus isn’t one to waste food! – he puts the disciples in a boat and sends them on ahead.  He dismisses the crowd and goes up the mountain to pray alone, which Matthew says has been his desire all along.Meanwhile, back on the boat in the middle of the lake so large they call it a “sea,” a sudden storm blows up.  Waves splash over the gunwales. The spray stings their faces.  A howling gale chills them to the bone….  Sounds kind of inviting, doesn’t it?(Opening umbrella)  Today we will surpass the mark for the most consecutive hundred degree days in recorded Austin history.  A picture of the new Texas rain gauge went viral on the internet this week:  a bottle cap!  We are as parched as we’ve ever been, and it’s wearing everybody down.  No relief in sight.  But the gospel is giving us a storm warning!Lesson one:  it doesn’t matter where you live, it doesn’t matter who you are, whether you are the worst jerk who ever lived or one of Jesus’ own best buds, sooner or later – actually, from time to time - the storm will hit you.  No escaping that.The boat leaks and stinks.  The wind is steady against them.  Suddenly, those loaves and fishes Jesus blessed don’t seem so blessed after all!  Matthew, who is not a fisherman, hurls on Peter’s feet.  Of course, Matthew leaves that part out of the gospel, but I think that’s why Peter wants to get his feet wet later on.  Still, this storm makes even the seasoned salts shudder.  The disciples feel like we all do when the storm strikes:  alone, vulnerable, afraid.  And they suffer.In this regard all storms feel the same, whether it’s a hurricane or a flood or even an insufferable drought.  It’s true of the so-called “storms of life,” too:  losing your job or losing yourself working 18 hour days; burying a dream or burying a beloved; overcoming hardship or overcoming addiction; managing an illness or learning your illness is beyond managing and will take your life.  Add to those the storms of war, a bad economy, crazy politics, rising poverty, you name it – the storm is fierce and beyond our control and everybody’s affected by it.  With all of these the storm outside is scary enough, but it’s the storm inside takes the toll.  And those are just as hard to control.  Doesn’t matter who you are.  The storm will come.  And what do you do then?But look!  Look!  There on the horizon.  Do you see?  Can it be?  No, our eyes must being playing tricks.  It’s Jesus! - coming to us! - in the middle of the storm!  To a boat in the middle of the sea, to the antiseptic hospital room, to the lonely bedroom, to the funeral home, to the strident workplace, to the most remote location in the desperate hours, he comes to us.  And we are not alone.He draws near.  We recognize him.  And we are terrified!  Isn’t it enough that we are facing the storm without having to deal with his demands?  We just want to go back to the way things were.  We will even pretend the storm isn’t so bad, we can handle it, we don’t need anybody’s help, anything to keep from facing the fact that we feel alone, vulnerable, and afraid.  Anything to keep from seeing the truth that our reality has changed and we are being called to emerge into a new life different from what we knew before or what we had planned all along.  Anything to keep from seeing the miracle that with our God even the worst storm may be an opportunity for us to become deeper, stronger souls.Happens over and again in the Bible – and in our lives – the Savior we beg for help shows up, and we resist him, because we don’t like the terms that he offers.“Take heart!  It is I!  Do not be afraid!” Jesus says.  Actually, he says, “Take heart.  I am.” And you know what that means.  “I am” is the special name for God in the Bible, the all knowing, all loving, large-and-in-charge-of-all Supreme Being.  If we fear God, we have nothing else to fear.But this is where Simon Peter of the brash bravado speaks up:  “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” “If it is you….” Not exactly a ringing affirmation of faith, is it?  In fact, interpreters are split on what Peter does here.  Some see him as the courageous disciple boldly following Jesus without regard to personal risk, a model to us all.  Takes some courage to do Christ’s work in this world.  You are just asking for a storm when you do, because you will meet resistance from those who gain from keeping the world as it is even if it adds to the suffering of many.  Jesus’ mission is not for cowards who want to play it safe!  You’ve seen the bumper sticker:  “You can’t walk on water if you don’t get out of the boat!” There is no mission without risk!Other interpreters see Peter as the attention seeking fool who prefers personal glory to the simple faithfulness of helping the others in the boat.  He is, as we say in Texas, “all hat and no cattle.”  He lacks faith from the start – “Lord, if it is you….” – and then loses faith again when he feels the wind.  But notice this:  the opposite of faith in this story is not doubt, but fear. Peter is frightened, so he begins to sink.  How is he feeling?  Alone, vulnerable, afraid.  “Immediately,” Matthew tells us, immediately Jesus reaches out his hand and catches him. “Weenie faith,” Jesus calls him, “why did you doubt?”Notice this, too:  Matthew says,  “When they got in the boat, the wind stopped.” Jesus stills the storm for those who are in the boat.I saw this image scratched into the walls of a catacomb in Rome.  It is one of the earliest symbols of the church, a simple boat.  It represents Noah’s ark, Moses’ basket in the bulrushes, those who have been saved by passing through the water.  It represents the church, tossed on the storms of disbelief, worldly temptation, and persecution.  Its mast was a simple way for Christians to disguise their central symbol, for the church always stands beneath the cross.  The symbol survives through the history of the church and I have seen it on Christian tombs, altars, lamps, floors, and stained glass windows.  The image is found in the literature of the early church leaders, and Melville has an exquisite description in Moby Dick of the church as a ship with the pulpit as its prow.  If we had a screen I could show you countless renderings in painting and sculpture.  The central section of Christian sanctuaries in classical architecture, including our own cross-shaped basilica, is called “the nave,” from the Latin navis or “ship.  That’s where you are sitting now, and if you look up in many churches, you see what looks like the hull of a ship.The church is the ship of salvation which God has provided so the presence of Christ can take tangible form when the storms of life strike.  We are called to be Christ to one another, to give and receive the support we need not only in the sudden crisis but in the day to day chaos of just living.  Jesus comes to us.  Jesus calls us through.  But Jesus has given us a boat with our fellow disciples so we will know we aren’t alone.  We aren’t alone.  So maybe the bumper sticker should say, “If you can’t walk on water, don’t get out of the boat.”John Newton was the son of a seaman and a devout Christian woman.  He followed his father’s path and became a sailor, became known for cursing like one and was nicknamed “The Great Blasphemer.”  He led other sailors away from the faith, and wound up working in the slave trade.  Surely a man beyond redemption.  One day a terrible storm struck, and pounded  his ship for days.  On the eleventh night, exhausted, he thought of his mother and the scripture she had taught him.  He prayed for deliverance, and the storm soon abated.Newton continued in the slave trade for a while, but began to read his Bible and pray, and tried to lead the sailors under his command towards a Christian path.  He left the slave trade, then sensed the call to ministry, which he began at the age of 39 and followed for 43 years, preaching and writing with great influence in the English abolition movement.  The last three years of his life he was too sick and weak to preach.  He told his friends, “My memory is nearly gone, but I can remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.” Several years before John Newton had written the same idea in a hymn he wrote for his congregation.  You know it; sing it with me:Amazing grace!  How sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like me.I once was lost, but now I’m found;Was blind, but now I see.Think you can go it alone?  Think the storms won’t come upon you?  Think again.  Remember the story:  Jesus is the one who puts them together in the boat in the first place.  Jesus is the one who transforms the storm to send them in a new direction.  Jesus is the one who stills the storms without and within.  Everywhere I see people sinking in fear, treading water. And I see the church, leaky and stinky, but so much safer than the storm, sailing on. It’s the old ship of Zion, the ark that saves us through the flood.  Get on board.  Get on board.  Because Jesus stills the storm for those who are in the boat.  Amen.  May we pray?Lord, thank you for the boat you have sent us to get us through our storms.  Though the winds blow against us, and the waves beat the hull, though our boat has holes and just stinks sometimes and we cringe with fear, give us the courage, give us the sense, to stay in the boat.  Because we need each other, and we need you, and this is where you come to us, where two or three have gathered in your name.  Amen.

-Rev. Dr. Larry Bethune