The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A
August 13, 2023
I’ve been thinking of this piece of art
all week as I’ve been pondering the story of Peter’s attempt to walk on water
that our gospel reading gives us this week.
What on earth possesses passionate, impetuous Peter to inspire him to
get out of the relative safety of a boat on an already storm-tossed sea and
attempt to join Jesus out walking on the water?
What is it that possesses any of us to take risks in our lives or in our
lives of faith?
Our reading from Matthew this week is
especially interesting to me, not just for this risk that Peter takes, but
because it shows growth in Peter and in the rest of the disciples in their
faith in Jesus. This is actually the
second time in Matthews’ gospel when Jesus is with the disciples in the midst
of a storm on the sea. In the first story,
Jesus is present in the boat with the disciples. (This is in Matthew 8:23-27.) Jesus falls asleep in the boat, and a storm
blows up. The disciples start to panic,
wake Jesus up saying, “Lord, save us! We
are perishing!” Jesus chastises the
disciples saying, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” and then he gets
up, rebukes the winds and the sea, and everything suddenly becomes calm. The disciples’ response is amazement, and
they say, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey
him?”
In today’s reading, Jesus has sent the
disciples on ahead in the boat to the other side of the lake, while he goes up
the mountain alone to pray. A storm
blows up, and Jesus walks across the water to join the disciples in the boat. Interestingly enough, the disciples don’t
seem to be freaking out in this storm like before. It’s only seeing Jesus walking across the top
of the water to them in the midst of the storm that really freaks them
out. Jesus speaks to them, assuring them
that it is he, and Peter decides at that point that he needs to get out of the
boat to join Jesus walking out on the water (because, why not?). Jesus seems to agree with Peter’s plan, and
Peter is doing ok at first, until he remembers the storm blowing all around
him. He becomes frightened, and then he
begins to sink. Jesus wastes no time
rescuing him and saying again, “You of little faith” and asking “why did you
doubt?” But then, listen to what
happens! The two get into the boat, the
wind ceases, and the disciples in the boat worship Jesus proclaiming, “Truly
you are the Son of God.” This is quite a different response to the first story,
where they basically say, “who is this guy?”
I can’t help but wonder if Peter’s risk
and stretching and willingness to get out of the safety of the boat didn’t help
inspire the other disciples to finally recognize Jesus for who he really is—the
Son of God.
Can you think of a time when someone
else’s risk or stretching in their own faith helped inspire your faith or
helped you grow deeper in your relationship with God? I know that your courage inspires me all the
time and makes me want to be more courageous, too. It’s one of the gifts of Christian community. When we walk closely together, we see the
ways that each of us grows in faith, and it can inspire us, challenge us to
stretch, to take our own risks and to grow in our own ways, jumping off into
the deep end even when we don’t always feel prepared.
This fall, we’ve got plans to do some
stretching here at St. Thomas. We’re
going to start a Children’s Chapel program for kids in K-5th
grades. (Older kids are welcome to join
us as helpers if they want.) It’s time
we tried something different for Children’s formation, and so we are committing
to do this for a year to see how it does.
We are so committed to this, in fact, that the two clergy are going to
take turns, with one of us being in children’s chapel every week with the
kids. So we are committing some energy
and some resources to this to try to help it succeed. It’s definitely a risk, a stretch, for each
of us. I’ve never done children’s chapel
before, so we’ll see if this old dog can learn some new tricks. Hopefully our risk will inspire others to
join us in this. For it to be
successful, we need the parents to bring the kids (‘cause it ain’t children’s
chapel without children), and I’m going to be asking our young families to make
a commitment to regular church attendance while we try to get this off the
ground. We’ve already got some
volunteers who are willing to step up and help us in this endeavor. How else might this risk, this stretching,
inspire us as the people of faith in this place?
This past week, I finished reading the
book How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive
Moments in Life and Faith by Bishop Mariann Budde, the Bishop of Washington
D.C. Bishop Budde writes all about the
times in her life when she has been inspired to take risks, to get out of the
relative safety of the boat. She also
acknowledges that sometimes, it is not our choice to get out of the boat;
sometimes, the storms of life toss us out into the water, ready or not, and it’s
up to us to figure out where we go from there.
In her final chapter, she writes about the importance of perseverance and
she writes about how perseverance in prayer needs to be joined in us with a
commitment to mindfulness and a willingness to learn some basic spiritual
skills. If we don’t have mindfulness and
spiritual skills coupled with our perseverance, she writes, “We fall pray, in
the words of the late Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes ‘to a false and phony
version of the Christian faith that suggests that by our faith or our prayers we
will be spared the burdens of life. Thus
perseverance in prayer isn’t just about doing it more, but allowing our hearts
to be stretched by the trials and struggles of life so that our capacity for
love and forgiveness grows, as well as what we are willing to endure for the
sake of love.”[ii] Perhaps you find yourself outside the boat
against your will. What might this allowing
your heart to be stretched by the trials and struggles of life look like for
you in this moment?
Your invitation this week is to ponder
how you might be called to stretch a bit, to take some risk in your life of
faith? Or, if you find yourself in the
midst of a trial or a challenge (tossed out of the boat, perhaps against your
will) then your invitation is to persevere in prayer so that your heart may be
stretched by the trials and struggles of life so that your capacity for love and
forgiveness grows. Where might Jesus be
inviting you to get out of the boat and do the seemingly impossible with him at
your side?
[i]
You can access the story here: https://www.storypeople.com/products/deep-end-prints?variant=32107322081391
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