Sermon, August 10, 2008 -- Matthew 14:22-33

“That Sinking Feeling” (Matthew 14:22-33)
Rick Olson, August 10, 2008

Walking on water is a common pop culture motif, and of course it’s all thanks to this story here in Matthew, and its counterparts in Mark and John . . . of all the miracles, all the signs and wonders Jesus does in Scripture, perhaps this one has lodged in the modern mind more securely than any other. So much so, in fact, that it’s become the most iconic miracle of all, if somebody’s getting just a little too big for their britches, you’re liable to hear—sarcastically, of course—“What does he think – he can walk on water?” Of course, the snide innuendo is that the person getting a bit arrogant thinks he’s Jesus. Thinking you’re Jesus, in turn, has been a hallmark of insanity, right up there with funny-hatted Napoleons with their hands in their shirts and all . . .

Walking on water has been a staple image in the arts, as well. Hal Ashby’s droll film of Jerzy Kosinsky’s “Being There,” Chance the gardener is a truly dull man who all around him think is some kind of savant, and in a climactic scene he walks on water, and of course, Ashby’s point is clear: Jesus, in reality an insignificant carpenter, is like Chance: a tabula rasa upon which we write whatever we want, whatever comforts us the most. That there is a bit of uncomfortable truth in this is seen in the split between so-called liberal and conservative Christians—the one camp sees Jesus as a crusader for social justice (just like them!) and the other sees him as the defender of traditional mores, which are, amazingly, just like theirs!

Currently, an interesting appropriation of the walking-on-water image is by the Vegas magician Criss Angel—suggestive name, no?—who is nicknamed “mindfreak” and very convincingly walks on the water in swimming pools and lakes and birdbaths and such. As he does so, he spread-eagles his arms in a cruciform shape that leaves no doubt about his affectation, as well as the fact that he seems to be mixing his metaphors just a bit, ‘cause I can’t find anything in Scripture that says Jesus was ever an angel . . .

Criss Angel aside, there’s a reason it’s resonated through the ages, and to see it we have to imagine it in our minds: he’s just returned from the mountain where he’s gone to pray to God. And don’t think that Matthew means anything different, either: the notion that Jesus and God were one and the same didn’t begin to take hold until a well after the Gospels were written, so Matthew pictures him as very naturally going up to pray. This is just after, of course, he’s dismissed the crowds that had gathered to hear him preach, and that he’d just fed in another miracle we call the feeding of the 5000.

And so what we have here is a back-to-back telling of two of Jesus’ most well-known miracles, or signs, as I prefer to call them. Because that’s what they are, really, pointers to other things, things that are not immediately evident, hidden even, or to yet come in the future. And so the interpretation of miracles—and I’ve said this before—the interpretation of signs has a lot to do with figuring out what they point to. What reality that is not particularly self-evident, or clear, or not yet here, does the miracle illustrate?

To put it in linguistic terms—for all us pointy-headed Presbyterian scholars, and just because I can—a sign consists of two parts: the signifier—that would be the miracle—and that which is signified, which is what we have to figure out. And in the case of the feeding of the 5000, it’s pretty obvious, at least on the surface: Jesus takes the few crumbs they have on hand and he blesses the bread and breaks the bread and gives them to the disciples, and they feed 5000 men and who knows how many women and children from 5 measly loaves and 2 scrawny fish. And that’s the signifier, and we must pay attention to Matthew’s wording, it’s very specific, he takes the bread and he blesses the bread and breaks the bread and gives it to his disciples . . . take, bless, beak, give . . . this signifier is the four-fold eucharistic actions; that which is signified is the future, and yet already present, right there beside the Sea of Galilee, messianic banquet in the kingdom of God . . . Each month, we repeat that sign as the sacrament we call the Lord’s Supper.

And immediately, he makes them get in a boat and head out over the Sea of Galilee while he prays, and this in itself is a sign . . . or at least a pointer to what we ourselves should do . . . as we do God’s work, as we are God’s hands and feet and arms and legs, it’s important to heed Jesus’ example and replenish our batteries on the mountaintop. He’s been feeding the people, preaching to the crowds, and he takes time to take time . . . we all need time to ourselves, time to recharge, and Jesus’ example leads the way. And by evening, he was up on the mountain by himself, but the disciples were in trouble . . . the winds were against them, the waves were battering the boat, and they were still far from the other side.

And let’s pause right there to think about what the sea represents . . . in the ancient mindset—and you’ve heard this from me before—but in the ancient mindset, the sea represented chaos, it represented misrule . . . predictability was all-important to the agricultural enterprise, and the sea represented the ultimate in unpredictability. It was a force that could be sunny and calm at one moment, and in the next instant rear up and strike you down . . . a storm could come up out of nowhere, the Sea of Galilee was notorious for that, and that’s what doubtless happened to the disciples in the boat that day.

And so when Jesus appears to them, walking on the water, it’s a sign, but of what? What does walking on the chaos mean? Well, what does walking on anything mean? What does it mean when we use it colloquially, when we say “she just walked all over ‘em?” Of course, it means she dominated them, beat them, took them down. Or, looking at it schematically, Jesus is on top of the sea, on top of the chaos. So, to the original hearer of this story, Jesus has conquered chaos, he’s walked all over it, he’s made it his own. Chaos has bowed under the heel—literally—of the Son of Man.

But does it mean that Jesus conquers chaos? What does it point to that he’s walked all over the sea? Who else do we know who’s done the same? Who else has tamed the sea, the primordial chaos? Well, God, of course, at the dawn of creation . . . remember? The earth was a formless void? Darkness covered the face of the deep? And God blew across the waters, and dry land appeared, appeared, and God called it Earth, and the waters God called Seas, and God saw that it was good. And so in our creation story, God tames chaos, and makes it his own. And now we have Christ doing the same . . . so what our sign points to is that Christ is somehow like God—remember Matthew probably didn’t think he was God—or that Christ is God’s child.

But the disciples didn’t get it, as usual, they thought he was a ghost, or in Greek a phantasm, and they cried out in fear . . . and immediately Jesus reassures them, saying take heart, or better Courage! It is I; Do not be afraid. And that’s part of the sign, too . . . do not be afraid. Christ comes to us, calming the chaos, striding over it, taming it, saying do not be afraid . . .

But Peter needs proof . . . and here we should acknowledge something else . . . whenever Peter appears, it’s like he’s a stand-in for all the disciples . . . more, perhaps: he represents something universal in the human condition, and here he’s clearly a doubter, a person who has not enough faith even to believe that it’s Jesus coming on the water toward them. Like doubting Thomas, he asks for proof, if it is you, command me to come to you . . . and I can imagine the heavy sigh with which Jesus does it, but he does do it, he commands Peter to come, and he does. And notice what’s happening here: Peter is doing the same thing as Jesus, he’s participating with him in the creative act of taming chaos, he’s co-operating with Christ in doing God’s work.

But not for long: when he sees the waves and the strong wind, he panics, he loses it. He begins to sink. Help me, Lord, he says . . . and immediately Jesus reaches out and pulls him up, but chastises him saying: you of little faith . . . why did you doubt? And this faith—and the Greek here can be translated also as belief—its belief in what? Not in Christ as his savior, as we often suppose, but its belief, its faith that he himself can stay on top of the water. It’s faith that he is—through Christ—a child of God. But Jesus reaches down and pulls him up, and steadies him, and all the disciples acknowledge it, and they worship him saying “Truly you are the Son of God.”

And we in our little boat—literally, here at Covenant, our sanctuary’s like an inverted boat—we in our little boat are being tossed around more than usual, these days . . . our people are aging, our numbers shrinking, and the church has lost much of its influence on our world. It’s changing so much around us, so quickly, that it is difficult to keep up, hard to know how to do our mission which is to spread the Gospel in thought, word and deed, to people who think so different, behave so different, have such different values. And so, we’re foundering, taking on water, sinking into oblivion or worse, irrelevance . . . and it’s difficult to keep our chins up, it hard not to be terrified as the chaos threatens to sweep over us and drown us out.

But there is a way . . . Jesus does come to us in the chaos, on the very waters that threaten to engulf us. And he commands us to join him there, to not stay in the boat, to not do what is natural and burrow under the seat-cushions, hiding our heads while the water gets inexorably higher and higher. Jesus commands us to come to him, to be out working in the world, so we do not sink with the boat.

But how do we do this? How do we respond faithfully to all the chaos, how do we meet the needs of the new generations while still being faithful to the old? By learning a new way of being church, a new way of responding to crises, a new way of being faithful to God . . . and we will be doing that, brothers and sisters, we’ll be doing that . . . because it’s not too late to teach old dogs new tricks, it’s not too late to learn new ways of thinking about how we do our mission and ministry.

But the key is getting out of the boat, removing ourselves from our old conceptions, taking those first tentative steps out onto the waters, walking and shaping and savoring the chaos for ourselves. And if we are afraid, all we have to do is call out, and our companion along the way, our guide across the waters, Jesus the Christ will reach out and lift us up. And before long—and not in some trivial, illusionary way like Criss Angel or Chance the Gardner—we’ll be walking on the waters as well. Amen.