Saint Matthew 14:22-33
In case you haven’t heard one week from tomorrow there is going to be a total eclipse of the sun.
This is important because, according to NPR correspondent David Baron “it's been 38 years since one last touched the continental United States and 99 years since one last crossed the breadth of the nation. On August 21st the moon's shadow will race from Oregon to South Carolina.”
Amtrak planned a special train to Carbondale where Southern Illinois University is going to open up it’s football stadium to any who would like to watch it from there.
My partner and I plan on loading the dog into the car bright and early and heading off to Marion, Illinois where (Don’t tell anybody now!) we figure the crowds will be thinner and I have already prevailed upon a local funeral home for a space in their parking lot.
Don’t worry though. If you can’t get away for this one Baron tells us:
Over the next 35 years, five total solar eclipses will visit the continental United States, and three of them will be especially grand. April 8, 2024, the moon's shadow heads north from Texas to Maine. In 2045, on August 12, the path cuts from California to Florida. 1
Make note of those dates and make your travel and hotel reservations early!
A solar eclipse is one of those natural phenomena that our non- scientific ancients tried to explain through myth and lore. Some thought it was the sun god and the moon god fighting for supremacy. Others though a dragon was devouring it or that dogs were trying to steal it.
Even as late as 1869 eclipses were frightening events.
"During the total obscuration of the sun, a silence like death rested all over our city," a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune reported. The temperature reportedly dropped more than 40 degrees. A startled drove of cows feeding near the reservoir took off running toward the city, not stopping until the absent star finally reappeared. "Dogs were seen to gaze in wonder at the terrible appearance of the sky, and remain during the total obscuration in an attitude of alarm and wonderment," the Tribune reporter's dispatch continued. As the light returned, the shaken canines "expressed the joy they felt in a way that only dogs can." 2We know better now but it is still seen as something we have no control over and seek to understand.
It is as explainable as a thunderstorm. (Just ask Tom Skilling! Or not, if you don’t have all day!) However, to first century sailors thunderstorms at sea brought a terror that was almost (pardon the pun!) unfathomable.
So once again we are called to consider the disciples encounter with a terrible storm, in a small boat, in the middle of the night.
This is another one of those texts that you have heard so often that you may be, once again, “ho humming” to yourself “Oh yeah, this. I know this text.” But let’s dive in anyway and I promise to stop with the puns.
We know about the storms and we know that for some people they are terrifying and frightening.
While my family used to gather on the front porch to watch the storm our tenants would beat a hasty retreat to the southwest corner of the basement in heavy weather. While they were doing push-ups off the ceiling at every streak of lightening, crack of thunder, and heavy gust of wind, my family was cheering every boom and passing each other towels to wipe off wind driven water.
A storm in the middle of the city can be approached in different ways but a storm in the middle of a lake is another matter.
Once, a very long time ago before I discovered five star hotels with poolside gin and tonic service, I went camping in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota.
We were out in the middle of a lake in aluminum canoes when a classic, Midwest thunderstorm suddenly came up. I remembering paddling like crazy and promising God everything I was, and had, and ever would be, if I just arrived back at shore without becoming toast.
Remember, the disciples boat was a great deal like my canoe that had no sophisticated equipment - no radar, no sonar, no running lights, not even a horn or a lantern. They were out in the dark with the winds and waves against them and their strength beginning to fail.
It is at this moment that Jesus comes and they misidentify him as a ghost. It is, men and women, a perfectly reasonable response.
Remember, we’ve been around this story for so many years that we take it for granted that it is Jesus.
But, how would they know? They had never seen Jesus, or anybody else for that matter, walking on water so they jump to what I think is a perfectly rational conclusion. It must be a ghost. Casper of the sea!
And what did Jesus say to contradict their impression? He didn’t speak to the storm and still it, he speaks to them. “Jesus was quick to comfort them. ‘Courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.’” 3
If I would have been in the boat that would have been enough but not Peter. He is now at his irrational best! He wants to walk on water too.
United Methodist pastor, Michael A. Turner, explains Peter’s behaviour to us. We think that being a disciple of somebody is just to know what they know. But in Jesus’ day:
A disciple wanted to do what the his teacher did. A disciple wanted to talk like his teacher talked. A disciple wanted to walk like his teacher walked. A disciple wanted to devote his life to being just like his rabbi.
So Peter is just being a good disciple when he asks to walk on water with Jesus. He wants to do what his rabbi is doing. 4
But he can’t. He can only take a few steps on his own before fear, gravity, and physics take over and he begins to sink.
It is then that Jesus does something really spectacular. If you think walking on water was amazing what he does next is incredible.
What I am about to tell you comes not from years of studying scripture or theology. It does not come from years of preaching or teaching. It comes from my college Red Cross water safety certification classes in order to be a life-guard.
Those classes were made up of people on the swim team and when we went out to practice saving someone we played rough. We made it as difficult as we could for him or her to stop our flailing and drag him or her to the deck.
The reason? Because we wanted to simulate a real drowning where the victim might have been so afraid that they took leave of their senses and fought back.
That is why I have always hated those Sunday School pictures of a “drip-dry Jesus” walking on the water. Wind and waves all about and not a hair out of place. And then, him merely reaching out a hand or even just a pinky finger and plucking Peter from his plight.
I hate those pictures because, from real life, here is what I think happened.
I think Jesus had to dive in after Peter. I think he had to grab him and turn him around before he could get him to the surface. I think when both of their heads popped above the water both were soaking wet with water in their eyes. I think Jesus didn’t say calmly, “why did you doubt?” but sputtered it out with the words “What got into you?” running through his mind.
And that is the most important thing for all of us to take away from this story.
As Bishop William H. Willimon has written:
Sometimes we think of faith as a matter of calm, serene rumination and thoughtful consideration that ends in, “I believe.” But this story suggests that sometimes faith is what comes to you in the middle of a storm, in the dark when Jesus ... says, “It’s me. Come.” 5
The problem with being a guest preacher on a morning like this is that I don’t know where your storms are. I have no idea where or if the sun has stopped shining in your life. With my people I knew and I am sure that, after 17 years Pastor Lauritsen does too, but of this I am sure:
If by chance you find yourself not sitting here in the serenity of our church but in the middle of a “storm,” going down for the third time, like Peter, full of doubt and in danger of perishing, darkness all around you, then I say that is a great place to be met by Jesus. In the storm, in the dark he will come to you. 6Even when our nation seems divided and any civility we once had seems to be being ripped from its moorings. Even when the thundering voices of hate attempt to separate us one from another. Even when evil seems to be running rampant and our stomachs turn as if we were seasick. Even in these storms, Jesus will come to us, too. 7
Jesus comes to us in the middle of the storm, dives into the water after us, climbs into the boat with us, and joins our story to his.
It is then, right then, that we will hear him speak saying those saving words to us: “Courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.”
Thanks for listening to him and for the last couple of Sundays putting up with me to me.
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1. Baron, David. "You Owe It To Yourself to Experience a Total Eclipse." Lecture, TedxMileHigh, Denver, Colorado, August 9, 2017.
2. Ritter, Geoffrey. "Look Up: A Dark Sky Over Illinois." Marion Republican (Marion, Illinois), August 8, 2017. August 8 , 2017. Accessed August 13, 2017. http://www.dailyrepublicannews.com/news/20170808/look-up-a-dark-sky-over-illinois.
3. St. Matthew 14:27. (MSG) (MSG=The Message)
4. Turner, The Rev'd Michael A. "Just Like Jesus." Sermon. In Pulpit Resource. Vol. 36. Series 3. (Inner Grove Heights, Minnesota: Logos Publication, 2008.) 25-28.
5. Willimon, The Rt. Rev'd Dr. William. "In Deep Water with Jesus." Sermon. In Pulpit Resource. Vol. 45. Series 3. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2017. 21-23.)
6, ibid.
7. Sermon was preached the day after the violence that occurred because of a White Supremacist march in Williamsburg, West Virginia.
Sermon preached at Saints Peter & Paul Lutheran Church
Riverside, Illinois
13 August 2017
