Who's Your Savior?

 

 Matthew 14:22-36

 

There is nobody who has been in church for any amount of time that hasn’t heard sermons on this text, and 99% of the time, they bypass the whole rest of the story and zero in on Jesus’ question to Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” then urge us assess our faith meter, check the balance on our faith account, and uh, oh, it’s low. So have more faith, we say, more than Peter’s little faith, anyway. Have faith enough not to doubt, faith enough to get out of the boat like he did, but not to get distracted by storms, faith enough to keep your eyes on Jesus, whatever that means. 

 

If we doubt, we call ourselves bad Christians and assume that (if there’s a God) God is surely disappointed in us.  When we’re afraid we judge ourselves for not believing and are sure God is judging us too. If we’ve learned that faith doesn’t mean certainty or fearlessness, but means trust, we conclude we don’t trust enough. 

 

So right now, let’s just acknowledge this is super messed up. The way of fear is shaping our thinking here. We’ve made faith a commodity to acquire, a product to stockpile, and so none of us will ever have enough. None of us, ever, will be worthy of whatever we think “enough faith” is supposed to eventually accomplish for us or bring us to—which is what, actually? God’s love? Our own worthiness to exist? We’ve strapped ourselves into completely winless game of our own making.  In fact, this whole thing has nothing whatsoever to do with God. We don’t even need God for this debacle. We’ve got it locked down. In our relentless pursuit of “enough” faith, God can stay a vague idea, a critic made in our image, an unreachable longing and brutal projection of our own dissatisfaction with ourselves. Then we are never expected to actually encounter God, or God-forbid, participate in anything God is doing. We are simply never good enough for the role (so, side bonus? We’re off the hook of those intimidating propositions!) 

 

But we know that the stories in scripture are to tell us who God is and what God is up to. A good indicator that we are completely missing the point is if we’ve taken God out of it and made it about ourselves. Let’s return to this story and perhaps we can hear it again as showing us something about Jesus, who is God right here with us, which, in and of itself has enormous implications for us after all.  

This year we are getting to know Jesus. If you want to follow along at home, we’re spending the next 2 ½ months in inside four chapter of Matthew: 14-18. Before celebrating Pentecost, first we were with Jesus and the bleeding woman who was healed, and the dead child who was raised. Then we were with Jesus and the crowds at the feeding of the 5000, just before the moment that opens our scripture today. There we saw how, after hearing about his cousin John (aka the Baptist’s) cruel and senseless death at a royal feast, Jesus went to be by himself, but the crowds went to be with him. Then they all spent the day together, living in the kingdom of God—in direct opposition to the kingdom that had just murdered John—a day that culminated in a radically different kind of feast, a feast of abundance and life, in which the God who created everything from nothing fed every single man, woman and child from practically nothing, with leftovers galore.

We pick up here, with Jesus sending the disciples on ahead, and finally going to be alone with God. But now he goes to be alone with God as one who is fundamentally never alone, always part of a bigger, truer story than we often see in a world filled with evil, bravado, and cruelty.  After a day of healing, sharing and kindness, going to be alone with God is another way of connecting to the ancient true belonging of all creation and all creatures to the love of God that holds the universe intact and flows between you and me. 

But meanwhile, the disciples, who had just witnessed, nay, participated in, this vast and unbelievable miracle, instead of arriving early and getting a good night’s sleep, spend the entire night struggling for their very lives against a raging storm. Wind and rain tossing their boat, they bail and battle, bracing against the gale and wrestling torn sails, coursing with adrenaline and dread, for hours and hours, with no relief in sight.

And in the wee hours of the morning, wind still gusting and waves still heaving, here comes this figure, strolling atop the water, toward the disciples, who watch, exhausted and scared.  

 

If you want to see human being doubt even what they know to be most true in the whole world, start watching when we’re exhausted and scared. Exhausted and scared are when abundance and belonging feel like a faraway fantasy, not something that we maybe, literally just experienced. Exhausted and scared are when the disciples doubt God’s love and care, and you and I, and Jesus too, actually, who, even thought he was God incarnate, even though all he did and said flowed from the deep, unbreakable connection to the Father through the Spirit, still, when he was exhausted and scared, cried out from the cross My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 

 

If you’re measuring the faith meter, better do to it when you’ve just witnessed people being healed, and delivered, and fed, and connected, and your own belly and heart are full too, and the vast, harmonized kumbayah is still buzzing in your soul. But if, even a few hours later, you find yourself exhausted and scared, that faith supply can plumet. Serenity is impossible to even recall, let alone conjure up. 

 

So, right in the midst of the raging storm, Jesus comes to the exhausted and scared disciples. And when he’s within shouting distance, Jesus calls out, “Don’t be afraid, guys, it’s me.”  And Peter, dear Peter, trying to beef up his faltering faith, climbs out of the pitching, heaving boat into the storm, puts his feet onto the water and stands, and begins walking toward Jesus.  

 

But then, (oops, darn it, Peter!) he’s distracted by the furious sea and the roiling sky and the wind screaming around him and he begins to sink.  

 

And here is where we get told to just keep your eyes on Jesus, as though God’s goal is to get us out of storms, or perhaps God sends storms to test us, and we are supposed to have faith bigger than Peter’s little faith. Here we act like faith is a mental game of concentration and focus, like karate or zen golf, and if we only believe hard enough we won’t sink. Seeing the storm is what causes the sinking, so if we just keep ourselves from acknowledging that the elements are raging around us and threatening to break us down, somehow we’ll coast along the top of the water and everything will be peachy.  But, if we admit our fear, or notice how terrible things really are, down we go, under the waves. And apparently, Jesus is just there to get us back on track, our own personal, robed and bearded life coach, our cosmic advice columnist.  Denying a loved one’s pain or refusing to face your own fear becomes “faith.” Faith is pretending to understand things you don’t, or believe things you can’t. It’s plastered-on smiles and buried secrets, denying doubt and aggressively cultivating a deeply dishonest positivity.  This is faith without God, salvation without a savior. 

 

But here comes Jesus.  Jesus, who heals the sick, cures the injured, feeds the hungry. Jesus, grieving his cousin, needing to be with people and needing to be alone, walking steadily on an unwalkable surface, bearing calm and peace into a violent storm, reaching out his hand and catching Peter as he falls, climbing in the boat with them and quieting the wind. And those overwhelmed, exhausted and scared disciples, with shaken trust, and raging doubt, and little faith, worship him.  Truly you are the Son of God.

 

There are two places in Matthew where doubt is mentioned – here, and after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  And both put doubt with worship. They doubted and they worshiped. Doubt belongs with worship, doubt precedes worship, doubt is part of worship. Because worshipping is turning to the presence of the living God right here, with all that we have and all that we are, (doubts included), coming in our own weakness to the source of life and salvation, with genuine gratitude, to receive the life God offers us, in whatever miraculous ways it is coming to us at this moment. 

 

We need a savior. We cannot save ourselves. This is good news. Saving ourselves or each other is not our job. Receiving salvation, going to be with those who are grieving, welcoming one another, lifting up those who need healing, passing the baskets of abundance, expressing our doubts and our fears to the One who comes to us in the storm, reaching out our own hand when our trust has collapsed and letting him grab onto us, hearing his voice gently invite us to trust again, watching the calm descend and pouring out our hearts in gratitude to the source of all life in worship – that is our part.  Encountering Christ and participating in what God is doing. This is faith: to live our fully human lives inside the story of a God who comes to us.  To let that story take us where it will.

Where it took the disciples that morning was onto gentile shores, to people who had no precedent to believe this salvation was for them, and also no reason to think it was not. And the people recognized the savior, and sent word throughout the region, and they brought all who were sick to him, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; like the bleeding woman who trusted salvation was for her too when she encountered Jesus, and whose story of faith spread far and wide making way for them to follow her lead, because we are all connected and participate, and all who touched it were healed. 

Amen.

(Check out who Jesus was and what God was up to with the bleeding woman and child raised from the dead, and with the crowds at the feeding of the 5000.  If you want to go further back in our "getting to know Jesus" series, in Lent we were with the Samaritan Woman at the well, the religious leader Nicodemus, and Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead - which was preached by Pastor Lisa Larges).

The Context of the Meal

 Matthew 14:13-21

Besides the Resurrection, the Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels; it’s a super important story for the early church and clearly meant to give us a glimpse of who Jesus is and what God is up to. And as bible stories go, it’s fairly tame and unassuming, so we love to tell it to children. It’s not scandalous or disturbing, and it has a happy ending too! What's not to like?

 

But like most things in life there is more going on than we see on the surface. The context matters. When we tell this story on its own, we don’t realize that in Matthew’s telling in a single 24-hour day, a bunch of big things happen that maybe have something to do with each other. And maybe it’s not as meek and mild as we think. 

 

Our story begins early in the morning with the words, “Now when Jesus heard this...”  Heard what?  When Jesus heard that John the Baptist, who had been in prison, had just been beheaded, and his head delivered to Herod on a platter in the middle of an extravagant and vulgar dinner party. John’s disciples had picked up his body from the palace and buried it, and gone immediately to tell Jesus what had happened. 

 

When Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place. 

 

 And who wouldn’t?  What else in the world is there to do?  

John is gone, his cousin, his friend, the one who knew who Jesus was better than anyone -  from before he was born, even – leaping in recognition in his mother Elizabeth’s womb at the sound of pregnant Mary’s voice, the one who proclaimed in the wilderness that the Messiah is coming, and plunged God incarnate under the waters of baptism, the one whose whole life was telling that God’s kingdom is coming and announcing that Jesus had arrived, this John has just died a pointless, disgusting, inexplicable death, as a pawn in a gluttonous game of revenge and power. 

 

When Jesus hears this he withdraws in a boat to a deserted place.  

But the crowds seek him out. 

 

On foot they go around, ahead, and I have always imagined them like clingy toddlers flooding his alone place and his apart time with their need and their clamoring, their sheer mass, the overwhelming sound, smell, the hungry obligation of them.  And I’ve felt defensive of him, as perhaps, his disciples were too. He has every right to absolutely lose it. To tell them all to go away. To tell the disciples to make them leave him alone.  To practice self-care and turn the boat around and float alone in the waves for hours until he regains his composure, until he finds some peace and quiet.

 

But when Jesus sees the crowd, it says, he has compassion on them, and cures their sick.  He brings the boat ashore and goes to them and stays there with them. 

Vulnerable, grieving, reckoning with the horror and consequences of evil, mourning the death of his beloved friend, Jesus embraces the vulnerable, the grieving, the sick and despairing.  

 

And I don’t think it was a “nevertheless” kind of thing, being with them. I don’t think it was “even though” he was sad he embraced them “anyway” sort of deal. I think it was an “alongside,” “with and for” kind of thing. I think it was sorrow meeting sorrow, a pretense stripped away, no games being played, hearts connecting scenario. 

 

I guess until now I have always seen the crowds as almost predatory, like relentless zombies following him around, grabby and demanding and needy. Why can’t they just leave him alone?   

 

But this time I saw something different. I had to read it three times: “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.” When confronted with the news of his friend’s death Jesus went to hide in his sorrow. But when the crowds heard the news that they knew would devastate Jesus, they went to find him.  And not to give every person there a noble and altruistic motive, but perhaps, without overthinking it, the drive to be together in suffering is a way human beings return to our humanity, which is also to say, a way we seek and share in the presence of God. Perhaps that’s the way God designed us.  When someone we care about suffers a great loss, the reflex is to be with them, to share the pain.  

 

A few weeks ago a friend texted me from a meeting of exhausted teachers, education assistants and therapists in a program for children with extreme trauma, to tell me that a therapist had just said, (and I paraphrase to remove the swear word), “Self-care is hogwash. When something happens we don’t take care of ourselves, we take care of each other.” This is not to say we should not have good boundaries, or cultivate healthy habits, or that we should give and give when we are tapped out. This is to say: in crisis we do not take care of ourselves; we take care of each other. We belong to each other.

 

So perhaps, as much as all those people needed Jesus, Jesus needed them too.  Maybe he needed to feel his belonging to each other and God, and that was not something he could have done on his own in the moment. 

Being with them connected him to the bigger context, the deeper story, the wider belonging. In his own need and dependence on God, Jesus was moved with compassion for the people, and he welcomed them, listened, touched, and healed their sick. In his own vulnerability Jesus reached out to theirs.  And I wonder how God-with-us being with us with them on that day–the Great I Am coming in weakness alongside weakness with healing and hope—how this may have fed Jesus himself in that moment. 

 

As the day stretches toward evening the disciples, who, let’s face it, must have been freaking out all day at this impromptu gigantic event they were apparently hosting in the wilderness without a port-o-potty or vendor stand for miles around tell Jesus that maybe he should send the crowds away so they can find food for themselves in the villages.  But Jesus answers, They need not go away - you feed them. An impossible and ridiculous instruction.

 

But impossibility is God’s favorite canvas. And now a meal is about to take place that will upend the meal that preceded it. 

The first meal happened among sycophants in the seat of power. Full of insecurity and hungry for esteem, a cruel leader fed his own ego in a vicious power play of political manipulation and demonstrable control, killing a person in a mighty flex of fear and dominance. 

The second meal is happening here among ordinary people in the middle of nowhere. Full of sorrow and hungry for gentleness, a brokenhearted healer is feeding thousands with a single child’s handful of bread and fish, in a compassionate outpouring of inconceivable abundance and demonstrable unity, nourishing all these people in a colossal expression of love and solidarity.  

 

And the people, out there in the deserted place, far from the center of commerce and empire, are sitting down on the ground like one enormous picnicking family, dining on manna, until all, every single one of them, to the last man, woman, and child is full, and there are leftovers galore. And the power that brought the world into being, is here, among them, healing the sick, providing their daily bread and receiving their love and gratitude, and together, all of them are connected and held in a power greater than death, a force greater than evil, that is moving the world toward love. This power is not encountered by the strong but the vulnerable, and it comes not through coercion or control but through compassion and companionship.  

 

In a few minutes we will share a meal that seems almost silly, really. Without the context it could feel tame and unassuming, a nice tradition, a lesson to remember. But real violence rages in our world, rampant corruption and evil, power is wielded to selfish ends and lives are lost for pointless reasons, and own lives from time to time threaten to brim over with despair. 

In this context we will eat bread and drink grape juice and claim that God is with us right here and now and it means something important and powerful.  Because God is, and does; Jesus himself was broken for us, taking into God’s own heart the heartbrokenness of us all. 

 

We are gathered today in our shared need and vulnerability, with whatever we bring and however we’re struggling, and Jesus meets us here, joining us with all those gone before, including those that one evening in that deserted place who ended that sad day side by side with a sister who was just healed, and a neighbor who just found hope, and thousands of siblings in this world God is creating anew. 

In receiving the bread, taking it and pass it to one another as they did, we are connected held in a power greater than death, a force greater than evil, that is moving the world toward love.

 

And, just to wrap up the day, because, believe it or not, there are still a few hours remaining: after the feast Jesus releases the disciples and disperses the crowd and finally gets away to a quiet place. He rests. And stops. And makes space for his grief to breathe.  But he does so now not as one thrown into isolation by his pain, but as one who has been held in solidarity in the love and care of others, as having experienced the power of God moving through him to them and through them to him and the love of God holding them all as they all shared that day together, that meal together. Now, grounded in his belonging to God and each other, Jesus finds the solitude, solace, and silence he needs. 

 

But just in case we don’t yet get how big it all is, just before dawn breaks on this long, full day, we meet back up with the disciples, who left that epic experience to find themselves all night long battling raging winds and torrential rains in their precariously rocking boat. And just as he did for the crowds, Jesus meets them right where they are, which means that as the vulnerable and terrified disciples squint through the storm, they see Jesus calmly walking to them on the water.  

 

Amen.