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).

Anatomy of a Miracle

Psalm 24 & John 6:2-14

Have you ever experienced a miracle? 

How do we know if something is a miracle?

Six months wages wouldn’t buy enough for all these people to have even a little, they said. What are five loaves among so many people?

If we really hear this story – which chances are, many of us don’t because if we’ve heard it before we heard it in Sunday school and so instead of listening to it we are mostly just remembering it – but if we really hear this story, it messes with us a little.

Because the most interesting part, the part we might fixate on- or at least I am, is HOW this thing happens.   Did the bread just multiply? Did Jesus keep ripping and ripping and it never got smaller?  Did people decide when it got to them to reach into their own pockets and bags and add to the stash?  How?

But the story doesn’t get into the details of how it happened, that is not important, I guess. You’ll just have to wonder.  Most miracles, it turns out, are that way.

 So when I think about how it happened, I realize I always imagined that Jesus, with holy hands sanitized, tore up the bread and piled it into some nice clean baskets or giant tupperware containers and the disciples politely passed them down the straight, organized rows, (fifty rows of one hundred?), in perfect usher offering synchronization. 

But it sounds instead like Jesus picked up the rolls, and maybe also the small, slimy fish?, ripped them in half with his grubby hands and placed them in the grubby hands of the person sitting closest, who tore off a chunk (or took a bite?) and reached over, handing the rest into the grubby hands of the next person, willy nilly, germs and dirt everywhere, munching away, wiping dirty fingers on tunics and grass, until all were filled. 

And the disciple’s didn’t supervise this mayhem- making sure the bread reached the end of the row, skipping the next row (because it’s heading the opposite direction there) and handing it off down the line, personally responsible for each mouth.  No.

The people passed it to each other in their haphazard sitting groups, clumped in the shade of trees or spread in awkward smatterings of reclining bodies. Reaching out to each other, looking in a stranger’s eyes, here, did you get some? 

What about her?

 Can you hand this to them? No, that guy there, with the kid on his lap. Yeah, them. I don’t think they have any yet.

And this miracle, this being fed one and all from one kids’ lunchbox, they didn’t conjure it or pray for it, they didn’t faith hard enough, think the right thoughts or please God in any particular way. They were not deserving of this miracle in any extraordinary respect, nor did they even ask for it, in fact.  It just happened. Because God decided to do it, and for no other reason, really.  

They were hungry.  Jesus fed them.  That’s it.

And this also wasn’t an individual miracle. Individual people had been miraculously healed in font of them that very week, in fact, that does happen from time to time, miracles for individuals, healing and spectacular  transformations of soul or body, but this wasn’t that.  

This was a healing of the whole.  A healing, in some way, of them all.  The whole crowd shared this food, passing it hand to hand, person to person.  Some may not even have realized they were hungry, and yet they too were fed.

 I came alone today to hear the preacher.

I came with a friend to find the healer and watch him work. 

I’m an observer, just one of the crowd.

But suddenly the focus shifts from the stage to the spectators, and the camera pans onto them, and like Oprah’s audience reaching under their seat for the keys to a new car, now we’re all part of this thing. 

But unlike Oprah’s surprise new car- which feels like a miracle in the moment (and later looks like taxes and paperwork and insurance, and latte spilled on your lap and a fender bender down the road) -this one feels completely ordinary in the moment, not really special at all. 

Real. Earthy. Food. Sweat and grass, and buzzing insects, hot sunshine and animated conversation. 

It feels like life, not shiny or special, no screaming and weeping and jumping up and down and thinking, How did I get SO LUCKY?

In fact, perhaps not even grasping how very lucky you are.

Most miracles feel kind of normal.  

Because in a way, all of life is a miracle.  

After all, the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.

In fact, it was not until they saw the baskets filled with leftovers that these people realized there had been a miracle. 

Miracles look like someone passing you ordinary food, and they taste like crusty bread and salty fish and bubbly laughter, and they smell like human bodies and summer warmth.  They don’t often seem extraordinary in the least, and most often, we miss miracles. 

And if we do happen to recognize miracles, it’s after the leftovers have been all cleaned up.

 It’s later on, when we realize a prayer has been answered: when a phone call from the right person at just the right time made a difference.  When we leave the AA meeting with the one particular story holding us up – propelling us forward. 

When we get the offer to help move, the sharing of garden wealth, the neighbor who brings your kid home from school and gives them a snack when you’re stuck on the other side of town. 

When you’ve made a surprise friend you never thought you’d have, or endured a situation of such suffering as you never thought you’d have the strength to sit in with another, but you did.  It’s when you’ve really listened and heard someone’s soul, or when you’ve been truly, deeply heard.

And if we’re going to recognize the miracle, it’s then, looking back, that we suddenly notice the abundance instead of the scarcity, that we feel peace washing over us, or gratitude or love, wonder and awe at the hope that peeks through the cracks of this world with relentless persistence, and in shock we realize, we ourselves were part of a miracle. That what just happened was nothing short of miraculous.

And in the insight of retrospect, the mundane becomes sacred. 

What are five loaves among so many people?  they ask, so utterly aware of the scarcity.  This kid has something, but what is his something among so many people?  It’s nothing!  One little lunch isn’t going to make a difference to the hungry masses.

What can we possibly do?

What is my dollar bill and friendly greeting to the whole of her homelessness and unemployment?

What are my words to such grief and loss? 

What is my puny internet credit card donation against such catastrophic loss of life, livelihood and home?

What is my wordless hug against the force of such devastating news? 

What difference could what I do possibly make?

And in the world’ scarcity mindset – no real difference. None at all. It’s laughable to even try.  In the world’s mindset miracles don’t happen, and most of us are alone.  So it’s almost mocking the seriousness of the situation to even suggest it, so utterly insignificant is my little contribution.  So pathetic what I have to offer in the big scheme of things. 

But Who is this king of glory? 

Or to put it another way, Who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?

This one comes from different mindset than the world, a different reality completely– a way of living and being where gifts multiply and miracles happen.  

This one is operating with different rules altogether, where people – in their most insignificant offering of hope or help, do make a difference. Where lives are changed on small choices. And where all people are connected.  Where miracles happen and we’re part of them, and most of the time we don’t even realize it because they are ordinary, which is also another way to say, so extremely prevalent.  

This one is a God of abundance and not scarcity.  The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.

And they ate their fill.

We’ve been talking lately in church about faith. Not faith as some kind of doubtless belief.  Not a muster yourself kind of certitude. Faith not as the guts to pray for miracles or the audacity to try to convert your neighbor, not even as any kind of conclusion whatsoever.  We’ve been talking about faith as being the moment when you are stirred to ask, “Who is this Jesus? Who is this God who encounters me in this way in this moment?”

Faith doesn’t give you answers – at least not many, but it may make you have to question what you’ve ever known or believed. And faith may open your eyes to something wonderful that you had never before noticed.  It may reveal the miracles around you.

And Faith calls out of us trust, or at least stirs in us a tentative wonder that gently invites trust.  Faith in God can never be about facts or conclusions. 

It is always about the person of God and your person coming into contact in one way or another. 

The response of faith is wonder and gratitude, – even if explanations and understanding are nowhere to be seen.  Maybe especially then. In those times where you might always be left wondering.  How in the world did so much come from what seemed like so little?

Your life is filled with miracles. And you are a part of more miracles than you will ever know.  Because the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

I dare you to live that way.