Matthew 14:22-35 In the Grasp Sermon preached July 28, 2013 Opening Some years back our oldest

child Peter almost gave me and Susan a stroke. He had just turned 18 and decided to do a senior project. He was in a science magnet program and decided to do a project about physics. So, for his project, he decided he was going to personally experience the reality of gravity, by jumping out of an airplane. Yes, when he turned 18, Peter decided to go skydiving and cleverly presented this lunacy as a senior academic project. Now I always raised our children to take risks, because I wanted them to approach life with courage, curiosity and a willingness to adventure. Take off the training wheels and let them ride the bike, if they fall, not the end of the world, thats how you learn to ride. When Peter played baseball, if the ball took a bad hop and hit him in the chin, thats part of the game, short-term pain leads to long-term gain. But skydiving - I mean, what kind of senior project was this anyway? You going to jump out of a plane and prove that gravity is an empirically verifiable phenomenon? That if the parachute doesnt open, youre going to go splat on the ground? Susan turned white as an eggshell when Peter announced his plans and declared she wanted no part of this insanity of letting her now-grown-up little boy jump out of an airplane. I figured, hes 18 and he really wanted to do it so I talked Susan into letting him do it. So one bright and sunny Saturday morning we drive out to a little airfield where theres a skydiving school. Peter plunked down his own money and signed about 17 pages of release forms saying things like if your parachute doesnt open and you end up hitting the earth like a Hellfire missile, its not our fault. All this time Im trying to act calm and be the good father, I brought along the video camera, Im acting like Im proud of my boy, but inside theres a pit of fear in my stomach. So after an in-depth training session of oh, about 15 minutes, Peter and the rest of the asylum climb into an old twin-engine prop plane and the plane chugged its way 1

skyward. I went out into the landing area and anxiously scanned the sky. And then they appeared, little dots of color as the parachute canopies became visible. And then Peter, attached to an instructor in a tandem harness, floated to the ground and made a perfect landing. And I start to breathe again. We named Peter after the disciple Peter - and here he was imitating his namesake, taking a daring risk just like Peter the disciple did one dark and stormy night on the Sea of Galilee. Scripture opening In our reading the disciples are all crowded into a boat and are crossing the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has just fed the crowd of 5,000 and went off by himself to pray and told the disciples to get into the boat and head back home. So they obey the Lord and set out and a storm comes up and the wind starts howling and the waves are breaking over the sides of the little boat and these experienced fishermen are getting scared theyre going to drown and the One who can save them is presumably off by himself praying in blissful solitude. So the disciples are baling water out of the boat and thinking their Lord can heal people and feed a hungry crowd but hes leaving them out here to drown and they look up and they see the rather unusual sight of someone walking on the water toward the boat. They think its a ghost - and they start screaming and pulling on the oars to get away. Jesus sees theyre terrified and calls out that Hey, its me. Its the Lord, come to save them from the storm. But Peter wants some proof of identity here. Now, when I call the bank or a credit card company, they want proof of identity too - and they usually ask me for the last four digits of my social security number, or my mothers maiden name. But Peter doesnt do anything like that, doesnt say to Jesus, If its really you...whats your hometown? Whats your favorite color? No, Peter comes up with the idea of walking on the water out towards Jesus. The riskiness of faith

I really have no idea how Peter came up with this idea. I plan to ask him someday. But we surely can learn from it. And the first thing we learn, is that we encounter Jesus Christ, in his reality and power and majesty, through risk-taking faith. Some people have the mistaken idea that faith means safety and security. In one sense thats correct - we have the security of our salvation; we have the security of knowing that the Lord promised never to leave us or forsake us; we have the security of knowing that when we die, God saves us from abyss of death. But - faith, following the Lord Jesus Christ, is risky. For starters - the Lord told us we can trust him and to put our lives and eternal destiny in his hands. Well, were taking a risk by taking him at his word - I mean, what if Islam is the true religion? Were in deep trouble! But then - following Jesus means he is going to call you to get out of the boat again and again and again. If you think the only thing Jesus wants from you is to go to church and put some money in the plate and bring a casserole to share at pot-luck suppers, youve got it all wrong. The New Testament scholar William Barclay wrote ...most of us live a cautious life on the principle of safety first. (But) To live the Christian life there is necessary a certain reckless willingness to adventure. If faith does not involve risk, it is not faith. It is sometimes necessary for the Christian to take...the way to which God is calling him, without knowing what the consequences will be. 1 If you have not taken any risks for the Lord in a long while - if you have not felt the Lord calling you to do something you think No way can I do that!, calling you to sacrifice in a way that seems crazy, calling you to trust him when you feel fear welling up in you like stomach acid...you have to ask yourself, are you worshiping Jesus Christ, or the idols of safety and security. You have to ask yourself, are you hiding in the back of the boat, hoping he doesnt see you? The Danger of Playing it Safe Let me tell you - in the life of faith, playing it safe, is not safe. Its deadly to faith. There are Christians all over the place who refuse to take a risk of faith, and as a result their relationship with the Lord has shriveled up and died. There are churches that cling to the supposed security of the way it was in the good old days 3

even though the world around them has completely changed, and they are burying ten times as many people as join the church and they havent baptized a baby in four years. True story - about five years ago a salesman named Tom Lind was out making calls in southern Oregon, driving his big pickup. It was a few days before Thanksgiving, and a few miles into his trip the drizzle changed to snow and soon he was in the middle of a blizzard whiteout. Tom was forced to pull over for the rest of the day. By nightfall his truck was covered in snow. But Tom wasnt worried, he was safe in his big pickup. Soon the road crews would be along and help him escape. But what Tom didnt know was the road he chose was a scenic route and the state closed it after the first snowfall of the year. Nobody would be coming up that road until the Spring thaw. As soon has Tom failed to show for his next sales appointment, the state and local police began searching for him. But no one thought to venture up the now-closed back road that Tom had taken. And when the weather cleared and the sun came out, Tom chose to continue being smart and safe - he stayed with his big truck. And Tom stayed in his big truck for over eight weeks. He kept a journal of his thoughts and hopes and fears. But he still sat in his big truck. Eventually he grew too weak to have any other options and couldnt have walked out if he wanted to. At the end of January a group of back-country skiers found Toms emaciated, dehydrated body in his big pickup truck. His journal revealed he died around January 15th . In trying to play it safe, Tom actually chose to die. Security is found out on the water The security of the Christian life is found in being with Jesus. And you find him out in the water, not hiding in the back of the boat. Because its out there, you discover who Jesus really is. Every once in a while in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke), the veil is pulled back and you get a glimpse of the true identity of Jesus. Biblical scholar Dale Bruner says that when Jesus calls out to the disciples, this is no ordinary 4

hello - this is the divine Lord addressing his church. Because what Jesus says to them is, Courage! I am! Dont be afraid! When Jesus says, I am he is deliberately echoing the name God disclosed to Moses - and here, walking on the water, calling Peter out to him, Jesus discloses that he is far more than a miracle-working rabbi - he is God in the flesh, Lord of the cosmos. And at the end of our reading the disciples get this, they fall down and worship him and say, truly you are the Son of God. Maybe we play it safe because we have a puny understanding of who Jesus is. Maybe if were going to live the life of faithful adventure the Lord calls us to live, we have to enlarge our understanding of who Jesus Christ is. Heres the deal - the Jesus who calls us to get out of the boat into the storm, is the same Jesus who is Lord of the storms and who can make them cease with a word. And the Jesus who reaches out his hand when we start to go under - that hand belongs to the One through whom the whole universe was made - the hand that reached out for Peter, that reaches out for you and me, is the hand that stretched out the universe, that spun out the stars and galaxies. The psalmist says over and over that the hand of the Lord saves - Psalm 20 - Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. And he reaches to us even in doubt And that hand has us in its grasp, even when we doubt and are afraid. So Peter gets out of the boat - and starts walking on the water, just like Jesus is doing. In todays language hes probably thinking, Wow, this is awesome! But then he realizes what hes doing, he maybe remembers that people are supposed to sink when they step out of a boat, that the surface tension of water wont support a burly Galilean fisherman; he remembers hes in the midst of a storm - and his faith wilts away and he starts going down. And immediately - immediately - the hand of Jesus reaches out and pull him back out of the water. Even in the midst of doubt and fear, Jesus saved Peter, Jesus saves us. Our faith in Christ flickers and wavers, like a light bulb with a bad filament. Its 5

like this - one day we feel like its me and Jesus talking a walk through a sunny meadow filled with wildflowers, and then the next we may feel like Calvin in a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip. Hobbes asks Calvin, Do you believe in God? And Calvin thinks for a moment and replies, Well, somebodys out to get me! Well, the good news is that Jesus Christ is greater than our faith. You may be going under because you doubted the goodness and presence of Christ - all you have to do is call out, Lord, save me! and youre in the grasp of his hand. Even in our doubt, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is the one who saves us. Live with courage Maybe you sense Christ is calling you to take a risk of some kind, to set out on some kind of adventure, to do something you think you cant do. Maybe even like Peter youre not completely sure its the Lord out there calling to you. I cant tell you what to do, but I can tell you that it is perfectly within the character of Christ to call us to risk and to call us away from playing it safe. And let me speak to this church as a body. For a number of years, youve been in survival mode. Youve gone through some tough stuff, you lost members and energy and giving and morale. In survival mode you hunker down and become cautious, like Tom the salesman staying in his truck. Its understandable, its human nature, and its also deadly for a church. I think its time, friends, to trust the Lord Jesus. That he has a future for this church. That the Spirit of God is here. Its time - to recover courage and faith and trust. And to listen for the Lords voice, calling us to do things that might seem dangerous, risky, beyond anything we can pull off. Closing In the seventh century Europe was in chaos. The Roman Empire was gone, wiped out by Germanic tribes, Rome was in ruins and Europe was a collection of petty states and kingdoms. Almost everyone was illiterate and ignorant, poverty and disease were everywhere. And very few people knew Jesus Christ. Except for a group of monasteries in Ireland. No one knows exactly when the gospel came to Ireland - but with St. Patricks mission in the fifth century, the faith took root there and survived while the lights were going out all over the Western world. 6

The Irish monks were tireless scribes and they copied books, especially the Bible, making beautiful editions like the Book of Kells that survives today. They preserved learning from Greek and Roman sources that disappeared elsewhere, and the monasteries soon welcomed scholars who sought refuge and education there. But Europe was still dark, ignorant and pagan. So God called some of those monks to leave the safety of their monasteries to go to Britain and Europe and bring the Gospel, bring the Bible to the people there. The monks were not experienced shipbuilders, but they put together little reed boats. And then a group of monks carrying bibles attached by chain to their waists would clamber into these little, leaky boats, and sail off over the horizon to bring the good news of Jesus to people they had never seen. And as they rowed towards the horizon and lands unknown, the monks would sing, Gloria, gloria, gloria..., Gloria, gloria, gloria..., Gloria, gloria, gloria... until their sound of their voices was lost on the wind. You find the reality, the power, the presence of Jesus Christ out on the water. Lets be strong and courageous and do great things for our Lord. Amen. Endnotes 1. William Barclay, The Letter to the Hebrews, p. 163.