Day 1708 - If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat (The Church needs you)

A sermon shared with First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN on August 13, 2017

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33  (after the feeding the 5,000)

We continue to explore the connection between faith and action - specifically how we, the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Spring City are going to become a light of hope in our community, and a path for the future of the Church.

This morning we will focus on the connection of the Romans and Matthew passages.  Almost every Christian who has thought about one’s role in evangelism knows Romans 10:9 like the back of one’s hand, “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” In these ten verses we find rooted the essence of salvation based on faith.

Last week I talked about how we miss great messages and content when we become preoccupied with a key verse and overlook the surrounding verses. In our joy over salvation by faith alone, we may remember Romans 10:9 but overlook something very relevant about the call to Christian work found in verses 13-15.  These two passages are deeply relevant to the current times and our fear to “get out of the boat.”

I’m going to explain how, but I can’t do it without sharing some thoughts on Jesus and John walking on water in a storm that go all the way back to Genesis 1:1,2. This is part of what modern folk miss in this account of Peter walking on water. We don’t understand how the disciples thought about the world and God, therefore, we miss the power of the story.

How does the opening of the book of Genesis begin? “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  The “deep” is that dark, formless, mysterious and threatening sea of reality where God moves.

For the desert people living in Palestine, the sea represented ultimate fear and danger. The sea monster lurks in the dark beneath the waves. The sea is the remnant of the mysterious chaos, that totally unknown dark emptiness from which everything originated. (This idea of the sea as the source of creation is found in many other religious beliefs of people such as the Norse, the Macedonians, Greeks, and Babylonians, not just in the Jewish and Christian tradition. – I wonder why?)

There is something about the sea with its hidden sea monsters and deep darkness full of chaos and the unknown that inspires deep-seated fear in the human mind. Children fear the dark and dream about monsters lurking under the bed in the dark of night. If you are honest, even you may feel a little hesitancy to enter a dark room, and at night harbor a little thought of what is under the bed, behind the door, or outside the window.

You can appreciate the innate fear our sea-going disciples brought with them out on the sea in a wind-driven storm with Jesus.  Not only were they sailing on the surface of chaos, they were in a wind-driven storm.  Wind ranks right up there with the sea as something that strikes great fear in our Palestinian disciples.

In the times before we understood the physics of the atmosphere and how clouds and storms form, people only knew that when the wind blows bad things can be on the way, things such as rain, flood, lightning, tornados, hurricanes and death. What else could cause these things but the breath of God, the very wind that moved over the waters of the ocean of chaos before creation?

I lived out west in San Diego near the high desert, and spent some time out in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.  If you go into the desert you worry about water, but not just water to drink.  You learn fairly quickly to postpone the trip when stormy weather approaches. Even today, life-threatening danger of a rain storm faces anyone in the desert, even a storm that does not rain on you.

If you ever fly in an airplane over the western US, you can see how the mountains and hills catch the water in the clouds funneling rain into narrow channels and canyons of the desert, pushing silt and debris ahead of it.  In a matter of seconds or minutes a dry, dusty arroyo can turn into a raging river.

You may have seen on TV the recent story of the people drowned in the desert near Phoenix after a sudden storm in the mountains. A fast-moving wall of water running off the hills rapidly washed away campers and hikers. Desert people need water but fear storms. 

Fishermen and sailors need the sea but fear it. For all these reasons, the disciples knew the wind and storm over the sea means God is on the move in his creation.

The Sea of Galilee is known for sudden storms so sailing on the Sea of Galilee in a storm with Jesus was a nervous exercise.  This makes Peter’s action even more dramatic.  When Peter sees Jesus walking towards him. He tells Jesus to call him to come. Peter steps out of the boat walking on the water towards Jesus. When he stops focusing on coming to Jesus, he realizes that he is in the midst of a storm on the sea and fear, not faith, grip him. He begins to sink. Jesus extends his hand and pulls Peter up into the boat and the storm ceases.  

Matthew tells us the disciples were terrified to see Jesus walking toward them on the water (wouldn’t you be?), and when the wind stops they say, “He must be the son of God!”

Matthew adopted his account from the gospel of Mark and shaped a slightly different take. Matthew is more interested in how the experience of Peter and Jesus walking on water to show God is present and proves faith. Mark’s account (4:35-41) relies on faith of the listener to believe God is acting here. Listen to Mark, “ On that day, when evening had come, he(Jesus) said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and (1) rebuked the wind, and (2) said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’”

“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Even the wind and sea obey him? Whether we read Matthew or Mark, only God can still his wind and quiet his sea for us. These are the important words for our Roman’s passage.

It is so easy, especially for those who carry a prejudice against the Catholic Church or Seventh Day Adventists, to pass over all the other verses and focus on 10:9 as a call to salvation based on faith alone, not on works: “When we believe in our hearts and proclaim Jesus is Lord,” we have found salvation.  It is true, but let’s read all the way to the end to connect it with Matthew. Many, especially for pastors and those who grew up in the traditional Protestant view, say this passage is a call to preaching, evangelism and revival. That interpretation worked especially well in the Western Protestant Church and here in the US from its founding up to my early years in the 1950’s, but not so well now.

The church and churchgoers have changed dramatically over the last 60 or so years.  I recall a retired pastor friend who lamented this change in the church. He said, “You used to graduate from seminary and take a call to a small church for a while, and over time move upward to larger and larger congregations until you became head of staff and later retired.

That idea of ministry makes the call just another corporate, climb-the-ladder occupation.

Now days there are fewer large congregations, and the number of seminary graduates far outnumbers the opportunities that can afford them. Most graduates are young people with families to support in our rich, but expensive culture. Some of them still hold onto that old idea of preaching as an occupation, not a calling.

We could say all this isn’t our fault, it is the world’s fault. The Church is under attack by the world at large and we are bleeding members left and right. It may be true, but has always been that way.

That retired pastor described what happened to the Protestant and Catholic Church in the last century. In my opinion, a consequence of the Church getting too close to culture trying to compete with it and being seduced.

The primary footprint of the church, its attendance in worship, its membership suffered for it. It lost its connection to the core message of Christianity to be in culture not of culture.  

The fruits of culture, our improved standard of living nurtured by literature and technology, have become a primary, shared preoccupation by the Church and its members.

Theology professors always ask an old question, “Is the church a sanctuary for saints, or a hospital for sinners?” People continue to find sanctuary (safety, shelter) in the liturgical structure of worship services but the sanctuary of the congregational gathering must be a refuge for believers who seek solace and empowerment, not a nice basketball court. Being a presence of grace in the community(culture) is as critically important now as it was in the very beginning of the Church of Paul’s time. The congregation is the place not to find shelter from the wind and storm of chaos and evil in the world as much as to prepare us sail into that storm of chaos and evil as witnesses to the good news.

The old way of thinking about preaching and evangelism has to change, especially if you seriously consider Romans 10:13-15.

 The Church as we know it is on life-support. If the Church in the West is to recover from its cultural seduction, it will be because we focus on answering Paul’s question and accepting his praise, “How are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”’”

If we are to recover, we must move with the good news into the world around us, where we should have been all along. That is what we are doing here at First Presbyterian Church, working hard in stormy weather around us, though at times we struggle with doubt we are empowered by faith to keep our eyes on the prize.

Now, more than ever we have to have faith to walk on water. And if we want to walk on water, we have to also accept two more things, we have to get out of the boat and get our feet wet. And know that we will not drown if we keep the faith and trust in Jesus, our Lord.

Amen!