St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church  
Sunday August 28, 2011 Proper
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Theme: Ruining our Children for the World.  

One of my deep privileges at St. Michael’s over the past five years has been to be involved in the creation of educational or formational experiences for children, youth and adults alike. It has been and will continue to be an extremely demanding task especially amidst our cultural situation with so many choices and so much freedom for our youth generated by the advances in technology and the communication revolution along with the near failure of reliable social structures our youth require. The formation of children and youth is a ministry that I remain passionate about just as I am convinced of its essential importance in the life of any church. So I want to offer some thoughts on a theology of caring for the spiritual life of children and youth and in so doing I hope to illuminate the spiritual path for all us.  

To begin it is worthwhile to consider what we want for our children. I want my children to be followers of Jesus. I want my children to have a defining story that I believe is truthful and leads to a transforming relationship with God in Christ. I want my children to have an openness to the mystery underlying all things, and an ability to live faithfully even in the midst of failure because forgiveness, mercy, redemption, and resurrection is integral to their story. I want them to grow up with a great deal of love, acceptance and security but I want that to be balanced with the awareness and realistic view of their own shortcomings, flaws, harmful tendencies, and destructive habits.

I hope that our children have active imaginations that are kindled by the biblical story. I want them to be able to reflect on the tension between the powerful reality of the Kingdom of God (the world as it should be) and how different it is from the world as it is. I want them to understand that they are participants in creating, reclaiming, offering that beautiful symbol of the Kingdom of God here and now, not just in some distant future. I want them to understand that their faith is not simply a private affair but has a decidedly public dimension. Faith is personal but never private.

There are of course many other things I want for my children:
I want them to have more character rather than more money.
I want them to understand that they are stewards of the many gifts that God has given them: intelligence, energy, skills, finances, the earth, their relationships, the faith community, creativity, their bodies, water, air, and of a truthful story.

But, if I had to sum it all up I would say something like this: I want their life in the church, its liturgies, their classes, their friendships with adults, their involvement in ministry, their participation in service, and their discussion and study with peers and thoughtful adults to ruin them for this world. By God’s grace I hope that my children will somehow in their own time realize that following Jesus is the path to joy even as it makes one very peculiar in the world. By God’s grace I hope that they learn that forgiveness is more important than always being right, that repentance is the way to growth, that compassion rather than greed leads to life, that cooperation is so much richer than endless competition, that looking out for and being with the other, the outcast, the oddball, and the marginal is really the more excellent way.

Now how do we as a community make this possible?  The truth is that every community that wants to last beyond a single generation must concern itself with education. Education has to do with the way we maintenance our community throughout the generations. It is a way of assuring a continuity of vision, values and perception so that the community develops and sustains a self-identity. At the same time the way of doing this must ensure a certain flexibility or freedom so that the community can ReImagine itself in new circumstances and survive changes within the larger culture while still being relevant.

Nurture and incorporation of children into the believing community is a very complex and challenging task.  Our experience with our own children tells us that there is not a single decisive experience or event that will suit all children. This work of nurture and incorporation of our own children requires an on-going conversation, whereby the child-en-route-to-adult begins, a little at a time, at one’s own pace, to affirm and claim the “story” the “good news” which defines and shapes the community.

The conversation I’m talking about having with our children and youth is never done. It goes on and on and thus requires the energy and creativity of a whole community across the generations. It goes on and on because the vitality of this conversation is what actually enlivens the whole community. It is the conversation itself that is important because it leads to conversion for those involved. In the act of listening deeply to our children and youth and of finding creative and engaging ways to offer them a vision of God’s ways, of the world as it should be; we are in fact making provision for our own conversion.

Children and youth are in fact one of the greatest gifts that God showers upon us. Our engagement in attending to their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord as the baptismal covenant instructs is in fact a key ingredient in our own spiritual vitality. In caring for the souls and minds and hearts of those most vulnerable and impressionable among us we find that we are converted, changed, enlivened and made whole in surprising ways.

So I want to make the bold assertion that this work of which I am speaking is the primary work of the faith community. This is one of the main reasons that the community of faith exists to shape the spiritual, intellectual, political, emotional, and relational lives of its youngest members.

The challenge of this ongoing conversation in faith is evident. It cannot be hurried or cut short as growth in faith has its own patient pace. To do it well requires the twin skills of advocacy and receptivity. What I mean by this is that at times our children will need to hear adult testimony, our own risk-taking to speak plainly and clearly about the faith of our heart and our experience in growing into the full-stature of Christ. At other times the conversation requires something far different -- a patient and accepting listening that in itself shapes a place where real inquiry, questioning and exploration of the world can be held in an accepting but covenantal way. There is the tacit understanding that this exploration of faith may or may not end up in membership or commitment to the people of God, it is a free choice and a work of grace that none of us can make happen.

All who have been engaged in the adventure of nurturing children and youth or grandchildren (or adult children or parents who still seem like children) know that it is remarkably difficult to strike a balance between these two essential postures of advocacy and receptivity. For some, advocacy becomes so important that our children experience it as heavy-handed and excessively authoritarian (this of course is what we fear in the militant evangelical example). On the other pole, for some, receptivity becomes all and our children experience us as passive, noncommittal, or cowardly (this of course is the characteristic of communities overly dependent on the “therapeutic model” or to “active listening”).  Of course there is no “right way” to have this conversation and no matter how we handle the conversation with regard to advocacy or receptivity we will in most cases finish the conversation with some regret about our overall approach. By God’s grace our children may experience our advocacy and clear articulation of faith as inspiring and be grateful for our risk to share our own inner life and passions. For some children our deep listening and receptivity to their own exploration of the winding road of faith in God will be experienced as a healing openness and trust in God to meet them in their struggles and personal journey. The truth is that our children’s faith development is a mystery that develops both because of our loving efforts and in spite of us.  

The context in which all of this must take place is an interesting one.

This ongoing conversation with our children and youth must take place in the soil of unconditional love – our children and youth need to know that we are quite literally crazy about them. That we really love them, are there for them and really can’t get enough of them. To be sure sometimes we are driven crazy by them but that too must also be saturated in love. Having adults who are not easily shocked but easily amused who will really listen to young people is a gift of great value to the youth who need a place to puzzle out their lives and God’s place within it.

Our children and youth also need a place where faith is clearly articulated in coherent way. Faith must have a intellectual dimension that is credible and is advanced by interpretive questions and the making of connections of little pieces to the larger context to which the faith community adheres. This of course requires that adults themselves struggle to develop and discern a coherent faith within their own defining community. We cannot impart that which we do not possess.

The final context in which this conversation needs to take place is one that is profoundly and intentionally counter-nurture which of course sounds very strange. The purpose of the conversation is not that our children would become good “Americans” or “Moral people” or “Productive professionals” all of which may or may not be desirable. The purpose of our conversation is that our young would be able to perceive, embrace and put into practice a way of life that is animated and informed by our peculiar memory and vision of faith held out in the gospel community. The point of our conversation is to ruin our children and hopefully ourselves for this world, that we might live out the gospel story in a lively and surprising way amidst the competing stories of violence, greed, destructive competition, dehumanization, accumulation, and unchecked consumption. To put it into the vernacular -- when one meets a Christian it would be refreshing to think of the old Sesame Street song “One of these things is not like the other.”  In a strange and subversive way, the Christian story is meant to make each of us an oddity in the world, odd over against the secular self-indulgence while others go hungry, odd over against the complicit acceptance of violence as an acceptable way to make peace, odd over against the unyielding advance of market individualism.

There is no such thing as your private faith, your private Christianity. It is your living out of the faith, your articulation of what God has done, is doing and hopes to do in and through and with you that will animate and enliven the ongoing conversation with our children and youth. The maturation of my child in the love and knowledge of God does not just depend upon me, it depends upon the whole community. As a parent, I am dependent upon my faith community to model and give voice and example to the kind of faith that I desire for my children.  I need, desire and hope for others who have the skills and sensitivities required for children’s growth to risk being in relationship not only with me, but my children. Without this kind of village or communal enterprise the success of my children growing up as people of a lively and transforming faith becomes more and more unlikely.

The truth is that the young in this community -- in every community -- are at risk. At risk of not knowing a truthful story that will shape them into the kind of faithful people that this world so desperately needs. They are at risk because learning this story is a radical act, a scandalous undertaking that cannot simply be passed on easily. It must be shared in creative and fresh ways in every generation and it takes the combined efforts and innovative approaches of a whole community to undertake such a venture as shaping the young in our midst into faithful men and women. There are, of course, no guarantees -- only the real possibility of fullness of life for those who engage the opportunity, struggle and joy.

In the end, caring for our children and youth -- daring to do the patient and lively work of sharing our transforming story of faith -- is the most important work we can do. It is the surest way to help us to struggle enough with our own faith that we might discover its “newness,” its “radicality” in such a way that not only will we find fullness of life, but we will have that fullness of life to offer our young. And in this way we will know what it means to lose your life in order to save it.

I wish to acknowledge my debt to Walter Brueggeman for his strong ideas about Christian formation ruining us for this world.

August 21, 2011
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Recently I saw a very unusual film called <em>The Tree of Life</em>. My son, who works in film, recommended it to me. He said I shouldn’t expect a normal plot line, that watching it is like going to hear a modern symphony. A variety of things happen, and you just take it all in.

Mostly the film goes back and forth between cosmic images of the universe and a family in 1950’s Waco, Texas. One moment we’re watching Dad try to teach Junior how to box on the front lawn, and in another, we’re seeing nebula, the big bang, the emergence of amphibian creatures. Then back to the kitchen and Mom looking out the window at the wind in the trees.

The film took one little family, with all its dysfunction and repentance, tragedy and love, and placed it on the biggest possible stage. The weird thing is that rather than making the human seem tiny by comparison, it was enlarged and ennobled. There’s something beautiful and majestic about this family’s rightful place in the universe. They contribute to the vast sweep of creation and evolution. And you have the feeling that at some level, they know this. They, along with the audience in the theater, are both actors and observers in the grand drama of which they are a part.

It was the same feeling I sometimes have at funerals. In an old photograph in the parish hall display, we notice a quizzical look on a young, beautiful face. We see more depth or pain than we ever noticed in person. Viewing the whole of their life from a little distance, it seems poetic, almost epic.

While we are alive, in the close-up view, we worry our way forward towards things we want and things we’re obligated to do. But in death, everything opens up. All that is not important, all that is not love, drops away. Sins are forgiven, and there is empathy for the struggle.

This is what religion is supposed to do, especially worship. This is what our readings today point us towards.

Isaiah was writing at a time of real trouble for the nation of Israel. Their very existence was being threatened by attacks from without. Eventually they would be carted off into exile in Babylon. They felt great distress about the state of their world. In our own day, we too, look around us and sometimes feel the same way. And so to his day and to our day, to all the ages, Isaiah wrote this –
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats; but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended.

How is this supposed to help? By trying to transcend human life and waiting for pie in the sky? Not for me. I’m very aware of our obligation to make this world a better place for all of God’s people. We promise this several times a year in the baptismal covenant – to strive for justice and peace.

But I want to strive without fear and anger, with an underlying confidence in God’s goodness. I want to know that we are playing out the drama of human history on the stage of eternity. And Isaiah helps me do that.  

In the second reading, Paul wrote to a community of Christians in the city of Rome. They were persecuted, tiny, powerless, in comparison to the great empire in whose capital they gathered. To this ragtag group he said -  
You are the very body of Christ. As members of this body, you display all the diverse gifts of the Spirit – prophecy, faith, wisdom, compassion, and joy. So forget Rome. You are Christ, divinely gifted. See things as they really are. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
 
It is quite natural to see our little parish in practical, worldly terms. Ordinary people come together and have meetings, struggle over budgets, sing hymns, have a little coffee and conversation, and then go their separate ways.

When we see the church in this limited way, we can get caught up in whether we like this or that, whether we’ve got enough money or people to get things done. When change comes, as it has first in the departure of Fr. Daniel and now Fr. Christopher, we might get nervous, and understandably, we feel real loss. When things go badly in the church, we become distressed. In other words, we see our church as the world sees things, and whose ups and downs take us up and down.

Paul says to us as he did to the small church in Rome, Take the wider view. You are the very body of Christ on earth, divinely gifted, eternal, global. When we remember this, we can weather our ups and downs with patience and humor.

And we can also marvel, as we will next Sunday, at all the diverse manifestations of God’s own Spirit in the many gifts of ministry that will be on display. They ebb and flow, people come and go, we change - just as any body changes over time. But the body of Christ endures from generation to generation.

Finally, in the gospel, Jesus asks his friends Who do the crowds say that I am? “Oh, the usual – some religious nut, a trouble-maker like Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

But who do you say that I am? Peter took a deep breath and uttered what he had not yet dared to admit to himself, let alone say out loud. You are the anointed one, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. In that moment, I imagine that all the air was sucked out of the space around the campfire.

What did this mean to Peter? It would be centuries before the church decided that it meant Jesus was God incarnate. More than likely, Peter uttered these words only because in Jesus, he could see through the veil of humanity into another, eternal, realm.

The question behind Jesus’ question is really Who do you say that you are? Are you just your job, your calendar, or even your daily moods or perplexing problems? Look deeper, Jesus says. Peter had the right vision, the vision of faith. We are anointed, sons and daughters of the living God, divinely gifted, part of the grand sweep of evolution, playing out our little personal drama on the vast stage of the universe.

How is this supposed to help? Are we supposed to transcend our humanity? No. We will always feel partly like an actor who is caught up in a role. But we can add to that a wider perspective, sort of like peripheral vision – that is, the knowledge that there is a much wider field in which we struggle and play. We can be both actor and observer.

This helps us to be aware – aware of our tunnel vision, of our fear or attachment to things that may not really be so important. We can also be aware that all things shall pass, the heavens shall vanish like smoke, the earth shall wear out, but the goodness of the Lord endures forever.

And this makes all the difference in how we live in the here and now.

August 14, 2011
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
At the margins      
 Matthew 15:21-28

The story we’ve just heard is one of the most stunning in the gospels. Many preachers try to soften it, to justify Jesus’ initial rebuff of the Gentile woman. They say that he would never refuse healing to anyone who asked for it. He didn’t really mean it when he said that he was only sent to minister to wayward Jews. He certainly didn’t have the capacity to be mean. He was just testing her persistence.

But look at the text. The woman begged him to heal her daughter of demon possession. First thing, Jesus ignored her. His disciples told him to send her away, which he then tried to do – “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Go away. She pleaded. Here’ the shocker - Jesus then called her a dog, an insult for the “other” that is common even today in the Middle East.

Finally, she backs him into the corner of compassion, a place that Jesus himself claims to live. She says “Yes, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.” Busted. In effect, she was saying “How serious are you about this love-of-God business?” His blinders fell off, and his vision expanded.

This story shows us that Jesus was, as we always say we believe, fully human. And how can you be fully human if you don’t have any need for growth? Jesus grew that day, as a result of being confronted with his own values by a woman who dwelt at the margins of his world.

Jesus had become accustomed to hanging around the margins. He was close to those who were considered unclean: lepers, Gentiles, notorious sinners. According to his faith tradition, Jesus was in grave danger of catching their cooties.

He walked the margins a little too much even for his own followers. I suspect that most of them, being peasants, were pretty shocked when he cozied up to the “oppressors,” who were certainly on the margins of their world. Jesus invited a corrupt tax-collector to be one of his closest disciples. He made friends with Pharisees like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. He had compassion on a Roman soldier, healing his servant who was sick.

This is the story of Jesus’ life. He chose to walk the margins, and through his relationship with people there, he was changed. They broke open for him the neat little container many people prefer to stay in. As time went on, he lived more on the margins than in the container. That’s why the temple priests crucified him. He had gone too far, and become a blasphemer.

Followers of Jesus have always walked the margins of society and have been changed by what they experienced there. As we came to know the “other” – whether that has been Gentiles in the early church, or African-Americans in the Civil Rights era - we were able to see them no longer in the abstract, but as flesh and blood human beings, like us. We became family to one another. So how could we turn our back on them, or refuse them the things of God?

This is not always easy. For marginalized people can sometimes demand more of us than we’re ready to give, as the Gentile woman did of Jesus.

I wonder what will happen when the Rev. Susan Allison Hatch really gets the St. Martin’s church community going with the homeless. Will they begin to see themselves not just as grateful recipients of our largesse, but as full and equal members of the Diocese of the Rio Grande? Will their wardens and delegates sit at diocesan convention luncheons and debate how our budget should be spent so that it really reflects the priorities of the gospel? Will this change us?

I wonder what will happen when we finally approve rites for blessing of same-gender couples, and they say “Well, thank you for the scraps that have fallen from the table, but how about marriage?” Will we be changed by our relationships with couples who have been together for 30 years, raising children and in every way manifesting faithful Christian lives?

And I wonder how we will respond to those on the margins of religion in our increasingly secular society, if we listen to them carefully.

While on sabbatical, even before it started, I wandered around the margins of religion. I went to Burning Man, with all the artists and counter-cultural seekers who gather there. I went to so-called “emerging church” congregations. I visited groups that are creating interfaith communities. I listened to secular friends who have no use for church, about their experience of the sacred.

In relationship with them, I’m changing. I’ve come to wonder whether there isn’t a way to break open the Christian container so that the riches of our tradition and the person of Jesus are available to millions who are rapidly drifting away from us, perhaps forever, and for good reason. If we don’t, we run the very real risk of becoming a museum.

This isn’t about trying to be trendy so we will be more attractive, but listening to the truth of what people are experiencing in the modern world, and allowing ourselves to be changed by that.

For instance - most of us understand that our imperfection, our unkindness and unhealthy behaviors have psychological roots and solutions. So is the use of the word “sin” useful, other than when we do something really wrong?

Many don’t experience God as an Almighty Father or a judge, and they see spiritual truth through figures other than Jesus. So I wonder whether we couldn’t get past our requirement to use the Nicene Creed in worship every week.  

What about Jesus’s bloody death on the cross that pays the debt of human sin? This is an ancient metaphor that came from a culture that had animal sacrifice, but is still repeated throughout our liturgy even today. How about replacing it with martyrdom, which still happens in our world?

Is it really helpful to read so much of scripture in worship, or could we move the really nasty or arcane parts into the classroom, where their historical contexts can be considered?

These are some of my questions that come from my friends on the margins of religion.

But what about you? Where is the margin for you? If it isn’t around religious tradition like it is for me, is it among neighbors or workmates that are “other?” If you’re liberal, maybe they’re the conservatives you know. Perhaps they’re from a different ethnic or religious or socio-economic group. Maybe they’re hostile to religion. Can you get to know them, and find out what drives them?

If you do, be warned - they might change you. That’s why we’re sometimes reluctant to engage with them. But that’s what we’re called to do, to wander around the margins of God’s marvelous world, and find out who’s really there, and what they’re about.

What we discover is that the “other” may indeed be very different from us. But because we’re in relationship, we also discover a shared humanity. And this may allow the little containers we both live in to be broken open.

This is the foundation of all reconciliation, all harmony, all justice. It should be the foundation of all religion. And it is what Jesus discovered that day, thanks to that brave woman from the margins of his world.

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church   
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday August 7, 2011 Proper 14A
Text: Matthew 14: 22-33 Jesus Coming to the Disciples on the Water
Theme of Sermon: Wavy Faith
Preacher: Christopher McLaren


There is a story from the Zen Buddhist tradition about a monk who thought he could make more progress in his path of enlightenment by seeking it on his own.  So he bid farewell to his brothers at the monastery, crossed over the river by ferry and went to live in the solitude of a cave high in the hills.  Alone, he meditated non-stop for 25 years. One day he emerged from the cave, looked around, stretched his body out, feasted his eyes on the world and made his way toward the river.

Without even pausing to test the water, he stepped out onto the water and walked across it toward the monastery he had not visited in 25 years. Two brothers who were working at laundry that morning saw the monk coming across the river.  

“Who is that?” one of them asked. The other replied, “That is the old hermit who has spent 25 years meditating in the solitude of a mountain cave. Now look at him! He can walk on water!”

“What a pity,” the first monk said. “The ferry only costs a quarter.”

Like this story the Christian tradition has its own stories about walking on water. Today we encounter one of the most famous of them as Peter risks joining Jesus on the waters of the Galilee.

The story of Jesus walking on the water is a numinous one for me. It is full of struggle, danger, independence, fear, risk-taking, failure, salvation and hope.   For those of a more skeptical bent there have been attempts to provide more rational explanations for this miracle on water.  Some have proposed that what happened was nothing more than an optical illusion. In the dim light of the early morning hours the person of Jesus, ghost-like and ethereal was seen walking on the water through the shallows of the northern end of the lake.  Perhaps this is a credible explanation but it is improbable that such an experience would have been transformed into the story we are given.  A story based on the disciple’s mistaken vision would not, I venture to say, have been preserved for posterity.  Others have tried to understand this wave-walking story as a displaced resurrection encounter, and while it is a very intriguing approach, it too is ultimately no more than conjecture.  I think the best way forward is to set aside the question of the historicity of the event in question and instead to focus on what the narrative is meant to teach us theologically.  What does this mysterious story offer us in our life of faith?

In the flow of things Jesus and his disciples have just dismissed the crowds after considerable teaching and a miracle of feeding.  Jesus makes the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side of the lake. Jesus seems to be pushing the disciples a bit toward independence, making them do something on their own and giving them time to wonder about the feeding of so many. He on the other hand seeks out his own reflective time on a hike into the hills.  There is of course something here for us in this simple detail. The value of both individual and group reflection is apparent. We all need time to consider where God is at work in our lives, to see the wonder of what God has just done if we can slow down enough to notice the nonchalance of miracle itself all around us.

Jesus himself is a model for the spiritual life as what is necessary for Jesus is necessary for us as well.  Jesus needs to find a rhythm of engagement and detachment in his life. His ministry and work is not possible without his solitude and spiritual renewal.  We too cannot serve our families or reach out in ministry to our youth or community without finding a place and rhythm of spiritual nurture.  Our own frustration, resentment, and at times anger can be the indicators that we are not taking our own need for renewal seriously enough. Jesus was intentional about creating this space for retreat and reflection and we are called to do so as well.

In the early morning light, fog drifting over the surface of the water the disciples are struggling: battered by the waves.. far from land.. the wind against them.  These images describe our lives so well at times.  We all know what it means to be battered or knocked about by our troubles.  We know what it means to have the wind against us.  Where is the wind against you now?   What kinds of waves have been crashing into your plans?

Into the struggle of the disciples, Jesus, like miracle itself, comes walking toward them on the water. I wonder if this has ever happened to you? In the midst of your troubles, a storm in your life: stress, illness, conflict, crisis, loss, or surprising change whatever the struggle, have you seen the face of Christ coming toward you in a friend, a partner, a stranger, a neighbor?  This is the good news of this passage for us this day. In the time of trouble, God has a way of coming toward us in the most unexpected of ways. “Take heart it is I, do not be afraid.” I wish we had time to hear one another tell our own stories of when help arrived just as we needed it, so that we too might feel the message of this passage deep in our hearts.

If you are like me, you love Peter’s response to this whole ordeal. Peter wants to be with Jesus. He wants to do everything Jesus does and so he asks this proof-demanding question. “Lord if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” What a wonderful question full of the struggle between faith and doubt. Peter is surely us in this story, our desire to believe but our thirst for real proof, our willingness to step out in faith but our terrible fear of true risk. If I were painting this scene it is this moment that I would want to capture, this beautiful and terrible moment of risk as Peter, balancing precariously on the edge of the boat’s bow, rocking in the wind tossed waves, steps, steps out toward Christ onto faith’s dangerous waters, away from the disciples cowering in fear and toward the adventure that awaits in Jesus’ invitation, “Come.”

Peter walks toward Jesus and that I believe that this is what is asked of each of us. Do we dare to walk toward Jesus? Peter fresh from Christ’s provision in the wilderness is able to risk getting out of the boat. Can we trusting in God’s goodness walk toward Jesus in the mist of whatever risk we face: the work of a relationship, the healing of a deep wound, the adventure of a new opportunity, the challenge of working for justice? In the end, Peter gets a C- minus in walking on water but he is also the first to experience the saving help of his friend and rabbi Jesus.  Christ’s grace is sufficient for our needs, for God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness (II Cor. 12:9). And this is the freedom that comes from the risk of faith, it allows us to trust not in our own abilities or our own success but to trust that we are truly in God’s hands even when it looks like we might fail or sink into the waves.

Faith is always about risk-taking. It is our daring to say “Yes” to God in tender and vulnerable ways that allow God to show us that we are not alone.  As followers of Jesus we are urged to learn to live with uncertainties and the possibility of failure.  Jesus is the one who recklessly commands us to leave the safety of the boat, to step into the sea, and test the waters with him in front of us.  That’s Jesus, an inveterate risk-taker. He is always calling us to take a chance in the deep water instead of merely splashing around in the shallows. If we want to be close to Jesus, as this story challenges, we need to be willing to venture forth out onto the sea.  We have to be willing to get out of our comfort zone and into a place where our need of God is greater than our need for success. This doesn’t mean that there is no discernment of what risk we are being called to or what yes we are feeling rise within our hearts but it does mean that faith is essentially an action.  

It is helpful to realize that in the gospel writing of John believing or faith is always a verb and never a noun. Faith is not a possession it is an activity. As one theologian said, “It is like a song that disappears when you stop singing.”

This story is numinous because it is so true to life. We are all of us a mixture of fear and faith of doubt and belief. We alternate between cowering in the boat and leaping onto the waves with Jesus. If I am truthful it is my own doubts that keep me wondering and pursuing the life of faith. My doubts move me along and remind me that the world is not as it should be, the world, including me needs God, it needs the vision of the kingdom of God to break in.  But like the epileptic’s father in Mark’s gospel, I am willing to pray, “I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

Put simply I cannot walk on water. I might be more likely to pay the 25 cents for the ferry. But this God-bearing story calls us into a life that accepts the risk of faith that God places in front of each of us without fail. Only you can know where Christ is calling you into deep trust in God? There are times when what we most need is to leave the safety of the boat and the easy fellowship of our companions and venture out into the unknown waters knowing that it is there in that nexus of faith and fear that we will find Jesus striding toward us ready not only to reach out a hand to help but to pull us deeper into God’s saving embrace where we will come to know more fully who we are and more importantly to whom we belong.