Signs of Hope - Matthew 14:22-33
I have long been a fan of the church marquee, those roadside signs with messages offered to the passing cars. I don’t generally pay attention to the service times or the pastor’s name written large; what I look for is a good word, a funny saying, some pithy call to the Christian life.
Here are a few examples: “Honk if you love Jesus, text if you want to meet him.” Or “Adam and Eve, the first people to not read the Apple terms and conditions.” Or “This too shall pass, it might pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.”
I am, of course, often disappointed. Some jokes fall flat, some scriptures are ripped from their contexts, and often the theology is an abuse of all that is good and beautiful about our faith. But often enough the signs are just right.
Recently I saw a church sign flashing in LED with the message: “We are praying for scientists and for a vaccine.” It’s fine message. Scientists need prayer as much as anyone and a COVID vaccine would be wonderful, of course. But as I drove on from the intersection, I felt unsettled. I couldn’t quite identify the source of my discomfort, but I carried it with me as I sat down with the Gospel for this Sunday. It was in the story of Jesus on the water that I began to understand the problem. It is a question of fear and how we find our way out of it; of faith instead of false hope.
In our Gospel we find the disciples at night on a boat. They are traveling across the waters, a place that was familiar to them, but also alien. Far from the shore is never a safe place for humans to be. We are, at the end of the day, land animals, and out on the water we are vulnerable, fully aware of our fragility.
It is night, the waves are stirred by the wind, and the fragile boat creaks as it is tossed about on the water. We are not told if the night is cloudy, but it seems that there is a storm, and so we can imagine that there is no starlight, no moon. It is a kind of darkness that few of us have ever experienced in our light polluted world, but for those who have known it, you understand that such darkness can be both a comforting enclosure and a terrifying unknown. But the main action of our story comes when that dark is just beginning to fade, when the dawn light is breaking over the horizon. The refractions that form color are not apparent just yet; only shapes can be made out, the water, the distant shore, and then something out upon the waves.
What it is it? The water can be disorienting. It is no wonder that sailors are known for tall tales. Our eyes can play tricks on us when we are out on a boat and the sea is full of strange wonders, from creatures that glow with living light to animals whose shapes defy our land-born imaginations. The disciples have never seen anything like this shadow on the waves, but quickly they seek for some category to put it in so that they won’t have to dwell in the uncertainty of the unknown. “It’s a ghost,” they proclaim. They are terrified and we are like them.
Our lives have been unmoored. We are on a dark sea and uncertain what shore we will land on or even if we will make it there. And on the water there are apparitions, unknowns moving across the surface. We want to name them so that we interpret the dark shapes of our future, making their possibilities into ghosts that embody our fears. Our fears differ from one another and so the ghosts we see take many forms. Like the Boggarts in the Harry Potter novels, they appear to each person as the thing of which they are most afraid. We read the news, listen to the commentators, debate which ghost will rise from the water and how best to guard ourselves against it; what we should fear or not fear the most.
But then Jesus comes close and calls out, breaking the reality we thought possible. The disciples in the boat never imagined it would be him. Jesus on the water doesn’t fit the categories of their understanding. But here he is and he is telling them not to be afraid.
Jesus isn’t offering a generalized call to bravery here. He tells the disciples not to be afraid because he is here. Fear has its place, but not when Jesus comes close. Peter has a glimpse of that and he wants to experience the freedom from fear that Jesus provides. He knows that if he can walk on water then it must be Jesus who is in front of him. But once he is there on the unsteady waves the old uncertainties return. The wind whispers its “what ifs” and so Peter is distracted. Instead of looking at Jesus his mind flits among the headlines, scrolls through the alternating flashes of hope and fear and numbing trivia. He begins to sink, but Jesus saves him from his fear by calling him again to faith.
Ours is a windy world. There is the pandemic and its uncertain end, our politics in uproar, our climate in chaos. We want something to guide us through and so we pray in a pattern of “if only.” If only there was a vaccine. If only our politics were better. If only our economy was strong. And if we pray in such a pattern then the church has little to offer the world other than petitions for scientists who we set up as our real saviors.
We hope that somehow science can save us from our vulnerability to viruses, the fragile reality of our mortal lives. We hope that somehow technology will save us from the ecological destruction we’ve unleashed through our machine advanced greed. We hope that our national life can be solved like a puzzle with just the right politics. But when we place our hopes in such things as science or the next election or an economic policy we will go out onto the waters and find ourselves quickly sinking in the chaos of the changing winds.
The church has a better word to offer, a deeper hope. We can do more than pray for scientists and hope for a vaccine. We can worship Jesus, turning our gaze to him amid the waves. In doing this we will see his face and hear his words, “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” And if we really hear that word, it won’t matter so much anymore if we live or die. What matters is his life and our life within it. What matters is God’s work in the world, no matter the electoral outcome. What matters is the abundant life of the whole of creation, that cannot flourish alongside our empires of greed.
So yes, lets pray for scientists, and give thanks if a vaccine comes. And let’s pray for political leaders, God knows they need it. Let us pray and work for justice and be glad when God’s reign glimmers in our laws. And let’s pray that all will have enough so that creation, with its human and non-human members, will flourish. But when it comes to the message the church should offer the world, I want to say with the Psalmist:
Search for the Lord and his strength;
continually seek his face.
It’s the face of Jesus coming across the troubled water, the one who says: “Do not be afraid.”
That is my prayer, that is my hope, that is a message worth putting on a roadside sign. Amen.