Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 9, 2020 – 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33
Some of the most loved stories of my childhood and my youth had to do with the sea – “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” “Kidnapped,” “Treasure Island,” “Moby Dick,” “The Old Man and the Sea.” Since ancient times, people have had a fascination with the sea. Our earliest recorded epics were the “Iliad,” the “Odyssey,” and the “Aeneid,” all of which have to do with long sea voyages. But the fascination with the sea is only one side of a coin. The other side is the terrible fear of the sea.
We think of our culture as a Western European rooted culture, but when we think of it that way, we tend to think of the map of Europe. The fact is that our culture has its roots not up there in Germany and France and the Netherlands, and places like that, but rather around the Mediterranean basin – Spain, Italy, Greece, that corner of the Middle East that borders on the Mediterranean, all across North Africa, beginning with Egypt – that’s where our culture began. And in that culture, the Mediterranean was the life of the people. It’s how they got their food. It’s how they conducted their commerce. It’s how they won their battles. Whoever controlled the sea, controlled everything. The Romans used to call it mare nostrum, our sea. As long as no one was to come over the mountains against them, they were dominant.
So it’s not surprising then, than ancient peoples believed that there were powerful gods who controlled the wind, and the weather, and the ocean. And they feared the monsters of the sea, something called the leviathan. They prayed to their gods for protection on the water, for good fishing, to avoid storms, all that sort of thing. So it’s not surprising then, that God appears that way in the Old Testament. Think about some of the most famous stories at the beginning of the Old Testament. In the very beginning, the earth is waste and void, darkness broods over the abyss, over the roiling waters, and God says, “Let there be.” And there is. Then comes the story of Jonah, swallowed by a whale. So, if those stories are in the Old Testament, they’re there to say Israel’s God is the only God, he controls everything, and only Him should you serve.
When you get to the New Testament, it’s not surprising then, that Jesus is portrayed like Yahweh God. The Book of Job says that God walks on the crests of the waves, so Jesus walks on the water. There are actually two stories in the four gospels, about Jesus and controlling the uncontrollable ocean. The first one has Jesus, in a boat, asleep, and the boat is caught in a storm and the disciples wake Jesus in great fear. That story appears in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus calms the storm from the back of the boat. But in Matthew, Mark, and John, there is the story of Jesus walking on the water. But only in today’s gospel, only in the Gospel of Matthew, do we have this little extra episode between Peter and Jesus.
There are two important things to notice about the story. The first one is what Jesus says to Peter when Peter begins to sink. “Why did you hesitate, oh you of little faith?” That expression “little faith” is tricky. I looked it up in the Greek, then I looked it up in the Latin. In the Greek, it’s a noun – a little faithed one, oligopistos. But when St. Jerome came to translate the Greek into the Latin, he had three Latin words to choose from for the word ‘little.’ The one he chose is very different from the Greek word. It’s modicus. We get the word modicum from that. Jesus is actually saying to Peter, “You have a small faith. It is not sufficient for the task that you were invited to do. You have faith, but your faith is contained. It’s small. It’s moderate.” That’s what St. Jerome got out of the Greek. An interesting concept, because it’s not saying you don’t trust anybody, or your faith is very weak. It’s saying that you have a certain kind of faith that’s not adequate to the situation in which you find yourself.
The second thing to notice about the story… Did you ever ask yourself how they got back into the boat? I don’t know if you’ve ever been out on one of the lakes here in a rowboat, and gotten out of the boat to go swimming, and tried to get back in again. It’s a lot easier getting out than it was getting back in again! You need somebody’s help to get you back into the boat. Unless Jesus performed a third miracle that we don’t know about, where he just floated up out of the water and floated to the boat and then landed again, there were people in the boat to help both Peter and Jesus get into the boat after that episode. Keep those two things in mind.
Why did Matthew tell the story this way? All the stories were well known to all Christians before they were written down. So each gospel writer who wrote them down, wrote them down as a teaching, to get certain points across by using the well-known story of Jesus as a way of getting those points across. So Matthew has a frightened congregation. They’re frightened by a lot of things. They’re frightened by the failure of the gospel to convince their fellow Jews to follow Jesus. They’re frightened there might be something wrong with the gospel if so many people reject it. They’re frightened by the task before them, which is to preach the gospel to the world. They’re frightened because, in order to do that, they have to risk persecution by the Roman government, as well as by factions of their own ancestral people. They have to go out to a world they don’t know, to do something they’re not sure they have the strength to do. They are “little faith” people. They’re faith is in a box, and it’s not adequate to the task before them. So Matthew tells them, “Jesus is not in the boat. Jesus is out there beckoning, saying, ‘Come.’ You have to get out of the boat, the church as you know it, into a larger world. And you have to trust that Jesus will be there when you do. However, if you start out and then you are too fearful, others will help you get back into the boat.”
We are in the midst of an incredible sea change throughout the world. Every now and then there’s like a big hiccup in world history, and everything shifts, and that’s what’s happening right now. I began homily by saying that we see our roots in Western European culture. And even though, at times, that culture has clashed with the doctrines of the church, it’s been a family feud, but now everything’s shifting. The paradigm of the world is no longer Western European culture. There are other cultures vying for our interest and our attention. There are shifts in politics, in finance, in every part of the world, so that it’s off its Western European base and into something larger. When thigs are coming to birth it’s very challenging, very threatening, very difficult to cope with. When it’s there, one of the tasks of the church is to go out into that larger picture of what it means to be a human being and begin to speak Jesus into that larger picture, a very frightening thing to do.
But also, in our own lives, we frequently face one or another kind of stormy sea. Where we are beckoned forward, but we’re not sure we want to go there – a new job, a new house, a new state in life. Or there is something threatening us – what the doctor’s going to say when he gets our test back, all that sort of thing. And Jesus is saying you can come forward, with me. But we have our faith in that small box, it’s not adequate to the new situation in life that we find ourselves in, or to the new opportunities that are beckoning, or the new invitations that we want to accept. What today’s Gospel says is that you can step out into that new adventure, that new situation, or that threatening environment because Jesus will be there to catch you if you begin to fall. And, not only that, but there are others who will help you get back into the safety of the boat if need be.
One of my favorite old Gospel hymns has this verse in it that I think sums things up:
“When the storms of life are raging, stand by me. When the storms of life are raging, stand by me. When the world is tossing me, Like a ship out on the sea, Thou who rulest wind and water, stand by me.”