HELLO!

My vacation continues, and in my absence on Sunday August 9^th my colleague Rev. Bethe Benjamin Cameron will lead the worship service and preach on the Gospel text, Matthew 14:22-33. I asked Bethe to share a summary of her message. Here are her words: “When your life is rough and your faith falters, who do you trust, where do you turn, whom do you turn to? Is it a friend, a family member, your minister, Jesus? Is it “all of the above”? Jesus will always offer comfort but, also, may offer challenge as he did with Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Sometimes we don’t know our own strength until these rough times are upon us. We end up finding solutions and doing things we never thought possible when we trust we are not alone. How to we get out of our own rocking boats and trust Jesus will hold us up? Do we recognize Jesus in our midst? Come wade on the waters of faith with Jesus!”

The story of Jesus walking on water and Peter’s near drowning is about so much more than having the courage to step out of our boats and walk by faith. It is not a simple moral tale of do this not this. It is not a story about having enough courage, it isn’t even a story about having enough faith. As one commentator noted, “To take the focus off Jesus so as to put it onto our own needed courage seems (forgive me) to miss the boat.” As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “The miracle worth savoring in this story is not Jesus could walk on water (after all, if Jesus is God, then his ability to walk on water is no more surprising than your or my ability to walk up a flight of steps). The miracle is not how Peter managed that same trick, albeit briefly. No, the miracle is that when it was all said and done–while a soggy and chagrined Peter sputtered seawater out of his lungs and as the boat continued to bob around in that dark night–somehow way out there in the middle of nowhere, the disciples realized God’s own was sitting right there with them”.

Maybe what this scripture is telling us is…faithfully pulling on your oar against the winds that howl and believing Jesus is near and so pressing on. You press on in faith not because you’ve tested Jesus and found he lived up to all the hype and not because Jesus has enabled you to do something grand and eye-catching. No, you press on because you believe you are not alone, so you keep pulling on that oar. And when you do find yourself in the water, be sure to look around and see who else is in the water with you. Remember that we are not alone, we work together as a community of faith. We pull steadily on the oars we wrestle with the wind and in doing so we keep the faith. Pulling on the oars with you.

Peace, Kevin