At summer camp as a child, our cabin would have a nightly tradition from various camp counselors that once everyone was in their bunk beds and the lights were turned out, then it was time for telling ghost stories. Each camper would, in turn, tell their story to see what reaction from the other campers in the dark cabin before falling asleep. The goal of many was to cause a startle or laugh. My favorite story to tell was titled “Bloody Fingers”. If you haven’t heard “Bloody Fingers” — the punch line was “put some band-aids on”.
When the disciples believe Jesus walking on the water is a ghost, it makes sense to me. How else could they explain a man walking toward them on a lake, with the winds against them (Matthew 14:24)? They had spent all night in a struggle with those storms. Perhaps they’d concluded that they and everyone around them were doomed. Seeing Jesus coming toward them did not encourage them. The struggle had discouraged them.
When we really struggle, we believe we are all alone — without support. — God-forsaken. Our human efforts exhaust us; fear overtakes us. These feelings seem inevitable when we are struggling with the storms of running through the news and world. Many civil rights leaders, including John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr., have cited injustices with the famous line, “We are all in the same boat now.”
In the gospel, the storm rages, but faith will steadies us. Here, Peter experiences the saving hand of God in Jesus personally. God’s invitation is to risk going beyond what we know about safety and to trust Jesus’ outstretched hand.
It’s hard to just sit there. It can be hard to have faith in those difficult times. As much as we may crave a little peace, even a little silence. But we don’t know what’s all ahead – on the other side. In our overextended, overbusy, overscheduled lives, it can be fearful to be alone with what is in our own heads. Scrolling on our phone, going for a cigarette, pacing and distracting, it can be a challenge to sit with our own thoughts. We text and drive and find our addictive distractions.
Where is God, then? How do we hear or discern the Spirit? How do preachers get your attention when we are all over- stimulated? How does God get your attention? Amidst our mania and fears, we cycle in our own thoughts; we don’t and can’t listen, calm down, see, or hear.
In biblical times, but even today, the power of nature seems godlike. A t revelation of God—often occurs on a mountain or from the sky. Yet, for Elijah, God was not in the wind. Not in the earthquake. Not in the fire. But in the sound of sheer silence.
How often do we even experience the sound of sheer silence? I often put on the TV or music in the background. But even when you go out in nature under the starry sky, another siren startles us.
Jesus is goes off alone to pray in the Gospel account and to be recharged for his calling. There is the hugely important part of the faith in retreat, quiet and silence. I have met a lot of preachers — including myself — who like to talk. Doctrines, dogmas, propositions. Lots of words explaining God, defending truth, and sometimes condemning.
This Word proclaims that you are loved, accepted, forgiven. This word is on your lips and in your heart, as Paul writes. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. Jesus speaks calm amid the storm on the sea. When the disciples are afraid and think they see a ghost, he says: Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid. We build relationships and trust and understand ourselves by communicating with words.
When Peter walks toward Jesus on the water, he begins to sink. There is the wind on the sea. And a sinking feeling of fear. Even when unnamed or unrealized, we have deep fears.
What do we fear? What causes our hearts to sink? What makes us so afraid to be alone with our own thoughts and feelings?
We need the word. We need the words. We need the scriptures. We need music and hymns. Yet we also need silence. To clear our minds and hearts. And do the tough work of just sitting there for a moment. A lot of church and worship can be the gift of … just sitting there. Quakers and Buddhists sit for an hour or two in worship listening for God to speak.
Practice listening. Sit there. Listening for something deep within us. Perhaps sheer silence. Perhaps the still, small voice. Perhaps some deep sadness and fear – even tears are okay. Perhaps questions. Perhaps clarity. Or perhaps, as the psalmist writes, “I will listen to what the Lord God is saying, for you speak peace to your faithful people.”
At the end of the 13th century, Umiltra of Faenza was dubbed Saint Humility; she wrote: “I am like a fish that rests in the sea; when the waves sweep over it, and the great tempests assail it, the fish enjoys swimming, because it cannot be captured, and it leaps more nimbly. Thus do I in this world that is a troubled sea: the great currents arise, and I sail below them, and I take shelter in your bosom, and let them pass by. Feeling myself with you, I have no fear of the currents.”
At the death of the former SE PA bishop of this church, presiding bishop Yehiel Curry gave this testimony this week: “Bishop Davenport often reminded us, especially in difficult moments, that we are called to pause, pray and listen for the Holy Spirit to move within us so that we may respond and not react. Those words provided a guide to how she lived and led.”
Through all the physical and metaphorical storms of life, when battered by the waves, Jesus reassures peace, proclaims healing, brings reconciliation and redemption, and ultimately enacts resurrection.
In a moment we will sing, “Jesus, Savior, pilot me” (ELW 755). Jesus offers saving help in the storms at our seas. The second stanza describes Jesus as a mother. The third stanza discusses the storm of death. The hymn was written by a Presbyterian pastor, Edward Hopper, in 1871, who served his entire life as the pastor of sailors and seamen on Long Island, NY. The words of Jesus that have been sung in thousands of hymn books 150 years later: “Fear not, I will pilot thee.”
