Sermons

Psalm 46; Matthew 14:22-33 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn
Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – September 7, 2014

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might find comfort in your presence, no matter how life around us changes. We pray it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Human beings. We’re a mess. What’s more – the Bible makes clear that we always have been. I’m not even sure if that’s a comforting or disturbing realization. The ancient Psalmist wrote of tumult, of the earth shaking and melting, of kingdoms
tottering. Peter almost drowned. And here we are, thousands of years later, with just a slightly better grasp of how to handle all the frightening things in life.

We live in scary times. Sectarian violence breaking out all over the world, a jobless ‘recovery,’ racial profiling threatening our children, complicated changes in our schools, militarized police forces, terrorism, Ebola – it’s no wonder escapist television is so popular. It’s hard to even know what to pray for, because we’ve started learning an important lesson: if we want things to get better, it means things will have to change.

You’ve been warned before to be careful what you wish for, right? So often the thing we think we most desire comes with baggage we never imagined. The thing we do to solve a problem today plants the seeds of four more problems that spring up
tomorrow. This is true globally, personally, and even here at church. People are always hoping to get more folks in the doors at church, but we rarely take the time to realize that those new people are going to bring new ideas with them, new ways of understanding God and approaching worship, new foods and new games and new priorities. We may say we want change, but mostly, we want the kind that just feels better without feeling different. And somehow, we’re surprised when that’s not how it works out.

There are moments when the call of the future empowers us, when we’re filled with hope and courage and imagination, and we feel up to the task of being the church in the 21st century. And we set out boldly to do just that. But so often, like Peter, once we’ve made a crazy bold decision to do something like walk on water, we get distracted. We notice the strong wind. And we start sinking. Rather than keeping our eyes on Jesus, we look around at all the things that are insisting the gospel way is too hard, or too idealistic, or too naïve, and we start worrying that maybe they’re right. And once we get anxious, we start behaving badly.

You know this is a thing in life, so let’s just all admit it happens in churches too. When we’re anxious, we’ll listen to just about any old person who is trying to sound like they know what’s going on, no matter how ridiculous what they are saying actually is. We fuss, and we obsess, and we exaggerate, and yes, we jump to conclusions. We forget our good communications habits that used to help us remember to ask questions if we weren’t sure what was going on, and to confirm things with the people directly involved if what we heard seemed a little off. Instead, we repeat whatever so and-so said, and add our own commentary. And in doing so, we multiple the anxiety within the congregation, far beyond a healthy sense of urgency.

These are stressful times for churches. Our culture has gone through so much change in the last 50 years. Churches do not sit in the same place in our society that they used to. We cannot assume that the future will look anything like the past.
Finances are tight, volunteers are strapped, and yet, the needs of the world just keep growing. The wind is blowing really hard and really loud, and it’s getting pretty hard to ignore.

What happened to Peter when he noticed the wind? He started sinking. And then what happened? Jesus grabbed hold of him and pulled him up, and they got in the boat. Here’s an interesting question for you: Was Peter ever actually in danger?
Certainly, we can understand that he was frightened. But was he in danger? Presumably, this depends on how we define danger. Was he in danger of getting wet? Most definitely. But he was already in a boat on a lake, so presumably that wasn’t the thing he was afraid of. Was he in danger of drowning? Well, this is the same guy who jumped out of the boat and swam to shore in another story, plus Jesus was right there, apparently available to pull him up, so drowning seems unlikely. Was he in danger of  failing at the seemingly impossible thing he’d dared to do, in front of all his friends? Yes. What is it that we’re afraid of?

There is an interesting juxtaposition in Psalm 46 that illustrates how different our ideas of danger might be from God’s. “Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth,” it says. And then it continues, saying, “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shield with fire.” I gotta say, that’s my kind of desolation! And yet, we know how anxious we get when God breaks down our defenses. Vulnerability is not something we enjoy, even when it’s good for us. The first thing we have to realize when we are trying to learn to trust God is that God’s priorities for us do not always match up exactly with ours. God is not particularly interested in whether we get to keep all the things we’re already familiar with. God is not particularly interested in “how we’ve always done things.” (In fact, I’m guessing that sentence sounds pretty funny to the Divine Eternal Being.) When we become overcome by worry about our church, about whether people will come to a certain event, or whether we’ll figure out how to fund our budget, or whether we’re using the right combination of music styles in worship, it’s because the wind has gotten really loud and we’ve taken our eyes off Jesus. It’s not that we shouldn’t think about these things, for God wants us to be active participants in the continual growth and transformation of the Body of Christ. But thinking about them, taking daring risks for them, is not the same as letting worry about them overcome us. One causes us to walk on water; the other causes us to sink. And what is the difference? The difference is whether our eyes are on Jesus or not.

How does the Psalmist put it? “Be still, and know that I am God.” Not you, not your pastor, not your regional minister, or the general office. God alone is God, so you can be still. Truly. It’s harder than it sounds. But you knew that already.

What does it look like in a church setting? It means that we spend as much time in prayer as we do in strategy meetings. It means that our worship is more about reminding ourselves of the majesty and scale of God our Creator than it is about
making us feel like we ourselves can accomplish amazing things. It means when we encounter someone who is caught in a spiral of anxiety and spreading half-baked rumors about what’s happening and who’s doing what and why, we can calmly cut
through the noisy wind and remind one another that we’re in God’s hands, that we’re all in this together, and that honesty, hope and love are going to work better than suspicion and chatter.

When we keep our eyes firmly focused on Jesus, we can dare marvelous things together. I am a firm believer that churches don’t really start trusting God until they reach a point of near-panic when they realize they can’t actually make this work on
their own. Are we there yet? Is that what this moment is? There have been lots of changes around here lately, and some of them are increasing our anxiety. Where we will go from here depends on where we cast our gaze. Will we look to Jesus? Or will we frantically look all around at the wind and the waves and the earth shaking loudly? “By the power at work within us,” scripture says, God “is able to accomplish far more than all we can ever ask or imagine.” What can we dare together, if we keep our eyes on Jesus, if we can remain still and remember that God is God? Who could we be five years from now? It is a bit terrifying not to know, not to be sure that we’ll be who we are right now. But we will and we won’t. We will be the Body of Christ, and we will have been shaped by what is happening right now and what has happened in this place for the last 66 years. But we will also be something new, something different than we are today, because a church is a living thing, a growing, changing thing. And terrifying as that is, it is also a cause for rejoicing.

If we are tempted to be more terrified than joyful, then our best bet is to be still for a moment and remind ourselves to place our eyes back on Jesus. Remember that God is God, and God’s church is in God’s hands. We will likely get wet. We will
likely fail spectacularly at more than a few things. But we will not drown. Alleluia and Amen!