This is my sermon for August 9, 2020 the 10th Sunday after the Pentecost in Year A. The lectionary is found here.
Several years ago, at the Barbara C. Harris Camp, I met an adorable nine-year-old boy named Manny. Manny is one of those old souls in a child’s body. He’s also someone who looks life straight in the eye and then jumps right in. I got to know Manny pretty well by the middle of the week. I was the chaplain for his age group so sat in on a Bible study and spent time with his group on a couple of activities. He was happy to be at camp, with a confidence most of his peers didn’t show most of the time. I imagine Manny would be the one to challenge Jesus as Peter does in today’s Gospel “Ok, big guy. You say I can do this, huh? How about you tell me how to start and then I’m game. I’ll give it a try.”
That Wednesday evening, I got to know Manny even better. Another chaplain and I were asked to take him to the local ER because he’d fallen while playing a game and injured his elbow. We were a bit taken aback when we first saw him in the health lodge because it was obvious he was in pain, just as it was obvious his elbow was pretty badly injured. But Manny didn’t talk about the pain, although he talked pretty much the whole way to the hospital. Manny talked about his family and this, his second week at camp. He told us about school and that he loves to read. He told us he was having a hard time staying awake because he usually goes to bed at 7:00 and it was already almost 8:00. He told us in delightful detail what had happened, how he hurt his arm. And he asked lots of questions, lots and lots of questions.
It is in those questions that I think about Manny in connection with today’s Gospel. In his questions Manny voiced the fears he had about what was going on. He worried that his parents would be angry with him for getting hurt. He asked if he would have to get a new arm. He was afraid that he would have to be awake and feel whatever it was the doctor would do to fix his arm. He was terrified he would have to leave camp, after successfully begging his parents to allow him to come again for a second week. He worried about what fun he was missing out on because he was on the way to the hospital. Would his friends think about him? Would they worry so much they didn’t have fun? Question after question after question. Fear after fear after fear. All of them distracting him from what was so clear to my friend and me in the car and then to the staff at the hospital: Manny had to have been in tremendous pain yet he barely seemed to notice.
His fears were bigger in some ways than the physical reality of what was happening . When asked, he had a hard time telling the nurses and doctors about his pain and how he was feeling physically. Although visibly exhausted, he couldn’t lie down until his questions were answered fully and completely. Needing to ask the questions over and over as if to make sure the answers did not change. Once satisfied he promptly fell into a deep and peaceful sleep. His fears were allayed, and he could do what he needed to do, what his body needed him to do.
In this passage from Matthew’s Gospel, Peter and the disciples are clearly afraid. It is night after an intense day of working with Jesus. No doubt they are aware of how some consider their ministry with Jesus foolhardy. They might even be aware of what Jesus has recently learned: the John the Baptist has been killed, beheaded, by some who are threatened by Jesus’ radical thinking and willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of his followers and maintain the status quo. They might even wonder – somewhere deep within, or maybe more visibly – whether what they have witnessed with Jesus: the feeding of the 5000, turning water into wine, some healings – is real or if they been fooled.
Imagine what it would have been like to be there in a small wooden boat, completely subject to the power of the wind and the rain and the waves, in the kind of complete darkness we don’t know so well these days. The stars – essentially the only source of light in a night sky -obliterated by the storm clouds. No way to see the villages on the shore on either side of the lake. Left alone by the teacher you have been following as you have been caught up in the wonder and the promise of his message. In that small boat, on the turbulent water under a pitch-dark stormy sky, your fears keep you from recognizing Jesus as he walks toward you. You think he is a ghost and are not even sure what to believe when he tells you it is okay, he is real.
As you sit in that boat are you grateful to Peter for having the gumption to challenge Jesus, to make Jesus prove he is who he says he is? Or are you saying a silent, or perhaps not-so-silent, prayer that Peter just sit down and be quiet? Are you envious that Peter has the courage to ask the question that is on your mind when he gets to walk on water? What do you think and feel when his doubts take over and he starts to sink? Can you feel his gratitude when Jesus reaches out a hand to save him or do you say to yourself, “I would have believed better, longer, stronger, and would have been able to walk all the way to Jesus”?
As you listen to this Gospel does this message of fear and faith and trust resonate with you? Can you think of one example from your own life of when your fears got in the way of something just as real? Perhaps your fear of what the doctor might say keeps you from making an appointment to check out some discomfort or pain. Maybe you don’t risk talking to your spouse or your partner or your friend about something in your relationship that is upsetting you because you worry it will spiral out of control. Maybe you commit less than 100% to your church or your prayer life because a full commitment would mean making some changes in how you live your life and that is too much to contemplate.
Do you hesitate to talk openly and honestly to God, with God, because there is a part of you that knows you may not hear what you want to hear? Or do you take the leap of faith, kind of like Peter, and put your whole self – including the parts that have trouble recognizing Jesus right there in the middle of your less than perfect self – into asking the questions and then trusting that God will get you when you fall?
My young friend Manny, scared though he was, did not stop asking the questions, voicing his fears, until he was satisfied with the answers. And when the doctors woke him up to tell him it was time to fix his dislocated elbow and asked him how he felt, Manny didn’t miss a beat when he told them his arm hurt “really, really, REALLY bad” and he wanted them to fix it. And when it was fixed and we were on our way back to the camp, he talked and talked some more about how good it felt to “get fixed up” and how he knew he was going to have to wait until later in the morning to find out if he got to stay at camp or if he’d have to go home early. He said, “I know my friends at camp prayed for me [we’d told him they included him in their bedtime prayers] and that was nice. And you two are priests, right?” Then the simplest, most profound, and faithful statement: “Right before I fell asleep I said, ‘God, I know you got this’ and I figured I’d be all right.” Amen.
Copyright 2020 The Rev. Paula J. Toland
