Heads Above Water

Matthew 14:22-33

            When someone says, “ I do not have enough faith,” you might ask, “if you had more faith, what would you do with it?” 

            Today’s gospel ranks in the top five stories (but who is counting?) that seem to be about believing in the impossible.  The phrase “walking on water” has come to mean being able to do something superhuman, or to be morally or otherwise superior to ordinary people.  A former parishioner of mine, who, it is fair to say, held me to a standard I could not meet when I was her priest, came to see me some years after she and I had both left that parish.  She was talking about her then current rector and all of his faults.  “In retrospect,” she said to me, “you walked on water.”  Well, of course, I did nothing of the kind.  Not even metaphorically.  But hers was high praise.  And on my less than good days I might even think that she was correct.

            But the truth of the matter is that most non-literalistic rationalists who read or hear this story about Jesus walking on water immediately conclude that it couldn’t possibly have been so, since everyone knows that human beings don’t walk on water because they can’t.  Literalists conclude that the story proves that Jesus was in fact God, who alone can walk on water should he take a notion to do so.  And the moralists are sure that the story is all about Peter, who couldn’t do what any human being presumably actually could do if only that person had enough faith.  So we are left with basically three alternatives:  don’t believe the story; or believe that the story proves the divinity of Jesus; or believe that the story implies that if we are not walking on water it is because we are guilty (note the word) of having too little faith. 

            As is usually the case, these rather simplistic views obscure what the story is all about.  It is clear that for Matthew, the story is one about discipleship and the disciple’s dependence upon Jesus for strength and power.  It is about the community of faith, pictured as being in a boat on a wind-tossed sea, trying to make headway on their own since Jesus is absent.  It is about how that community is surprised—shocked—by the very appearance of the one who can and does save them.  It is about the hesitancy of the disciples to believe in the reality of the Risen Christ, always testing him, saying, “If it is you, then do so and so.”  It is about Jesus finally getting in the boat with his community who at last acknowledge who he is and worship him accordingly.  Matthew himself writes the part of the story about Peter, who for Matthew, is the icon of the disciple, not always (as this story indicates) a good model of discipleship, but a reliably accurate example nonetheless.  And the problem with Peter is that he seems to be afflicted with what the Church generally considers to be the chief of deficiencies:  doubt.

            So let’s face the question:  if Peter’s doubt was his problem, and thus the problem for the Church, and thus the problem for you and me, what can he, we, or Jesus do about it?  What might we do if we had more faith?

            It might behoove us to consider what faith is.  And that isn’t as simple as it sounds.  Faith, in scripture, can mean a host of things including belief in a religious system, confidence in a person, being attentive to and responsive to God, hoping confidently in a particular outcome for a set of circumstances, and giving one’s heart to another, something that causes faithfulness and reliability, a solemn promise or oath, a proof or pledge, a special gift or virtue, and so on.  But in the Bible faith overwhelmingly means actively taking risks in trusting or confiding in another.  That is what characterizes faith in God, for example, the prime example of which is Abraham, who embarked on a journey the end of which he had no way of knowing. Jesus consistently teaches that faith is taking a risk:  asking for what one might not get, trusting in what one cannot prove, casting one’s lot with the Kingdom of God when every other kingdom is clamoring for one’s loyalty with nearly irresistible promises. 

           

            Ultimately, then, faith has to do with relationships.  It is not so much a matter of giving mental assent to a series of propositions by saying, “I believe” in this, that, or the other.  It is about being in a relationship with God or Jesus or somebody else in whom you place your trust, to whom you give your heart and life.  And that really is what the story about Jesus walking on the water, and Peter’s near drowning, are about.  They form a narrative portrait of how the relationship of Jesus and his community work.  We are all in a small craft on a storm-tossed sea, with no visible God anywhere around.  Suddenly there is a Presence, we don’t know who or what.  No matter how many times that Presence reassures us, saying “Take heart!  It is I.  Don't be afraid,” we cannot get it through our skulls that he really does show up in the darkness.  So we test him, “If it is you…”  And he responds, “Come.”  Then comes the moment of faith.  Getting out of the boat, which seems our only means of survival, requires an immense amount of courage.  Winds rage.  Waters swamp.  Our hearts sink.  That is the moment of judgment—not the judgment that wags its finger saying, “You don’t have enough faith,” but the judgment that reveals the Truth:  we cannot make it without him.  It is not so much that we take hold of him as he takes hold of us.  And the journey of faith takes us to where we never imagined we would go, which is back into the boat—the community—that continues to discover the power and peace of Jesus.  Living in that reality is what we call living the resurrection.  It is what we call taking up the cross and following Jesus.  It is what we know as the moment of transcendence. It is our healing.

            Does it always work this way?  Maybe so.  Maybe not. (Can you think of a better way?)  The whole thing is a matter of getting out of the boat with no assurances, only with the trust that God will show up when we least expect, and that God will sustain us  and empower us to do far more than we could imagine.  True?  Who knows?  That is why it is called “walking on water.”

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2014

Left Out?

John 20:19-31

            Thirty or so years ago, I still pretty much cared what people thought about me in that post-adolescent sort of way.  I secretly pondered in my heart the awful question if I really had many friends.  I could go for months without thinking about these matters until I was in a group of friends.  At the time I belonged to a rather large diocese with hundreds of clergy.  When we would be together, vested, waiting for a diocesan convention to begin or an ordination or some other grand affair, I would find myself talking with a gaggle of clergy.  The signal would be given for us to get in line.  Suddenly, everyone in the group would have a partner to walk with but me.  I got a little self-conscious about that.  I started surreptitiously staying quite near to someone—anyone—thinking that I would have a natural partner to walk with when time came.  Never once did it help.  Later I would simply come through the front door and ask, “Would you walk with me in procession?”  a question that raised eyebrows and furrowed foreheads. 

            At some point the issue vanished from my awareness, but not quite.  It came to embody for me what I suspect all the energy around the symbol of “heaven” is about.  It was my deep craving to be included, not to be left out.  It was no big thing, indeed nothing anyone else would have paid any attention to.  I just needed to be included.  Simply included.

            So I have great sympathy for Thomas the disciple who happened not to be with the others when Jesus made his first appearance to the Eleven.  I suspect that he was out of the room tending to personal needs as people are wont to do, or on an errand for this bunch locked behind closed doors, such as fetching some pita bread or olives for the evening meal.  Whatever the case, Thomas, I fancy, felt a little on the left-out side when he returned.  Most folks are preoccupied with his hesitation to believe what the others report, which is, of course, John’s point in telling the story.  When we want to be included but find that we are not or were not, the most natural reaction is to replay our favorite response to stress or threat.  “You guys are putting me on, right?  He never came.  You’re just trying to fool me.”  Or, “C’mon.  I know Jesus better than that.  He and I were tight.  He’d never show up just when I was out.”  Or, “Well, he may have shown up, but what’s it to me?  I had other things to do.  Next subject.”  Thomas had his own defenses, which are on full display in Chapter 19 of John’s gospel.  And I have mine and you have yours.

            The interesting thing about this story is that it reverberates far beyond the Easter evening scene itself, far even beyond the issue of Jesus’ appearance and the consequent challenge of believing in him without having seen him.  It touches on something that we only rarely seem to look at, and that is how human beings are always looking for a community to be a part of.  On no level is that search more apparent than when we feel suddenly like outsiders looking in on those who already belong to what we feel detached from.  They know the scoop, the news, the story.  We don’t.  And that poses a crisis for us.

            I saw just this week a photograph of young Filipino boys carrying weapons in the service of the Taliban.  I wondered what the appeal of the Taliban was to them.  I suspect that few of them could discuss many of the political or religious notions of the Taliban beyond parroting what they might have been told or taught.  But I can promise one thing:  a deep need to belong to something important is answered for them by that group.  One can say the same thing about many movements, groups, and configurations in human societies the world over.  We need to belong.  We are communal animals. 

            Now the interesting thing is that there are far more options for belonging to a group with an old story than there are options for inventing or discovering new stories.  Did you never wonder how it is that the same animosities, the same rivalries, the same partisan politics, the same religious divisions maintain their power and their hold on people decade after decade, century after century, age after age?  Look at how many folks identify with a story, let’s say Protestant Christianity, for example, or Roman Catholicism, for that matter, simply because that is the story of their tribe.  Many of these folk could tell you nothing much about the religious battles of the sixteenth century, but they are fiercely attached to a tradition that keeps old arguments alive.  Not long ago I heard from a neighborhood boy I grew up with in Conway, South Carolina.  His family, like mine, were just average middle-middle class people, with no pretension whatsoever to money or prestige.  But he has become a dedicated Confederate participant in Civil War battle re-enactments, and appears on Facebook with a bearded face in a Confederate cap, the Stars and Bars waving behind him.  I wonder how he imagines that the powers that started the Civil War ever had anything much to offer him.  But I’ll bet he could tell you plenty of reasons why that particular story has become the one that he most passionately identifies with.  And so it goes. 

            By the end of the first century when, in all probability, the Gospel of John appeared, this crisis had penetrated the Christian community.  On the one hand, there were folks who had come to be Christian because their parents were or because it was the thing to do.  Christian instruction being what it was in those days, it is unlikely that people would have been ignorant about the general story of Jesus, his death and resurrection; but knowing the story line, even identifying with it, was a good deal different from being deeply invested in it.  Bear in mind that the external pressure upon the young Church was enormous.  Persecutions came in waves.  And persecution always presents the inevitable result that a great many people would rather renounce their faith than die for it.  But there were other issues as well.  The first and perhaps even the second generation of witnesses had died out.  There were lots more Thomases around, people who had not been there when it all happened.  Other communities with stories more credible, more dazzling perhaps, less risky maybe, were available to those Thomases.  With more power, pull, and punch, those stories, even some that were corruptions of the Jesus story, proved fierce competitors with the apostolic tradition.

            Now you can begin to see how it is that the Church was caught in a double bind.  Not only was its story under attack from without and in danger of irrelevancy within, it had not only to convince the Thomases that they could in fact believe without having actually seen, but that the story of the Christianity was indeed true, and that those Thomases could not only believe it but give their lives to it and for it.  That is what we see going on in Chapter 19 of John.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”   And believing, such a central issue for this gospel, is not giving intellectual assent alone, but giving one’s heart, falling in love with, giving one’s allegiance to the crucified and risen Lord.

            Yet it is not simply believing that is a problem for the Thomases.  It is belonging as well.  So this story about the resurrected Jesus is a story about the founding and charging of the beloved community.  Jesus appears to the disciples and breathes on them.  This is John’s account of what, following Luke-Acts, we call “Pentecost.”  Jesus gives the spirit to his community, empowering them with the life that he lives as the risen Christ.  They, in effect, share his own priestly vocation, forgiving sins (or not).  But what does all this do for Thomas and his misfortune of missing the first appearance?  The story shows that Thomas stands in contrast to “the Beloved Disciple,” the model disciple in John’s account, who, when looking into the empty tomb earlier that morning, had “seen and believed.”  Thomas’ insistence sets him apart not only from the Beloved Disciple but sets him apart from the community as well.

           

            Since our own age has more than its share of problems with believing without physical evidence, we would very much like for Thomas to be excused.  I would.  Were I writing the story, I would definitely cut Thomas some slack.  John will have none of that.  Jesus very clearly criticizes Thomas:  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  And yet, even before he says that, he invites Thomas to examine his wounds.  Thomas apparently does not need to go quite that far, as he exclaims (first among the disciples to do so!) “My Lord and my God!”  There is no doubt that there is a place for Thomas in this community.  And there is not the slightest suggestion that there needs to be a remedial breathing of the Holy Spirit for Thomas because he missed the first go-round.  He belongs fully. 

            It is not too much of a stretch to see that, of all stories in the gospel, this one has your name on it.  John says as much.  “These things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  You get to decide, as always, exactly what you will do with that.  Two things are nearly always at stake for us humans.  One is that we are so constructed to be creators and tellers of stories that we will always be seeking one that gives our lives meaning.  It may be political or philosophical or just a simple collection of family folk tales.  It may even be a story that justifies our addictive or self-destructive behavior or rationalizes our guilt or self-absorption.  But the story of the Risen Lord breathing his New Life into a community that dares to live as he lived, serve as he served, a liberating, healing, forgiving life stands as a beacon to all who would find their way by losing their lives and who save their lives by giving them away.  You have that option.  The other thing that you need on some level is what I was jittery about as I awaited the great processions wondering who would walk beside me.  And that is a way of belonging to a community in which you are unquestionably valued.  You are welcome in this community of Christ not in spite of who you are but precisely because of who you are.  There are no outcasts, not even those who miss the point or the Spirit or the resurrection appearance when it happens.  Just stay connected.  Be a part of the fellowship.  Live in community.  For in this same gospel, the Jesus who was raised from the dead promises to you and to all his disciples that you need have no fear of abandonment, for “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the ages.”

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2013

Can't Bear It Now?

            One very nice thing about Pentecost is that Hallmark has not yet found out about it.  Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day cards crowd out any possibility that one could find a nice card with doves or flames, touting, "Happy Pentecost!"  One not-so-good thing about Pentecost is that Hallmark has not yet found out about it.  Hallmark and a lot of other people don’t have a clue as to what Pentecost is or means.  Christians, and not nearly all of them, are in churches today saying things like, “The Spirit of God fills the whole earth,” and no one outside hears a thing.  Nothing seems changed from yesterday afternoon. 

            But the point of Pentecost is not how popular it is, but how true it is.  Truth does not have to do with what really happened once upon a time.  Truth has to do with what holds for all time, and thus eternity.  That is something that is at once so simple and so hard for people to grasp, perhaps because we have mostly been brought up to believe that what is true is whatever we can see, measure, demonstrate, validate, prove, corroborate, and so on.  Experience itself teaches us otherwise.  Ask most people in Washington today, for example, what is the most important thing in the world and a good many, if not a majority, will likely answer “love.”  But take the conversation further and ask them what love is and you will quickly run aground, because, although we know love when we feel it or experience it, it is almost impossible to describe except by analogy.  This most important thing in our lives is something that we can barely describe, let alone pin down, and even more remotely measure in any sense.  But we know it when we see it.  We know it when we feel it.  We know it when we receive it.  And yet, love is like quicksilver:  it can deceive, so that what we are most certain is an experience of love might turn out to be a hoax.  Still, such hoaxes and disappointments rarely leave us believing that there is no such thing as love. 

            Pentecost is like that.  It is an affair with the Presence of God.  It does not lend itself to neat quantifications or solid explanations.  Pentecost is neither a fact nor an idea, neither a symbol nor a proposition.  Pentecost happens whenever the reality of God erupts in human experience causing a profound change in human behavior. Pentecost happens when the Presence of God invades ordinary rational boundaries upending set priorities.  Pentecost happens when the Presence of God strikes a blow to human suppositions, as when the weak are empowered, when the frightened are strengthened, when the downtrodden are treated with respect, or when the outcast are invited in. 

            Pentecost, in short, is a celebration of God among us.  That is the whole thing in a nutshell.  The Spirit of God, as distinct from the Creator who is behind all things and as distinct from Jesus, is the God we know in our presence, in our bodies, in our stories, in the multitude of little incidents that comprise our lives.  God present with us.  

            But there is more.  Jesus says to his disciples that it is a good thing that he is going away, because otherwise the Advocate—the Spirit—would not come.  But, since he is going, Jesus will send the Advocate.  Then he says something very interesting.  “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”  What things?  We may well wonder.  And yet it is apparent to us, two millennia later, that things which were imponderable in the first century have clearly been the work of the Holy Spirit in the intervening time.  It is the nature of God with us to lead us into all Truth.  The band of disciples that Jesus was talking with in John’s gospel could never have imagined women in places of leadership as they now assume in the Church.  They could not have borne a discussion about table fellowship of Jews and Gentiles, let alone a community inclusive enough to welcome and respect homosexual persons.  They could not have borne to hear many things that even today many people cannot bear to hear and to ponder.  But the Truth is that the Holy Spirit leads us into all Truth.  There will always be some who imagine that the full Truth of everything was apparent right in the beginning, and that any additions or accretions since have been error, not Truth.  But the Spirit will never leave it at that, because the Spirit is God present at work in the world about us, nearer than the air we breathe, exposing the incompleteness of the last generation’s grasp of Truth, leading us to embrace new things, to sing new songs, to speak in new languages that only a short while ago we could not have borne the idea of doing. 

            Wonder of wonders, when we begin to open our minds and our imaginations to the possibilities of God, we begin to see how limited our former notions have been.  It is not unlike looking back at something we painted as a child, or something we wrote as a teenager, or something we wore twenty years ago.  We don’t necessarily reject what we did or wore or were, but we are not infrequently amused, a little embarrassed perhaps that what seemed so fitting (and was!) at one stage, seems to be so outgrown and outworn now.  But that tends only to happen if we are growing, and not busy trying to justify to the rest of the world or to ourselves what we think or believe we know.  For the Holy Spirit to lead us into all Truth, we have to be on some level willing to follow, and almost always that means a willingness on our part to embark on journeys into unfamiliar, sometimes terrifying, territory.  But it is in such places that we find ourselves able to embrace what but a few years ago we could not have borne.

            Over the door of the Bishop Payne Library of Virginia Theological Seminary are the words of Dr. William Sparrow, one of the professors in the 19^th century.  “Seek the Truth, come whence it may, cost what it will.” That is the work of the Holy Spirit.  And that is the work cut out for you and me.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2012