Sunday 13 August 2017

Pentecost X (Proper 14 A) [Matthew 14:22-33] (13-Aug-2017)

This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am (lay reading), and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 9am.

Click here for PDF version for printing.

This sermon is dedicated to two very dear young friends of mine, who know who they are.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, send us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to all of us that we may hear well. Amen.


Our Gospel reading today tells us about one of the most well-known events in the life of Jesus, when he walked on water.  Now, even though this passage is so well-known, it is an event which many people doubt to have actually happened. Even though this event is seen as the most amazing demonstration of Jesus’ power, many people even in the church don’t believe it. Today in our sermon, we’re going to assume that it happened, exactly as the evangelist Matthew tells us. We’re not going to assume that miracles don’t really happen, or that Jesus was just any ordinary human being who obviously couldn’t do things like that! In our sermon today, we’re not going to take this passage in a sceptical way, but take it as it is, in all of its majesty and glory. This is the way we always take the bible, and we leave it to the Holy Spirit to create faith in us to believe in it, despite any protests of our human reason.

So let’s come to the beginning of our passage for today. We read: Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. Our reading today continues straight after Jesus fed the 5000, which we read about last week. In all the Gospels, the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on the water go together. They happened right after each other, and they are connected.

Many years earlier, Moses—like Jesus—had fed the Israelites in a miraculous way, when God had rained down manna for them to eat. Moses also prophesied that, sometime in the future, the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen. When Jesus fed the 5000, we see Jesus behaving very much like Moses, feeding the people with bread from heaven. Jesus feeds the people with five loaves and two fish in a miraculous way.

But then in our reading today, we also see Jesus performing a greater miracle than Moses. Moses had split the waters of the Red Sea, so that the people of Israel could walk through it, and be rescued from Pharaoh. In our reading today, Jesus does not split the sea and walk through it on dry land, but he walks right on top of the sea.

There’s a wonderful hymn, that says: God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform; / He plants His footsteps in the sea, / And rides upon the storm.

Let’s come back to our text. We read: After [Jesus] had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone. It’s a wonderful mystery that Jesus prays. If Jesus is true God, why does he pray, we think? What does Jesus need to pray for? We are infinitely in much more need than him, and yet Jesus prays infinitely more than we pray, or can pray, or will ever pray!

But, remember the first words of the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father. In the Catholic Church, they even call the Lord’s Prayer, “The Our-Father”. Now why does Jesus teach us to pray “Our Father” and not “my Father”? The reason is that whenever we pray, whether we are praying with other Christians or in a quiet place by ourselves, we are always only praying together with Jesus. We never pray by ourselves – we only pray together with Him. He is always praying for us, and when we pray, we’re just joining in with his prayers which are going on all the time. Hebrews 9 says that Jesus always lives to make intercession for us. We get a wonderful picture of this in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus depicts himself like a wonderful friend who picks us up off the side of the road, bleeding and wounded, who then takes us to an inn, and gives the innkeeper some money and says: Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. In the same way, Jesus brings us to our heavenly Father, bruised and beaten by sin and the devil, and he pays for all our sin with his blood which he shed on the cross. But then what does he do? He continually prays to his Father for us, just like the Samaritan says to the innkeeper: Take care of him. And so it happens—Jesus prays for you, and our heavenly Father continually takes care of you.

But now, let’s look at the next part of our reading. We read: When evening came, [Jesus] was there alone, but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.

This is the amazing miracle of our reading. Jesus, by the way, is not some kind of new-age mystic here, who went to Asia before he was baptised to learn how to meditate, and is sitting like some guru on the top of the mountain, but is having an out-of-body experience floating around on the sea. That kind of behaviour is occult, and is forbidden in Scripture. I mention this, because I have met people in our society today who try to do things like this. I can’t warn you against this stuff strongly enough! Anyway, that’s not what the text says. The text does not say that Jesus floated around on the sea, but it says: He came to them. He actually came to them, body and soul, true God and true man. And how did he come to them? It says: walking on the sea. It was his human feet that were planted on the top of the waves.
                                                                                  
Now, here we learn something about Jesus. In the Creed, we confess that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary. We believe that Jesus had God the Father as his true Father, and the Virgin Mary as his true mother. He is both true God and a true man. He is not 50% man, and 50% God, but 100% man and 100% God, 100% of the time. Since his conception, nobody in history ever then meets a Jesus who was only a man, and nobody ever then meets a Jesus who was only God. Jesus never switches off his divinity for a minute, and he never switches off his humanity for a second. After his conception, He is always God and man in one person, at every moment in his life, and even still today. So, who was in the Virgin Mary’s womb? Not just a human embryo—but the God who made heaven and earth. Who shed his blood on the cross? Not just a weak man—but the God “who flung stars into space”, as our well-known song says. Whose clothes lit up the night sky at the Transfiguration? Not simply Jesus as God, but his human flesh and his human face shone with all of that brightness. Who is sitting at the right hand of God? Not simply Jesus as God, but his human flesh, with all his flesh and skin and blood, glorified and transfigured with divine majesty.

Jesus is a bit like a burning coal. His humanity is a bit like a coal, but the divinity is like fire or heat. When a coal is burning, it glows red, so that the fire (or heat) and the black coal are always together, and work together. We also might think of branding cattle. If you use a piece of cold iron, you would just poke the cow. If you use a blow-torch, you would end up with roast beef! But to make a brand on the cow, you use a red-hot piece of iron, so that it pokes and burns at the same time.

In the same way, Jesus is like that poker. He always acts as true God and true man at the same time, just as the poker burns and pokes to brand and stamp the cattle. So when Jesus walks on the water, it is his real, flesh-and-blood, human foot that is walking there. And at the same time, if he were not also true God, he would not be able to use his human foot to walk on the water.

This is such a useful teaching, and has all kinds of applications. For example, St John says that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If Jesus were not a real human being, he would have no blood! If he were not truly God, his blood would not be able to cleanse us. Think also of the Lord’s Supper. If Jesus were not a real human being, he would have no body and no blood to give us to eat and drink. But if Jesus were not true God, it wouldn’t be possible for his body and blood to be given in the Lord’s Supper to Christians all throughout the world at the same time. And, his body and blood would not be given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins.

Now back to our text. It says: When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear.

Jesus had walked out to them in the fourth watch of the night. This means sometime between 3am and 6am. The disciples had had a long night of hard slog, trying to keep strong as they endured this terrible wind, and saw the waves tossing back and forth. They must have been at the end of their strength. Maybe they even started to think they were seeing things. They say: It is a ghost!

The word “ghost” here refers to the way in which we normally use the word: to refer to an apparition of someone who has come back from the dead. We live in a time where many people believe that such things are just a lot of silly nonsense, and many times this is true. But also, as Christianity has declined in our culture, and people have stopped coming to church, you may be surprised just how many people live in fear of things like this. It is not uncommon for pastors to be invited to pray for a house that people think is haunted. It is not uncommon for people to say that their dead relative came to them and spoke to them.

Now, we might think this is all a load of nonsense, and sometimes it is. But there is something true in what people say—there really is another spiritual world. We confess this in the Creed—God is the maker of all things, visible and invisible. He made human beings, and he also created angels, some of whom have fallen into sin, like us, which we call “demons”. There really is a life after this life, and once people have died, they have not ceased to exist or are obliterated.

But there are some people who think that it is quite a natural thing to have paranormal activity in their homes. It’s not a natural thing—it often means that there has been some trouble there, or some rebellion against God. And in these cases, the house should be blessed. In our books of rites, our church has a special ceremony for the blessing of a house for this purpose.

Now, the disciples in our reading respond in the most natural way: They cried out in fear. Now, isn’t it a strange thing that Jesus himself is mistaken for a ghost! On Easter Day, Mary Magdalene doesn’t recognise him either, and mistakes him for a gardener. When we don’t recognise Jesus, or know him, it is easy to mistake him for something that he is not. But also, in our reading, there’s a sense in which Jesus allows his disciples to make this mistake because he wants to sympathise with them. They are already scared, and it is a scary thing to be on a boat in the middle of a storm, and Jesus knows this! But Jesus comes to them on a scary night in a scary way so that he can then comfort them with his own voice.

Jesus says: Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.

This is not a ghost. This is Jesus. Luther writes in his Small Catechism: I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord. And what a comfort this is!

First of all, Jesus says: Take heart. It’s as if he says: Take courage, cheer up. But he doesn’t mean “cheer up”, like someone who wants to make light of our situation. He says, “cheer up” knowing full well what the disciples have been through, and wants to encourage them in all their exhaustion.

He then says: It is I. Actually, in Greek, the words are “I am”, but this doesn’t translate into English very well here. But where have we heard the words “I am” before? These are the words with which God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. God said to Moses: I AM WHO I AM… Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ And so with these words, Jesus comforts them that it is not a ghost, but Him. At the same time, He reveals that he is also true God, the same God who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush.

Jesus said: Do not be afraid. If Jesus were a ghost, they would have every reason to be afraid—but since it is Him, all the fear in the whole wide world melts away at the sound of his voice and at the sight of his face.

Actually, there are some people who call themselves Christians today who deny that Jesus rose from the dead. They think that the disciples couldn’t cope with the fact that Jesus died, and so in order to be able to deal with their grief, they said that he rose again, as if they were in denial. These people believe that the Holy Spirit is basically the ghost of Jesus. But a ghost is a dead spirit. And we do not worship the dead, like the ancient Egyptians, or the Tibetans, or any other ancestor worshippers all throughout the world or throughout history. We worship a real, living Jesus, whose feet walked on the sea, and whose same feet were planted on the ground on Easter Day before he walked out of the tomb. And the Holy Spirit is not the dead spirit of the dead Jesus, but the living Spirit of the living Jesus, the Lord and Giver of life. After rising from the dead, Jesus made a special point of eating fish in the presence of his disciples and said: See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

Let’s look for a little bit at the part of our reading that talks about Peter, who walks out to Jesus on the sea. He says: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Isn’t it strange that Jesus should say: O you of little faith! Peter sure had more faith than any of us to think to walk on the water to Jesus!

This passage is often used to say that if only we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we won’t sink beneath the troubles of our life. It’s only when Peter takes his eyes off Jesus and looks at the waves, that he sinks. But we always sink! Peter sinks because that’s what we sinful humans do: we don’t always have our eyes on Jesus. Peter doesn’t raise himself back up again by looking back at Jesus. It’s Jesus who raises Peter up with his outstretched hand. We are always people of little faith, not great faith; we are the weak ones, and Jesus is the strong one. You might think that your faith is weak—good for you! Jesus is not weak, he is strong, and so trust in him in all your weakness, because he is strong for you. Jesus said to Paul: My grace is sufficient for you; for my power is made perfect in weakness. And Paul says: Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

And in the last part of our reading, we read: When they got in the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” They worship him, not because they are idol-worshippers, who are worshipping just another man, or who are worshipping a ghost or evil spirit, but they are worshipping him because he is true man and true God in one person. He is not just Mary’s Son, but he is God the Father’s Son. This is what the wise men from the east did when they saw the baby Jesus: they presented their gifts and worshipped him. 

And so today, we do the same thing—we come into the presence of the risen Lord Jesus, who casts away all of our fear, and we worship him, true God and true man in one person, together with his Father and the Holy Spirit, as true worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth. Amen.


Dear Lord Jesus, speak your word to us today so that we may take heart, and recognise you for who you are, and not be afraid. Amen.

No comments:

Post a Comment