7 August 2011

“Walk on water … with beautiful feet”
Romans 10:5-15 / Matthew 14:22-33
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time / Season of Pentecost
7 August 2011


There’s an old joke / story told among pastors – about ourselves – based loosely on this most familiar of Gospel readings that we have before us today – and it goes like this ….

The highly effective pastor – the one who does everything right, who can do no wrong – that is the pastor who walks on water.
The fairly effective pastor – for whom things “go right” most of the time – that is the pastor who can tread water.
The slightly above average pastor – this covers most of us – that is the pastor who can recognize large bodies of water.
The average pastor – can at least drink and pass water.

Now that I’ve told it – I realize how dumb a joke it is – but what’s true about it, even as dumb as it is, is that it too often reflects reality … at least, as to how people view their pastors or church staff. Another version of the story I’ve heard is one told by bishops, about congregations in the pastoral call process, describing what kind of pastor they want versus who is actually available for them … in other words, most congregations want a pastor who can walk on water … while for most of us, the best we can do is drink … or pass … water.
Walking on water is a miracle – that’s for sure – and no one but Jesus has ever been able to do it right. That’s the first lesson we learn from our texts this morning … realistic expectations, not just of pastors but of church leaders, congregation councils, church congregations. Even though it’s strange to say in these days when all institutions are viewed with great suspicion (which is not an altogether bad thing) … but still, many times people view church congregations, church leaders, church people as somehow “above it all” … they come to a church thinking of it as an “escape” from the “nastiness of the world” … and then are put off … disappointed … hurt … when they come to find out that the church is less a place of perfection and more, as Luther rightly called it, a “hospital for sinners” where people can and do act pretty much in the same way as they do in every other aspect of human life … perhaps we start out fine, but then, like Peter, noticing the strong wind rising up around them … around us … we start to sink, and cry out, “Lord, help us!”
Jesus … the rescuer … he is the only one who can walk on water.
And yet … and yet … that shouldn’t stop us from trying, either.
The second thing we who follow Jesus should note from these texts is how Jesus approaches things.
He begins from a time and place of rest.
Which, when you think about it, is the opposite of how we usually approach things.
I’m going on vacation after worship today for three weeks. So of course the past week has been jammed full, with trying to get everything done and completed so I can take the “time off.” I’ve worked so I can rest. That’s the way we usually approach things … do do do … work work work … often times, totally wearing ourselves out … so we can vacate … empty … do nothing for some time to come.
We work hard with the dream ahead of retiring … for people of my age now, a far more distant dream, but still … working so we can eventually rest.
Even the words we use … vacation … retiring … they imply emptiness … vacancy … rest … as the reward of hard work.
But this isn’t how Jesus does things. He rests first … so he can go out and do his work. He approaches his work from a posture of rest … being refreshed, refilled, reconnected with God in prayer and worship … it’s from rest that he goes to work.
It’s a fine lesson for us, too, as we are on this discipleship walk with our Lord.
The balance Jesus exemplifies here … proper time for rest, and work … proper perspective from both rest and work … rest, a time spent in prayer and meditation, even coming in short increments, as it did here for Jesus … good rest is necessary for good work … it’s a rhythm, a cycle, into which we are called to live by our Lord … in all aspects of our life, separate and together …
… from allowing spaces for silence and meditation in our worship together … to making dedicated time at the beginning of each and every one of our gatherings together as God’s people called Nativity, dedicated time for meditating, discussing, praying – not just a perfunctory prayer but 15, 20 minutes of “God-talk,” “how is your faith walk” going talk … in the end, this is far more important conversation for our faith and life together than just “getting the business done.” And the good news for us is that the business will get done … we may not “walk on water” but we’ll certainly do better than just drinking or passing it.
After all … we do, as Paul puts it so well … all of us, have “beautiful feet.”
Feet which are made beautiful in service of the Word about Jesus … as we live out both the rest and work into which we are called … all of it, holy … all of it, given to us to be about bearing the word of Jesus into the world …
… the way we can best reflect the Word and the will of the One Water-Walker is to take our beautiful feet and follow him, working from our own rest, our own time spent to connect with him and each other in Word, Worship and meditation and prayer … following him on our beautiful feet, going out to share his Word in the ways we are best able …doing the best we can, for that is all we can do … sometimes coming close to walking on water ourselves … more often, merely treading it, recognizing or using it for bodily purposes … but in all of that, reflecting our God-given and God-blessed humanness … humanness which reflects the goodness of our God … which is what this Word, this Worship, this Way is all about … that God so loved and still loves the world that he came as one of us … fully one of us … yes, he walks on water but he also knows us so well and loves us so much that he reaches down and rescues, saves us … saves us when we try and fail … he sets us back on our beautiful feet … and sends us out … us, the ones with the feet he calls beautiful, the ones he entrusts to tell others about him.
Amen.