The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies
St. Martin's Episcopal Church
August 10, 2008
Proper 14 A
Bad things happen when you get out of the boat. But miraculous things also happen."
That's the message in both the Gospel reading from Matthew and in the Old Testament book of Jonah. The Gospel reading stands by itself as a story, but this little snippet of Jonah doesn't make much a sense unless you know what comes before - so allow me to refresh your memory.
Jonah is called by God to go preach repentance to the great and wicked city of Nineveh. Jonah doesn't want to obey. He thinks going to Nineveh is about the last thing he wants to do, and he is so determined to evade God's call, that he goes down to the docks and hops on a ship bound for Tarshish, in the exact opposite direction.
But Jonah discovers that God isn't finished with him. A terrible storm blows up and when the terrified sailors cast lost to see on whose account the storm had been sent to them, the lot falls to Jonah. He admits that he is running away from God, and then he tells the sailors to cast him into the sea so that the storm will cease.
I think that is a point in Jonah's favor that doesn't get mentioned very often. He knows that bad things will happen to him when they throw him overboard - he knows he is being thrown to his death, and he still owns up to his responsibility and is willing to die himself rather than doom everyone else to destruction.
But God still isn't finished with Jonah. A great fish comes along and swallows Jonah - giving him three dark days and nights deep down inside the fish to think about things. And it is from the fish's belly that Jonah prays the words we heard Sam read this morning. It is a psalm of thanksgiving and praise - "Deliverance belongs to the Lord!" Jonah is a changed man - and as soon the fish vomits him up on shore, he heads to Nineveh, to do what God asked him to do in the first place.
So bad things happen when you get out of the boat - but miraculous things happen, too.
Bad things happen when you get out of the boat, because in the ancient Hebrew world, water was a symbol for the forces of chaos - for the disordered universe, a place where God's saving hand has not yet appeared. Water is formless, unpredictable, deadly and terrifying.
The water in both the Jonah and the Jesus story is meant to be a symbol of everything human beings fear. Creation may have brought the chaotic waters under God's control, but the awful power of water is always lurking, sinister and deadly - and again and again in the great stories of our Hebrew ancestors, water is the medium God uses to demonstrate who's in charge. The waters above the heavens are released in the great flood, the waters of the Red Sea are parted so that the escaping Israelite slaves can be saved from the pursuing Egyptians - God churns up the water around Jonah's boat, and when the sailors heave him over the side, God sends the great fish to swallow Jonah and carry him to dry land.
If water is part of the story, we are meant to understand that a mighty act of salvation is about to appear. Matthew wrote for what was probably an early Christian community made up of Jewish converts. As soon as the disciples set out on the boat, Matthew's audience would have pricked up their ears. If water is in the story, God's going to do something amazing.
The disciples have been fighting the storm all night. They might be fishermen, but they're really not watermen. They just have little boats meant for fishing a little ways out from shore; they're not equipped to handle a storm like this. To their exhausted, frantic eyes - the figure walking toward them through the storm must be some kind of water demon - coming to drag them down to death. But instead they hear Jesus say, "I'm here. Don't be afraid."
And then, why on earth does Peter say, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."
I'm not sure what to think about his words. It's an outrageous challenge. It is disrespectful and annoying. It is reckless, endangering both Peter and his companions, in the middle of that terrible storm. It is self-centered and self-aggrandizing. "Me! Me! Jesus! Let's make this about me!" But maybe it's an eagerness to be with Jesus that propels Peter over the side of the boat. Maybe it's faith pouring itself out in a willingness to take a risk. Maybe it's a disciple seeking deeper knowledge and experience.
Jesus says, "Come," Peter gets out of the boat, and bad things happen. Peter is human - the strength of the storm is too much for him - his faith is swallowed up by fear, and at once he begins to sink. But Jesus is there to catch him, to save him from drowning and gently rebukes him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" And then, they are back in the boat, and the storm ceases.
So the bad thing that happens when you get out of the boat, is the same thing that makes miraculous salvation possible.
I was thinking about the boat and the water and the storm earlier this week, when I heard Bishop Wolf talk about her experience at the Lambeth Conference. She gave a very interesting report about her conversations in bible study and small groups with bishops from around the world, about exploring a companion diocese relationship with a bishop from the Sudan who ministered in a diocese that had no source of electricity and no regular mail service, whose marriage had been arranged by the village elders. She talked about the diversity of opinion expressed by bishops in various parts of the Anglican communion - not just about human sexuality, but about a wide range of issues - from abject poverty, to being a religious minority in a Muslim world, to violence against women, and the growing climate and food crisis.
But sort of looming under and behind and around the bishop's report were all our questions about the future of the Anglican Communion. There is a sizeable and certainly noisy chunk of bishops that seek to establish a new, purified version of the Anglican Communion no longer centered in Canterbury. They want a church without women in leadership and they certainly want a church free of gay and lesbian persons. They don't want a church that they have to share with us - they don't want to be part of any ecclesiastical organization that includes the Episcopal Church.
Sooner or later, someone is going to have to get out of the boat in this stormy and uncertain sea.
Up until last week, I was pretty sure I didn't want to get out of the boat. Let the Puritan zealots leave, I kept telling myself - I love my Anglican identity, I love English cathedrals and the music of Thomas Tallis, and Evensong done properly, and the heritage of English saints, and the fact that I could go to church anywhere in the world and pretty much know my way around. And I love our Anglican tradition of comprehensiveness and compromise.
But now, I'm not so sure. I am pretty clear that my principal duty is to serve the people in my care. At St. Martin's, that includes being able to offer our gay and lesbian members the same healthy and wholesome support we offer heterosexual couples. It means being able to celebrate any time two people want to stand up in front of their families and friends and in front of God and make a lifetime commitment to each other.
Let me be perfectly clear. Bishop Wolf has forbidden same sex blessings on church property, and I am bound by my ordination vows to obey. I hope you can read between the legal lines as well as I can.
There are hundreds of ordinary parish priests, just like me, around the Episcopal Church who are deeply disappointed that the Archbishop of Canterbury chose not to invite Bishop Gene Robinson to Lambeth. By excluding him, Rowan Williams also excluded the one openly, unashamedly gay voice among the bishops (not - the only gay voice to be sure). So the Lambeth conversations about the role of gay and lesbian persons in the church went on without any official voice given to one of them. They were talked about, but never with, for over two weeks.
I truly have no clue what's going to happen next. The Puritans may seize control of the Anglican Communion over the next couple of years - the Episcopal Church may finally say, "You know - we have Kingdom work to be doing, and we're just going to quite coming to this particular family party for awhile." There are going to be lots more meetings, and proposed covenants, and posturings, and sound bites and media manipulation to come.
But I do think the time is coming when someone is going to have to get out of the boat. Scary stuff - when the boat seems the safest place in the storm. But look what happens to both Jonah and to Peter when they offer themselves up and leave the safe haven of the boat. Neither of them know what's going to happen next, and they both give themselves up to the terrifying power of water, and they are both saved from death and for another purpose by God's almighty and merciful hand.
Water is the medium through which God's saving power is revealed. It is the stuff of creation, of the miracle at the Red Sea, of Jonah's deliverance and it is the stuff of our own baptism. Water is part of our story, too. We have reduced what were once the swirling waters of baptism to a little decorous dribble, but the connections are still all there. We are drowned in the water of baptism in order to share in Christ's resurrection. We are put to death in baptism, so that death will have no dominion over us. We are delivered from the power of sin and death, and marked as Christ's own forever.
Our little Anglican Communion boat is tempest-tossed, wave-battered, adrift in a hostile and uncertain sea. We're all shouting advice about how to save ourselves: "Believe what the Bible says!" "Jesus welcomed everyone!" "Let's all just pretend the last five hundred years never happened!" but our voices aren't doing much to calm the storm.
I hate the idea of getting out of the boat - but I am coming to believe that it may be the only way to declare that my faith is not centered in church aesthetics, or the beauty of liturgy, or my rabid Anglophilia, or any of the other things I love about the Anglican tradition. My faith, I hope and pray, is centered on the One who stands in the midst of the storm and says: "Do not be afraid; I am here."
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