271 Sitka

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Sitka”, originally shared on August 9, 2023. It was the 271^st video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   “If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.” Cute. But today’s Bible reading about Jesus walking on water from the gospel of Matthew has nothing to do with water and everything to do with the future of the Church. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   Taylor Swift ends her 6-day, record breaking run at So-Fi Stadium in Inglewood tonight. I haven’t heard of any seismological disturbances here, but the movement of her fans registered on earthquake detecting instruments when she performed in Seattle before coming to Southern California. When I mentioned to some young girls in the church that I served, years ago, in the early days of “Swifties” that Sally and I were friends with friends of her family, I got that stunned “we are not worthy” look. How does she perform a high-energy 3½ hour show for six nights in a row? I guess that on the 7^th day she will rest. It’s incredible!

   Right after he fed 5,000 people starting with almost nothing and ending up with 12 baskets of leftovers, Jesus went up the mountain to pray. It seems that doing miracles takes something out of Jesus. And then he does something even more shocking, in Matthew 14:22-33,

²²Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. ²⁵And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. ²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. ²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” ²⁸Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

   This text reminds me of the Warner Brother cartoons with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner and follows him off a cliff. The Road Runner keeps going. Wile E. Coyote keeps going, running on air until he looks down and realizes HE’S RUNNING ON AIR! And right then he sinks like a stone, crashing onto the desert floor.

   Peter is a follower of Jesus and steps out of the boat and starts walking on the water, until he realizes that he’s in a storm and HE’S WALKING ON WATER! And right then, he starts to sink like a stone. But Jesus reaches out and saves him and says to Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

   Is this text telling us that if you have enough faith, you could walk on water? I’ve known many faithful people, but I don’t know anyone who’s ever walked on water.

   Prof. Roberta Hestenes, who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena years ago, was called to serve as president of Eastern College, an Evangelical college back east.

   She came back as a guest speaker sometime later and told of how, one year, a graduating class came to her with a special request.

   Graduation at Eastern traditionally took place next to a beautiful lake on the campus. The seniors would come over a hill, walk down to the lake, then take a sharp right turn to go to their seats.

   That year, the Seniors asked if they could have the school maintenance department install underwater posts and sheets of thick plexiglass just below the surface of the water so that the class could walk down to the lakeside, step onto the plexiglass, and appear to walk on water, taking a sharp right turn to the shore and then going to their seats.

   President Hestenes said, “No.”

   That’s as close as I’ve come to hearing of anyone but Jesus, and Peter, briefly, walking on water.

   I think that this text is, like all of Jesus’ miracles, not about how to overcome the laws of physics. It’s about Jesus pointing to the way the world was supposed to be, and about how it will be again in the future, in the coming perfected Reign of God. God is Lord of all things. The storms were/will be calmed.

   Sally and I were on a cruise up and down the coast of Alaska to celebrate our 40^th wedding anniversary this summer. We were on a ship, not a boat. That’s an important distinction to seafaring people.

   We met all kinds of people from all over the world. And we were surprised at how many people were people of the Christian faith, like the catholic priest broken by addiction and restored by the grace of God. The woman who talked about the reported abuses of the Roman Catholic Church but who said that she was a believer and that if you say you are a believer in her Canadian city, people look at you like you’re a unicorn. The people who went to the unhosted Christian Fellowship Gathering who we saw at other times on the ship and shared a look of community (fun fact: the first 6 people to arrive on the first Sunday were 3 couples who were all celebrating their 40^th wedding anniversary on that cruise; and that evening we sat next to a couple who were also celebrating their 40^th wedding anniversary on that cruise. Small world). The woman we sat next to at lunch who said that she stopped going to church as a girl when her parents stopped but who wondered why God had allowed so much suffering in her life (so there was a belief in God there), The people we saw attending the formal worship service led by the ship’s captain and officers on the last day of the cruise. There were almost 3,000 passengers and crew on our ship. It was not obvious that there were even a majority of Christians on board, and yet our presence was felt.

   The logo of the World Council of Churches is a boat, not a ship. It’s small. It’s tiny compared to a cruise ship.

   The Church is often more like a boat than a ship. I think often of the story of the Anglican vicar who decided that what his church needed was a service of Holy Communion at 6:00 a.m. every day.

   Sometime later, some colleagues asked him how it was going. “Great!” he said.

   Skeptical, one asked, “About how many people come to worship at that hour.”

   “Well, there’s me, and the two widowed sisters who come to everything, about a million Serafim, a billion Cherubim, and all the hosts of heaven.”

   We are light. We are salt, we are leaven.

   The Christian Church is like a boat, but the Christian life is not lived there. The Christian life is lived where the people are. It’s lived everywhere, where Jesus is.

   It’s lived in a living relationship with the one true living God that is the substance of faith.

   When Jesus chides Peter he doesn’t say, “You of no faith, why did you doubt?” He says, “You of little faith…”

   We belong to God, even when we doubt. Even when we fail. We call out to Jesus, “Lord, save me.” And he does, because he has.

   The Church may be buffeted, it may be small, but we are still saved and defined by the unearned grace of God.

   When we were in Alaska, our ship made a stop at Sitka.

   Sitka is a relatively small town known by many as a basecamp for hunting, fishing, photography and other outdoor activities. It includes Sitka Lutheran Church, St. Peter’s by the Sea Episcopalian Church, and St. Michael’s Orthodox Cathedral, which, though not a large building, is located at the center of town and highly visible. It was the first Russian Orthodox Cathedral built in America, with construction being completed in 1848.

   A fire burned much of Sitka’s downtown in 1966, damaging the Lutheran Church and destroying the Orthodox cathedral, though church members and residents were able to save many of the church’s furnishings, books, and icons. They continued to gather for worship in what is now the basement of the cathedral. Reconstruction began immediately using the original plans but was not completed until 1977.

   It continues to be the worship space of a living Christian community.

   The Church may be buffeted by storms, it may be small, it may even be burned down. But Jesus still saves, and the Church continues to live and proclaim the good news. It continues to be a living presence in this world.

   At the end of his book Bad Religion, Ross Douthat reflects on all the challenges, mostly self-inflicted, that the Church is enduring in our times. And then he observes that the Church has experienced decline many times in its history and two things have brought it back: holy living and the arts.

   The arts are seen and heard and smelled throughout the Orthodox church in Sitka. They are a part of most churches throughout the world. They are a means of communicating the deep connection God has called us to know with God.

   Holy living is living in the presence of God from the inside out. It is the product of a life lived near to God, in a living relationship with the one true living God. It is expressed in what Paul describes as the fruit of the spirit, in Galatians 5:22-23,

²² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 

   The cathedral in Sitka was closed when we got there. We knocked at the door and a kind woman let us in.

   People all over the world are searching for God, even and perhaps especially, when they can’t name the name.

   Sometimes, we are the means by which God opens the door. It is opened by the way we live our lives, by the way we serve, and by the way we worship in response to what God has done for us on the cross. Like Sitka, God is rebuilding us, giving us a new start, making of us a new creation. We are born again.

   At the end of our reading from Matthew, the disciples recognized Jesus for who He is, the Son of God. And what did they do when they saw him in the boat? “They worshiped him.”

   The future of the church is in its renewed nature, in the living relationship with the one true living God for which God created us, which we rejected, and which was restored by the death of Jesus for us, on the cross.

   Soren Kirkegaard, the Lutheran philosopher and theologian once said that many people attend worship services, but they don’t worship. They treat worship as if they have gone to a play and then they evaluate it as entertainment.

   Worship, instead, is prayer, praise and thanksgiving, all directed toward God.

   Kierkegaard said that the question to ask after a worship service is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I do?” Not to please God, but in response to what God has already done for us.

   Jesus showed his disciples what they had been created for and what was coming in the new heaven and in the new earth, in the fully perfected reign of God. In so doing he showed his Church the way forward in the response of the disciples.

    How did those disciples react? They responded the way we are all called to respond as people who have been given new life by Jesus. They worshiped him, saying “Truly you are the Son of God.”