Sermons from St Faith's
Miracles
Fr Dennis Smith, 10 August,
2014
The human condition
being what it is, when we’re really up against it,
and all seems hopeless, we long for a miracle.
When miracles do happen, we find them hard to
believe. Such is life!
There are several different versions of a story
that came out of South Africa at the height if the
anti-apartheid struggles, but they all have the
same punch line. The version that I like best is
this.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was out fishing from a
boat when President P.W.Botha’s official car
pulled up on the lakeside and a message was
relayed to the Archbishop that the resident needed
to talk to him urgently. Desmond Tutu immediately
left the boat and walked across the water in haste
to the meeting with the President. Next day, one
of the nationalist papers had the headline
‘Desmond Tutu can’t swim’!
What are we to make, then, of the story that
formed our Gospel reading for today? Indeed, what
would we have made of it had we been one of the
more distant disciples who happened not to be with
the others that day, but heard the story when they
all met up together again later on? Just to
pose these questions suggests that there are
different ways that this story is to be received,
so let’s see if we can peel back some of the
layers in a way that may help us to greater
understanding and deeper faith.
The first layer to consider is that of the
disciples themselves, and those that heard the
story first hand from them. As Matthew sets it all
in context, they’ve recently shared a double
whammy with Jesus. It began when he was given a
massive thumbs down by his own village community,
despite the fact that the folk there accepted the
amazing things he was doing. No doubt it was
partly because of that rejection that they were in
the boat when the storm blew up. Then, news came
that Herod was putting it about that Jesus was
John the Baptist reincarnated – the sort of story
that would totally undermine Jesus’s ministry if
it took hold of the popular imagination.
It’s against that background that Jesus took two
loaves and five fish and made it a feast for
thousands. Then, with the pressure still on, Jesus
sought solitude and sent the disciples across the
lake while he climbed higher for a night of
contemplation and prayer. With the winds mounting
and the boat in trouble, Jesus abandons his vigil
and walks towards the disciples, who are terrified
when they see him approaching. He bids them be at
peace and instils such calm that Peter, true to
form, engages mouth before brain and asks for a
security check.
Jesus bids him to walk on water, and he did, at
least until he noticed that the storm was still
raging. When he started to sink, Jesus showed that
he had his gold life-saver award and helped him
back into the boat. Then the storm died down and
the disciples said: ‘Truly, you are the Son of
God’.
That’s the story they told. Which was the miracle?
The transforming of a few loaves and fish into a
feast for thousands? Jesus walking on water?
Peter, walking on water? The calming of their
fears at the height of a storm? Jesus rescuing
Peter? Their recognition that Jesus, rejected by
his own people, utterly miscast by Herod, ws truly
the Son of God? What do we think they thought the
real miracle was?
We can only conjecture but, if we’d been where
they were, would we have said: ‘Wow, that’s a real
miracle’? So, with that in mind, let’s peel back a
second layer to look at this story in another way.
We can ask the question, ‘To whom was Matthew
writing?’ Who were the people he was hopoing would
benefit from reading his gospel? It’s broadly
accepted that he probably had a mainly Jewish
audience in mind, but in this story there’s a
particular emphasis which suggests that it may
have been intended for established congregations,
rather than for use – as we might say – for street
evangelism. The story’s interesting because it all
happens with only the disciples present, almost as
if it’s an ‘in church’ event. The miracle accounts
that are all around it as Matthew tells of Jesus’s
journey steadily towards Jerusalem are all very
public happenings. But this is different. What
happened was for the disciples alone. When we
think of it this way a somewhat varied picture
begins to emerge. The broad background is the
same. It’s still set against the double
whammy that Jesus had suffered. But now he
has sent them out on to the waters, ostensibly to
be ahead of him on the other side but, in reality,
to face the dark night crossing without him. True,
they were skilled fishermen but by now they were
used to being where Jesus was, and on this night
he’d left them alone. In fact, they didn’t know
exactly where he was.
Then the storm blew up and, to make matters worse,
while trying to cope with that, an apparition
appears, walking towards them across the water.
The pitching boat was bad, but this was enough to
turn their stomachs over. The Peter cameo in the
middle of it all simply highlights the rest. The
apparition was Jesus: thank God for that! What
calm it instilled.
‘Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you’ ...
‘Come, Peter.’ Great. That is, until Peter
takes his eye off Jesus, and thinks about the
surging waters all around him. Then it’s ankles,
knees, hips ... how fare did he sink before Jesus
caught hold of him? We’re not told. Sufficient
that Jesus did catch him, chided him for a lack of
faith, and got him back into the boat.
Once again we can ask a question. What’s the
miracle which this story, with its cameo of Peter,
is intended to encourage within the congregation
that heard it? Indeed, what’s the miracle that
Matthew will be hoping may result among us as we
hear the story afresh today and think about its
implications for us?
I want to suggest that this is a story as much for
us today as it was for those who first heard it,
and for the congregation amongst whom it was
shared. They were very much betwixt and between
people, just as were Jesus and his disciples in
the story. We probably share their feelings, for
we too are a betwixt and between people. It’s very
clear that we are living in a fast-changing world,
but we don’t always find the pace of change easy
or the direction always comfortable. We recognise
that some of our long-cherished life-support
systems are past their sell-by dates, but we
distrust the alternatives presented as
improvements, still more when they are offered as
the only options available.
In our personal lives, many of us are in periods
of transition, when the waters we are sailing on
are choppy, to say the least. And sometimes it can
seem as though the hormone-surging emotions we
experienced as teenagers reappear when uncertainty
engulfs us and our safe, familiar boundaries slip
from view.
In church life, too, tensions between the varied
outlooks of different generations can create a
very unsettled feeling in congregations, and even
within national churches. As the storms mount, our
hearts cry out for a miracle. To walk on
water? Probably not. To still the storm.?
Don’t think so. To get to the other side, safe and
well? Perhaps. To hold fast to the One who sees
the need of his peo0ple in the midst of darkness,
when the winds are lashing and the waves most
turbulent, to the One who comes then to be with us
when all seems lost, to the One who brings us to
the other side in our right mind to work with Him
once again? When betwixt and between, for us to be
able to give thanks and praise to the Son of God?
Now that is a miracle!
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