Sermon — September 12, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“So you, mortal,” God says to Ezekiel, “I have made a sentinel for the house of Israel;
whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.”
(Ezekiel 33:7)

I sometimes think that deep down, in our heart of hearts, most of us yearn to be Ezekiel.

Just think how satisfying it would be to be God’s appointed sentinel on earth. Think how good it would feel to go to that cousin whose political views you detest, or to that sibling who just can’t mind his own business—to that neighbor whose construction has ruined your week or to that spouse who insists on loading the dishwasher completely wrong (not my spouse)—and to say to them, “Listen: I’ve got a message for you from God, and this is it: Your ideas are nonsense. Your behavior is offensive. YOU ARE WRONG!” (And I, of course, am right.)

Now, the Lord has never descended in any of our sight in a majestic heavenly chariot, as he did to Ezekiel, wreathed in fire and flame, propelled by the beating wings of four magnificent beasts, to set us aside for a lifetime of prophetic ministry in his name, and that’s too bad. (Ezekiel 1) But we know we’re often right, all the same. And we still take it upon ourselves, from time to time, to speak in God’s name, or at least to speak as if we know what is good and true and right. Sometimes we do this with other people who agree with us, and there’s a certain satisfaction in this: it feels good to solve all the world’s problems when we’re talking to people who already agree with us about everything. But there’s a deeper, darker kind of satisfaction that comes from a fight, from a confrontation, from telling someone how wrong they are.

(If you don’t recognize this tendency in yourself, then it’s possible that you’re a better person than I am, or maybe that you’re fooling yourself. But if you think I’m wrong about people in general, try putting on a Yankees hat and walking down Main Street, and see just how much people love to tell you that you’re wrong. To say the least.)

In today’s gospel, Jesus gives some very helpful hints on the best way to go about telling one another that we’re wrong. “If another member of the church sins against you,” Jesus says, first go alone, in private, and “point out the fault.” (Matthew 18:15) If they don’t listen, do it again, but bring a friend or two. If they still think they’re right, tell the whole church, and if that doesn’t work, strike three, they’re out with the Gentiles and tax collectors. (Matthew 18:16-17) Unless they’re the Rector, in which case, they kind of have tenure and you’re going to need to get the Bishop involved.

Now, I’ve been a little irreverent so far, but this is actually really good advice: if you have an issue with somebody, then in most cases, talking to them is a much better idea than talking about them. Of course, there are cases of abuse or inappropriate behavior where reporting it to someone else is the right call, and of course, there are times when you just want to vent about something to a friend. But in general, in churches and in friendships, in marriages and in families, no problem has ever been solved by talking behind someone’s back. Jesus’ advice is good: when you have a conflict with someone, the right person to talk to about it is probably them. Gossip won’t get what you want. Embarrassing them in front of someone else is unlikely to be productive. If you have a problem with someone, go to talk to them. Fair enough.

It feels good to be Ezekiel: to be in the know and to be in the right and sometimes, yes, to tell other people that they’re wrong. Jesus’s words help us channel that in a productive way, guiding us on how best to confront one another, how best to “speak the truth in love,” as Paul says, (Ephesians 4:15) how to stand up for what’s right, for the good of the whole world.

So, there’s a nice, quick sermon for a muggy Sunday morning.

There’s just one problem.

None of us is actually the voice of God. None of us is infallibly right, all the time. As much as we might like to be, none of us is actually Ezekiel. God has not told us that we must tell our cousin (neighbor, partner, friend) that they are wrong, and we are right, or that they will die, and God will require their blood at our hand. (Ezek. 33:8) We believe that we’re right, not because of a vision from God, but because… well, if we thought we were wrong, we’d still think we were right, just in the opposite direction.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stand up for ourselves. It doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as right or wrong. It just means that the confidence of condemnation that we see in our reading from Ezekiel and in Jesus’ words needs to be cushioned by the compassion and the ultimate commandment of love that Paul reminds us of this morning.

There are many times in life when you really do need to confront someone else, to tell them that you think what they’re doing is wrong, because it’s harming you, or someone else, or because it’s harming them. There are other times when you really don’t. And the important question to ask yourself might be this: am I doing this out of love, or am I doing it because I know I’m right? Everyone has an uncle or a cousin who won’t stop spouting off about politics, and often the appropriate response is to roll your eyes and move on, even if you know he’s wrong. But if your uncle won’t stop talking about how bad immigration is, even with your first-generation-American daughter-in-law at the dinner table, it might be time to step in.

If you think your friend shouldn’t have bought those new shoes because they’re ugly as sin, you should probably keep your mouth shut. But if your friend shouldn’t’ve bought those shoes because their shopping addiction is bankrupting the family, that’s a whole other thing.

If you you’d just prefer that forks, knives, and spoons go in separate compartments because it’s easier to unload, then that’s between you and God. But if the dishwasher’s going to break if one more Tupperware lid melts on the bottom rack,then it’s a situation like the one God describes to Ezekiel: “If you warn the wicked, and they do not turn away, then they will die.” (Ezekiel 33:10) Or at least the dishwasher will. When someone is headed down the road to destruction, to the loss of a relationship or a life or a dishwasher, and you love them, then you need to have that difficult conversation, and the way Jesus lays this out is a pretty good way to go about it. But if you just think they’re wrong, but there’s not really any harm, then maybe consider: Why am I so bent on telling them that I’m right? As God says to Ezekiel, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that they turn and live.” (Ezek. 33:11) It’s not about being right. It’s about saving someone you love.

Because if you ever have that kind of conversation, you need to have it not only out of love but in love; not only for the right reason, but in the right way. You need to remember that you are not God, and not even a prophet from God; to remember that every one of us is as likely to be judged as to judge, to be corrected as to correct someone else; that each one of us is as likely, on any given day, to be in the wrong as we are to be wronged by someone else, and that our prayer is not “God, forgive those who sin against us,” but “God, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Sermon — September 3, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

In a 2012 book, the writer Anne Lamott described what she calls “The Three Essential Prayers”: “Help,” “Thanks,” and “Wow.” I’ve always loved that. It captures the essence of prayer. Most of our prayers, from the incoherent ones we say while lying awake in the middle of the night to the highly-polished ones we say in church on Sunday mornings, fall into one of those three categories: asking for God’s help when we need it, or someone else does; giving thanks for the good things in our lives; or simply expressing the awe and wonder of existence in this universe.

But I can’t help but think that Anne Lamott missed a fourth, one-word prayer, one that’s often left out, a kind of prayer that many people aren’t even sure they’re really allowed to pray: “Why?” As in, “Why God, why? Why is this happening? Why is it happening to me? Why now?” Just “why?”

Listen to some of Jeremiah’s words in this morning’s reading, taken from a couple different translations. Listen, and think for a minute: Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever prayed this kind of prayer?

“Lord, you know how I suffer. Take thought of me and care for me…” (Jer. 15:15 NET) “Why am I always in pain? Why is my wound incurable, so far beyond healing?” (15:18a CEB) “Will you let me down when I need you like a brook one goes to for water, but that cannot be relied on?” (15:18b NET)

Have you ever prayed this kind of prayer? Have you ever asked God, “Why?” Have you ever been angry at God for letting you down? Have you ever felt like saying, “God, you know I’m suffering,” do something?

Sometimes this form of prayer, this “why, God, why?” is the only one that feels authentic. But people often feel like it’s not a prayer they can say. For some, it’s because they’ve been taught that they’re not allowed to. They’re not supposed to question God’s plans. Their attitude has to be “thy will be done,” no back-talk allowed. They’re supposed to “take up their cross” and bear it without complaint. For others, the kinds of situations that lead to this question drive them away from God. Surely no loving God would allow such situations to occur, and so it’s not worth bringing them to God in prayer. Either they’re too angry with God to be on speaking terms, or they just don’t believe that there’s anyone listening. Still others, I think, have trouble with this kind of prayer because they can’t find the right thing to say. There are no words to express the depth of confusion, or pain, or sorrow. And so they can’t.

But this is the kind of prayer that we find, again and again, throughout the Bible. The Psalms are full of cries to God, demands that God finally act to make things right. The Book of Jonah turns the question into a short story, with Jonah shaking his fist at God’s unfairness; the Book of Job sets it in poetic verse, as Job demands repeatedly and at length that God explain how any of this is okay. And here, we see the prophet Jeremiah’s prayer, the prayer of a man called by God to prophesy unpleasant things to his people, and to bear the brunt of their anger in response. Jeremiah blames God: You did this to me! “Your words were found, and I ate them, and they were my joy…” (Jer. 15:16) But look what’s happened now. Jeremiah looks at his life, in which he’s done everything God has asked, and he asks in response, “Why, God? Why? How is this fair?”

When we ask these questions of one another, we human beings tend to reach for answers that make the senseless make sense. “Everything happens for a reason,” we might say. “God never gives us more than we can handle.” These words can sometimes be comforting—although often not. But in a sense they always minimize. In the face of the many tragic situations in life, the things that simply don’t make sense, they try to make them make sense; and usually fail.

God’s answer to these prayers is different. God doesn’t offer a rationalization. God doesn’t try to make it make sense. God reveals compassion; and God offers hope.

“Compassion” is at the heart of what the life of Jesus reveals about God; com–passion, in its original sense: con- meaning “with,” and passion meaning “suffering,” as in “the Passion of the Christ.” God is a God of compassion, because God has suffered with us. When we cry out to God asking why, God isn’t angry that we’re asking the question. God just answers, “I know it hurts.” I’ve been there too. This is why Jesus tells the disciples that he “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering.” It’s not an accident. It’s part of the plan. And it’s part of the plan because Jesus is God incarnate, the God who hears our prayers walking on the face of the earth, and to say that Jesus suffers is to say that one of the Trinity suffers, that God suffers; that God knows what it is to be betrayed and to grieve, to suffer pain and to die, not just in the abstract sense that God “knows” everything but because God has experienced it all. Whatever you are going through, whatever you have gone through, whatever you will go through in this life, God knows. God has been there before, and God is with you now. And for what it’s worth, this is why the Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity is so important: if Jesus is not God, then God remains aloof from all our pain and all our suffering; the human experience remains, at best, an academic pursuit.

This is also why Jesus’ response to Peter’s rebuke is so harsh. This is the “stumbling block”: that Peter’s tempting Jesus to stay aloof, to avoid sharing in our pain. And Jesus could choose to do that. He’s a miracle worker, for goodness’ sake. He’s God. He can walk on water, walk through walls. He could simply walk away and live a pleasant life by the sea, multiplying loaves and fishes and turning water into wine. But instead he chooses to walk in the way of the cross, and to transform it into the way of life.

And he invites the disciples to do the same. If they want to follow him, he says, they should follow him; follow him in the way of the cross. They shouldn’t try to insulate themselves, or stay aloof from the suffering of the world; it’s going to come, one way or another. But the way of the cross is the way of life, because the way of love inevitably brings up closer to suffering. When he says that “those who want to save their life will lose it,” but “those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” (Matt. 16:25) the word he uses here for “life” is psyche. It’s a word we often translate as “soul.” If you want to do as Peter suggests—if you want protect yourself from pain and spare yourself from any kind of suffering—you can only do it by risking your own soul, by giving up on love, by shutting off the compassion you feel for the people around you or by pretending that no one else is worth thinking about. We ask “why is this happening?” and God almost never answers the question. God listens with compassion, and God invites us to treat one another with compassion.

But that’s never the end of the story. God isn’t just there to comfort us in the face of suffering. God promises something more. God promises salvation: new hope, new life, a better future world, an actual solution to the problems that face us. Jeremiah asks God why, and God doesn’t only answer, “I am with you,” but “I will deliver you,” “I will redeem you.” (Jer. 15:21) Likewise, after Jesus tells his disciples that if they’re going to follow him, they’re going to need to take up their crosses, he offers them hope: those who are willing to be vulnerable, those who are willing to risk compassion and love, will be redeemed. “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels,” Jesus says, “and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.” (Matt. 16:26) And it’s this same hope for God’s future that animates Paul’s exhortation to the Romans: they can be patient now, because God’s justice is coming.

Again and again in life, we ask God “why?” And I’m sorry to say, there is no easy answer. But an answer isn’t really what we need. We need compassion. We need comfort. And we need hope: the hope that the story doesn’t end here, that there is a future in which all the wounds of this world will be healed.

So “let love be genuine,” Paul says. “Hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection… Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:9-10, 12, 21) “For I am with you,” God says to Jeremiah, “I am with you to save you and deliver you.” (Jeremiah 15:20)

Amen.

Sermon — August 20, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“She came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’
He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
(Matthew 15:22)

Jesus’ words to the unnamed Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel reading can be difficult to hear, and even more difficult to understand. She comes to him, seeking healing for her daughter. She kneels before him in a posture of humility. At first, he refuses to answer her, and when she persists in asking, his response seems to be somewhere between indifferent and insulting. Matthew’s narration gives no hint of sympathy or compassion. “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” Jesus says, as if this weren’t a matter of life and death; as if she and her daughter weren’t children of God of at all, not human beings at all, but “dogs.”

It’s a baffling story, and it’s generated plenty of interpretations.

Some see the woman as the hero of the story, and Jesus’ actions as proof that God can change; that here, unlike most of the Gospels, it’s the Canaanite woman who converts Jesus, and not the other way around. Jesus’ words, in this understanding of the story, aren’t cool or indifferent; they’re angry, disdainful, an ethnic slur, and sexist, to boot. But the Canaanite woman’s persistence in confronting him opens his eyes to see her as she really is, and he leaves the story a changed man. So goes one interpretation.

Another school of thought starts from the other end. Jesus can’t, by definition, they say, be any of these things; Jesus can’t be bigoted, or sexist, Jesus wouldn’t be cold or lack compassion; Jesus doesn’t learn, or change, or grow. He’s testing her. Clearly. And when he discovers her great faith, he grants her her reward: “Let it be done for you as you wish,” he says, and her daughter is healed “instantly.” (Matthew 14:28) She’s passed the test, so the demon can get lost.

Others lean on the old Christian method of making Jesus look good through vicious anti-Semitism. You can’t imagine how many commentaries on this text make off-handed remarks like “Jews frequently insulted Gentiles by calling them dogs” (citing no examples),^[1] or “[Jesus] reacts to the woman’s request as they would expect of a rabbi in those days.”[2] (I beg your pardon?) Given the thousands of years of Christian violence against our Jewish neighbors, I’d think people would want to be a bit more careful about this kind of slander, but alas. It’s tempting for Christians to make Jesus look good, especially in his harsher moments, by making the culture around him look bad. But it just doesn’t work. The story of the people of Israel isn’t a story of exclusion or ethnic supremacism. It’s a story in which God chooses one people, not to the exclusion of all others, but to be the instrument through which God will call all the others. And we need to understand what Jesus says and does in this story as a part of that much larger story.

The story of the Bible is a story of false starts in God’s relationship with us. God starts out by creating humankind in a Garden, by giving Adam and Eve just one simple rule. What could go wrong? Well, things go wrong. Very wrong. But humankind continues to grow outside the Garden, and things go even worse, until it’s so bad that God has to wipe it all out with a Flood, and chooses one family, the family of Noah, through whom to rebuild.

It doesn’t quite work out. After the Flood, we return to our usual ways, trying to build a tower up to heaven so that we can become like gods. God won’t destroy us again, but God scatters us, confusing our languages and dividing us into different nations and peoples. And later, God chooses one family from among one people, the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and promises them that through them and their offspring, all the nations of the world will be blessed. (Gen. 22:18)

The story follows the descendants of Jacob, the people of Israel, as they go into slavery in Egypt and come back out of it; as they enter the Promised Land and struggle with the people living in it; as their kingdoms are destroyed and their homes taken away and the fraction who remain are sent into exile in Babylon, and then return. And yet the prophets promise, again and again, that though God’s people’s are small, and weak, and at the mercy of others, nevertheless, they are the ones through whom God plans the redeem the world. And so the prophet Isaiah, rejoicing in the prospect of a return from exile, receives this message from God: “Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel; I will gather others to them.” (Isaiah 56:8) The foreigners, the Gentiles, all the nations of the world will be joined with God’s people, and “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7)

Jesus sees his own life as part of this process; maybe even the central part. It’s in and through him that the good news will finally reach all the nations. And the message that he teaches prepares the way.

The first part of this Gospel reading is about Jesus’ disagreement with some of his contemporaries about the markers of Jewish identity, about the food laws and ritual practices that distinguished his people from their neighbors. Some of his contemporaries thought that the way forward was to emphasize the practices that separated them from the nations around them, the food laws and purity regulations that marked them as a distinctive people with distinctive beliefs, and even to expand them; to apply the same rules of purity to a meal at your own table, for example, that would apply to a sacrifice in the Temple.

Jesus disagrees. What really defiles you in God’s sight, he says, is not your dirty hands, but your dirty hearts. Ritual practices are markers of belonging, things that distinguish one nation from another. But when it comes to “evil intentions,” to “murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander…” these things cross every line of nation, race, or class. And if these are the true markers of purity, then there can be Gentiles who are as pure in heart as any of Jesus’ fellow Jews. People who are not among God’s chosen people and who don’t adopt their religious practices can still become a part of God’s beloved community.

Later, the apostle Paul asks whether this inclusion of the Gentiles means, in turn, the exclusion of the Jews. “I ask, then,” he writes to the Romans, “has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham!” (Romans 11:1) God has not rejected God’s chosen people, not at all. God’s grace hasn’t been moved from one set of people to another. It’s grown to include us all.

So where does this leave us, as we grapple with this strange story?

Well first: remember that Jesus knew this story of God’s universal love. If you believe that Jesus was the Son of God, then Jesus the plan and his own part in it. But even just on a human level, Jesus was a teacher who was well-read in Scripture and accustomed to interpreting it. He knew the promise that God’s kingdom would expand to include the Gentiles. He knew that God was calling this Canaanite woman. And in fact, he’d just caused a stir in the next town over by teaching that the things that separated her from him were not so important after all. It can be appealing, in a way, to see this story as a story about the Canaanite’s woman’s agency and her powers of persuasion. But it comes as a relief, at least to me, to hear that Jesus doesn’t need to be persuaded that you’re worthy of God’s love; that this was, in fact, the plan, all along.

I can’t explain Jesus’ tone, when he says these words, when he asks this woman whether he should give the children’s food to a dog like her. But I do know that human beings sometimes treat one another like something less than human. That we divide, constantly, between us and them; insiders and outsiders; the respected and the scorned. And I know that Jesus’ answer, when we make these kinds of distinctions, is that yes, it is right to take the children’s food and give it to the ones we call the “dogs.” That it’s what it is in the heart that makes the difference to him. That if there is ever a time in your life where you’ve been insulted or reviled, called a name or treated like you’re less than someone else—that Jesus condemns “false witness” and “slander,” but God promises to “gather the outcasts.” (Isaiah 56:8)

We do not need to persuade God that we are worthy, or prove that we deserve God’s love. We do not need to be born in the right place, or be a part of the right culture. The only test we need to pass is faith, the only thing we need to do is trust that God is gathering us in, whoever we are and whoever we have been—that Jesus is leading us to God’s holy mountain, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7)

^[1]Lane T. Dennis and Wayne Grudem, eds. The ESV Study Bible. Accordance electronic ed. (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2008).

[2] Richard Ward, “Commentary on Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-20/commentary-on-matthew-1510-20-21-28-6

Sermon — August 13, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Now, I’m not usually one to jump to Saint Peter’s defense. Peter is the central disciple, the first leader of the Church after Jesus’ departure, the Rock on whom the Church is built. But of all the disciples, Peter can sometimes be the hardest to love. He has a big personality, to put it politely. Peter’s inconsistent, impulsive; he tends to make every momentous occasion about himself. Who is it who feels the need to insist that he’ll never deny Jesus, even at the point of death, and then immediately denies him three times before the cock crows? It’s Peter. Who’s the one who sees the glory of the Transfiguration and then says, “Lord, it’s good that we were here!” Peter. Who sees the risen Jesus standing on the shore, and jumps into the water with all his clothes on to swim to him, leaving the others, less dramatically, in the boat? If you guessed Peter, then you’ve won our prize: free coffee after the service!

Peter can be hard to love. But in this moment, in this story, I feel bad for him. I wonder whether Jesus is being a little unfair. Because—let’s be honest. If you were Jesus, and you saw Peter coming toward you on the water, trusting so deeply in your divine power that he would step off the side of a boat and start walking, would the first words out of your mouth really be, “O you of little faith”? (Matthew 14:31) It seems to me that must’ve taken quite a bit of faith.

But then again, I’ve found it useful from time to time to remember that I am not in fact the Son of God. And if there’s a story in the Gospels in which my initial reaction is that Jesus is wrong and I’m right, it’s usually worth a second look. So I wonder what Jesus is actually saying here about faith, and doubt, and what they mean in practice in our lives.

There’s an old ice-breaker game called “two truths and a lie.” I might call this story “two faiths and a doubt.” It seems to me that Peter shows his faith in this story in two very different ways, and we’re left wondering: What does Jesus see as Peter’s doubt?

Peter’s first form of faith, of course, is his conviction that Jesus’ power can enable him to do more than he could do on his own. It’s late in the night, in the “fourth watch,” Matthew says, and the boat is battered by the waves, going headfirst into the wind. It’s cold and dark and rough. It’s not time for a swim. But when Peter sees a figure walking on the surface of the sea, and hears that it’s Jesus, he believes that if it really is, then Peter can walk on water too; that not only can Jesus conquer the chaos and the danger of the sea for himself, he can share that power with others, too. It’s the faith that Jesus is not a magician trying to impress us with his own skills, but a God who wants to share his blessings with us. I can’t imagine how much faith it would take to take that first step off the side of that boat.

And Peter’s first form of faith is actually backed up by a second one. Peter doesn’t only believe that Jesus will give him the miraculous ability to walk on the water. He also believes that if he falls, there will be someone to catch him. And to me, this act of faith is even more impressive than the first. It’s one thing to believe that God will give you some extraordinary blessing, because it’s a relatively low risk. The worst that can happen is that you remain ordinary. If Peter had taken a step and just splashed straight into the water, well, I guess he could just scramble back into the boat.

But to take step after step as the boat recedes behind you takes another kind of faith. That’s not the faith that you’ll succeed. It’s the faith to know that if you fail, and it will be okay. To believe that even if you start to sink, you will not disappear; that Jesus will reach out his hand to save you from the storm.

And these are the two halves of the courage that many of us need. We’re often faced with situations that seem to be too much for us, with challenges or opportunities that frighten or intimidate us, with an invitation from God that seems to be beyond us. And we have to believe, on the one hand, that by the grace of God, we can do more than we can imagine, that you are, as Christopher Robin said to Winnie the Pooh, “you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” And we have to believe, on the other hand, that if and when we inevitably reach our limits, when we reach the point beyond which we cannot go, and begin to sink, God will be there to catch us when we fall. It’s much safer to stay back in the boat.

This is the incredible faith it takes to walk on water, and yet Jesus says to him, before he says anything else, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31)

We’re accustomed to think that Jesus is talking about that moment at which Peter becomes frightened, and begins to sink, and calls out, “Lord, save me!” (14:30) He begins to sink, and Jesus immediately asks him, “why did you doubt?” as if it were a relationship of cause and effect, as if, if he were just a little more faithful, had just a little less fear or doubt about what was going on, he could have made it all the way. And that raises some complex theological questions and concerns that boil down to one problem: we can never try hard enough, believe hard enough, to earn God’s love for us. And yet, as Paul reminds us, “no one who believes in [God] will be put to shame.” (Romans 10:11; Isaiah 28:16)

So I wonder if it’s really something else. I wonder if Peter’s true lack of faith is that revealed by the fact that he didn’t stay in the boat. I wonder if his more radical moment of doubt came when he saw Jesus walking toward him, and wouldn’t just stay put, when he found himself in a storm, and he didn’t trust that God would come to him, when he was afraid that Jesus would walk on by. And as a matter of fact, the Gospel of Mark comes right out and says this: in a similar scene, Mark writes that “Jesus meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out.” And Jesus turned aside instead and got into the boat. (Mark 6:48-49)

I wonder whether this is Peter’s doubt, whether this was Peter’s fear: not that he doubted that he could walk all the way to Jesus, but that he doubted that Jesus would walk all the way to him. That he found himself in a cold, dark boat, in the middle of the night, battered by the wind and rocked by the waves, halfway between one place and another, and he was afraid that God had left them all alone. I wonder whether this is what Jesus wanted him to believe, whether Jesus wanted him to stop being Peter for just a minute, to stop being the center of attention and the man of action, and to trust that God would keep them safe, to trust that God would act in God’s own time. I wonder, in other words, whether the lack of faith that Jesus identifies was not so much a lack of faith in Peter’s own sudden miraculous abilities, but a lack of faith that God would come to him, exactly where he was.

I don’t know. I could be wrong. Maybe it is this other kind of faith. But it seems to me that we spend most of our lives on a boat from here to there, working hard with the wind against us, battered by the waves. And it seems to me that there are moments when God is calling us out onto the water, and moments where God wants us to stay put. There are times when we need the faith and the courage to take that step out of the boat, trusting that God will strengthen us and guide us, trusting that God will not let us sink. And there are times when we need to trust that, however rough the waves, we will weather the storm, and that sometimes, the best thing to do is to endure it, for now, with faith that God will not abandon us.             It’s genuinely hard to know which of these is right, at any given moment, in any given situation. It takes discernment, and prayer. It takes the effort to slow down, and listen; to wait through the roaring noise of the wind and the earthquake and the fire and to listen for God in the “sound of sheer silence,” in the “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-12); to hear Jesus saying to us, wherever we are, and wherever we are going, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27)