Henry Ossawa Tanner, Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water
On Sunday, August 13th, we commissioned the Pastor Nominating Committee of Rehoboth Presbyterian Church. Over the next several months, they will serve as the Corps of Self-Discovery for this congregation; they are charged with finding the next installed pastor of this congregation. The lesson from the Gospel of Matthew speaks very effectively into this reality.
Sermon
Good morning. Today is a big day in the life of this
congregation; today, we will commission the Pastor Nominating Committee to its
service. Over the next several months, you’ll hear people talk about this
committee, the PNC, and you’ll get so used to hearing the initials PNC that you
won’t even think of the bank. Instead, you’ll hear someone say PNC, and the
only think that will come to mind is the search for the next installed pastor
here at Rehoboth.
It’s an exciting time in the life of this congregation!
Maybe it’s a little bit scary, too. We don’t always like change, yet we don’t
often have a great deal of choice, when change comes. So, it’s a remarkable
coincidence that we heard this morning’s lesson from the Gospel of Matthew on
the same day we commission the PNC to service. It’s also remarkable that this
is happening at the same time that I’m reading a wonderful book about church
leadership called Canoeing the Mountains:
Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory.
This book has informed the last few sermons I’ve written
and I’m going to keep talking about it for a while. It was written by a
Presbyterian minister named Tod Bolsinger, and it uses the Lewis & Clark
expedition as a guiding metaphor for where the Church is in this
post-Christendom world, and how we, as the Church, have to chart a new course
because the world around us is different from the world we knew. Mind you, I
selected this morning’s scriptures several weeks ago; I didn’t know who Tod
Bolsinger was and I’d never heard of his book when I planned worship. I didn’t
know that we’d be commissioning the PNC today, either. This is either a
wonderful coincidence or the Holy Spirit wants to make sure we’re paying
attention! Hmmm. What do you think?
Today’s gospel lesson is a familiar story: Jesus walks on
the water; Peter is so excited to see Jesus that he asks Jesus to command him
to walk to Jesus—on the water! And guess what? He does! Peter walks on the
water, too! Until he noticed the strong wind. Peter’s fear kicked in and he
began to sink. Then Jesus reaches out and catches Peter, and then rebukes Peter
for not having enough faith.
Francois Boucher, Peter Tries to Walk on Water
I bet most of you know this story. And I’ll bet that most
of you have heard some pretty boring sermons on this story, too. It’s easy to
offer a sermon about overcoming your fears. It’s easy to reduce this to a trite
message: Have faith! Get out of the boat! Wait a second… that’s the title of
this sermon! Fear not. This isn’t a message about the gospel according to
self-help Jesus. This isn’t about the little stuff. This Jesus is way bigger
than our ordinary fears.
Don’t get me wrong, overcoming ordinary, everyday fears is
a good thing, but we don’t need another sermon on that; we don’t need Jesus for
that! A good friend, a good book, or maybe even a good therapist can help you
through the ordinary, everyday fears. We don’t need Jesus for that! We need
Jesus for the stuff that we can’t possibly do on our own. Like walking on
water. Like transforming the world and building the Kingdom of God. That’s
truly frightening; so is the idea that we’re supposed to participate in that
work.
I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll say it to you
again: Fear interrupts faith! That’s what happens when Peter steps out of the
boat. Peter believes and Peter walks on the water with Jesus. Then the fear
kicks in—and that’s why a trite sermon telling you to get past your fears isn’t
good enough. That kind of a sermon doesn’t honor the real, existential fears we
face.
What I find most interesting about this story is Peter’s
fear. The story doesn’t give us any explanation for Peter’s fear. I’ve heard
that in ancient times, in the Near East, people were afraid of the water, that
nobody swam for pleasure. So maybe the water was inherently frightening and the
original audience for the Gospel of Matthew understood this, but I don’t know. I
don’t know why Peter is so afraid. I don’t know why Peter can’t just wait in
the boat; surely Jesus will be there soon—he’s close enough to see and hear!
The only thing we know is that Peter became frightened. And we’re frightened,
too.
We’re afraid that we might not have enough members or
enough money or enough energy to maintain this congregation.
We’re afraid that we don’t have enough young people in
church.
We’re afraid that we won’t find someone else to take over
the Sunday school program or the Beacon.
Maybe we’re afraid to do Jesus’ work. In the world of
Christendom, most of you didn’t have to do much work, and the work that you had
to do wasn’t all that scary. But when I talk about getting outside of these
walls and being the church? That’s scary. And it should be scary. We’re afraid
to venture into uncharted territory, we’re afraid of change, and we’re afraid
that we might fail. In fact, we’re not even sure how to define success and
failure in the post-Christendom world. In the churches of our past, we could
take attendance and count the offering and we knew just how successful we were.
The lines aren’t so clear now.
Bolsinger says that the “fear of failure weighs heavily on
all types of leaders.”[1] I would also argue that it
weighs heavily on congregations, too. This can lead to paralysis, that feeling
of being stuck, where everyone is looking for new ideas, but no one seems to have
any solutions, and few people want to step into a leadership role, because no
one knows the answers. Bolsinger asserts that in this post-Christendom world, if
we are to break through this gridlock, we don’t need new answers, we need new
questions.[2]
An attribute of
imaginatively gridlocked relationship systems is a continual search for new
answers to old questions rather than an effort to reframe the questions
themselves. In the search for the solution to any problem, questions are always
more important than the answers because the way one frames the question, or the
problem, already predetermines the range of answers one can conceive in
response.[3]
When Lewis and Clark reached the Rocky Mountains, they
encountered an obstacle that they hadn’t imagined. They were stuck and they
were forced to ask some difficult questions:
- Where do we go from
here?
- What do we do with these
boats?
- Do we go around the
mountains, or do we go through the mountains?
- Is there anyone who can
show us the way?
It turns out, that last
question was the most important.
By November of 1804, the Corps of Discovery had made it
pretty far north and west, going up the Missouri River; they were toward the
western edge of what’s now North Dakota. The territory was controlled by the
Mandan tribe. The expedition built a fort and stopped there for the winter.
There they met a French fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau and they hired
him as a guide. Ultimately, Lewis and Clark didn’t think that Charbonneau was
all that useful. But Charbonneau had a young wife, and she proved to be
invaluable to the expedition. Her name was Sacagawea; perhaps you’ve heard of
her. It’s quite possible that the expedition would have failed without
Sacagawea. That’s a story for another time.
Edgar Samuel Paxson, detail from Lewis & Clark at Three Forks
Last Sunday, I said that this congregation needed its own
Corps of Discovery, a corps of self-discovery. In a sense, that’s what the PNC
is. Today, we will commission you to go out into that uncharted territory and
discern who God is calling this congregation to be, and then find the pastor
who will refine and focus that vision. I am confident that you can adapt and
transform. Change is scary; following Jesus is scary. It’s okay to be afraid.
Jesus is bigger than our fears. Trust Jesus and get out of the boat—you can
walk on water. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world, the world
today. Go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and reconciliation. Do
not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God,
and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and
be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus
Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!
[1]
Tod Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains:
Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books
(2015), p. 212.
[2]
Tod Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains:
Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books
(2015), p. 207.
[3]
Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve:
Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Qtd. In Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains, p. 207.
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