Note:

This manuscript is interesting in being longer than – I’m sure – any other sermon I have written. It ran onto a 9th double-spaced page, where I usually only wrote 6 or 7 pages for Sunday mornings. The original in my files is marked in pencil with square brackets indicating what I decided to drop out when preaching it, so as to cut it down to the expected length.

I.N.I.

A sermon to be preached at Christ Lutheran Church (ELCA), Elizabethtown, PA on 7 August 2005, the 12th Sunday after Pentecost and based on the Gospel for the day: Matthew 14:22-33

Ever think about what it is about religion that makes it a pretty much universal experience? Virtually every society in the world has had some sort of religious experience, a myth, a story, a way of worship, a code of conduct, priests, shamans, charmers, medicine men. And it all can be tied together in that it all seeks somehow, in one way or another, to connect the people with something bigger than themselves, with a higher power, with the creator, with spiritual beings, with the infinite, with an underlying life force in other words, with God. Not the true God, necessarily, but with a god, however he, she, or it is defined in that society.

Being in a right relationship with God is rather a universal goal, then, that is a commonality throughout much, most, or all of human society. It’s certainly been, and continues to be, a part of American society. And people go about trying to have such a right relationship in many different ways.

To some people it means making the right sacrifices. You’ll remember from your reading of the Old Testament that animal sacrifices were at one time necessary for the children of Israel. Other religions have felt the same necessity up to this very day. Other people try a less bloody sacrificial route and fully intend to do things — or do without things — in the hope or belief that somehow that little sacrifice will help them connect with God, satisfying him or something.

To some people, the search for a satisfying relationship with God means saying the right prayers at the right times in the right ways. Various religions throughout history have made a real fetish, almost, of reciting formulaic prayers at propitious times. They have hoped or believed that somehow saying the same words over and over again in the right situations will convince God of their sincerity, or wear him down so that he provides what the one praying desires, or just make the one praying feel closer to God.

To other people, their search for connection with God has meant doing and saying the right things. It sometimes comes out as religious ritual. It sometimes comes out in the way of pilgrimages or begging for alms or constantly going on retreat. It sometimes comes out as a strict code of behavior. The core principle here is that these people have hoped or believed that somehow almighty God decides who he will relate to based on what “good little boys and girls” they are.

Despite all these ways and means of trying to reach into God’s inner circle, lots and lots of people build up — instead of a relationship — a set of obstacles to prevent or delay God’s coming into their lives. And let’s switch for now from talking about all those “others” in time or place who have been intent on developing a relationship with Baal, or Thor, or Aphrodite, or any of the other gods of other religions besides our own. Let me focus instead on obstacles to God raised by people who are in Christian society and Christian churches; maybe even by some of us here. I’ll just raise some of the objections first.

There are intellectual roadblocks to a vibrant and developing faith-relationship, for example. Some might say that this whole business just doesn’t make sense. They don’t see a coherence to the Christian faith. They want it to form logical system, but don’t see how it does. Others might say that the biblical texts aren’t reliable. After all, who knows what they really say, and what they really mean, they’ll ask. And how can anyone be sure that Jesus said and did what the Bible says he said and did; much less the prophets; and don’t get me started on Moses. Further intellectual roadblocks focus on other details in Scripture, claiming that miracles couldn’t really happen the way they’re described in the texts. Just doesn’t make sense, they’ll say. Must be some other natural explanation.

And when we raise those or similar intellectual objections to God’s revelation, we rebuff the means God uses to reach our hearts

There are also emotional roadblocks to a relationship with God that are thrown in the way from time to time. When outside circumstances rule how we feel in general, some of us let that bring doubt across our path. When the weather or the phases of the moon affect our mood, some of us let that rain down confusion over whether God really could love us all that much. When depression or some other condition takes charge of our emotions, some of us don’t see that God remains constant in his care, protection, and love.

All these objections, whether they are intentional or forced upon us by things beyond our immediate control lead us to doubt the constancy and veracity of Jesus’s relationship with us.

There could also be physical roadblocks which we place in the way of a close, personal relationship with God. This can happen when people (plainly, not us at the moment) absent themselves from the fellowship by not being at worship services or Bible studies or Christian fellowship on any kind of frequent and regular basis. This physical separation from God, despite our words or intentions about wanting to remain close to Him, could also come about when we might go places where Jesus and his followers would not be welcome, so we might throw an invisibility cloak over our faith for a time, pretending our faith isn’t there or got left outside the door. Another way of creating physical roadblocks to God is when we distance ourselves from the means God uses to build relationships with his children.

These physical roadblocks can be the most detrimental because they decrease the number of opportunities for cultivating a relationship with the Lord.

What we find in the Bible is a really different way, a different scheme, from the usual human ideas about how to achieve a relationship with God. It’s also a very different way of overcoming these intellectual, emotional and physical obstacles. The biblical approach is simply this: God coming to us.

The more we soak ourselves in the words of the Scriptures, the clearer it becomes that the Spirit of the Scriptures is the spirit of truth and of wholeness and of the connectivity of God with humanity. In the Old Testament, there are many stories that depict God coming to people in physical ways. Near the very beginning we can read of God coming to walk in the Garden with Adam and Eve; coming at his own time of choosing, unbidden and unsought. A little later on, we read of God calling from the burning bush to Moses, surprising him with a call to leadership among God’s people and overcoming the objections Moses had ready at hand. Or you can page further into the Bible and reach, for example, the Lord revealing himself to the prophets like Elijah, as in today’s Old Testament lesson from 1Kings 19; that beautiful passage where God shows the prophet that it isn’t always in loud, thunderous ways that God comes, but that he also comes in a “still, small voice,” a gentle voice, a quiet voice.

Our God doesn’t stop there, of course, because we also have the New Testament revelation that begins with the stories of God coming at Bethlehem in Judea to walk on earth as a human in a way that, no, we cannot fully understand. But the timing and circumstances of the birth of Jesus all show the same distinctive signs of God appearing when and where He wants to even over the objections of the virgin mother who didn’t see herself how it could happen when she wasn’t married. And then recall how Jesus went about gathering disciples. There were crowds of thousands who heard him and followed him from place to place (the occasion for the feeding of the 5,000 that was last week’s Gospel lesson is just one example of how that sometimes played out), but when Jesus wanted to start training a core group that would be charged with learning and re-telling the stories and teachings did he take applications? No. He walked along the lake shore and called some men from repairing their fishing nets; he stopped by a tax collector’s office and called a man away from his desk; and so on. Jesus called them.

And now let’s finally spend some time with today’s Gospel lesson that started me off on this, so that you, too, can see how this picture rises up out of the text.

The text starts out in the middle of the action: “As soon as they were finished… ” that is, with the feeding of the 5,000. What were those crowds of people doing out there in the wilderness, away from stores and without picnic baskets? They had been attracted to the Savior’s presence as certainly as — if the analogy isn’t too crude — insects are attracted to our porch lights in summer. No light; no tight swarm of insects. No Jesus; no crowd of hungry people in the wilderness. So, prefacing the action of today’s Gospel, setting the scene for it, is another example of Jesus bridging gaps of distance and inconvenience and hardship and objection, in order to start relationships with people.

Then, after first sending his core disciples off ahead in a boat, and dismissing the crowd, and taking time out to pray, “Between three and six in the morning he came towards them.. .”. Out in the middle of the lake, “some distance from shore,” while they were battling a strong head wind and rough water, in the middle of the night, he came to them. He came to them. Despite the distance, despite the weather, despite the darkness, despite the time, despite the physical impossibility of it … Jesus came to them.

And then, after he’s assured them that he isn’t a ghost out there, walking over the rough surface of the waves, Peter throws up his own roadblock to a continuing relationship. He expresses further doubt and wants intellectual and physical proof. So Jesus says “Come,” to Peter. Note that Peter, Peter who believed in the Lord and had been following him, note that Peter had not already leapt over the side of the boat either to swim or to walk to Jesus. It wasn’t until the Lord made the first move, and called him, that Peter had the faith to very literally “step out on faith.”

Yet his faith wavered, didn’t it? He turned his attention away from Jesus. He saw the strength of the storm. He recognized the impossibility of his situation. He let the emotion of fear punch him in the stomach. And he began to sink. He squeaked out a prayer and “Jesus at once reached out and caught hold of him”. About the only thing Peter did was call out to Jesus in terror, but even that can be viewed as motivated by the presence of the Lord already: had Jesus not already been there with him, surely Peter would not have called, but would have begun treading water, trying to locate the safety of the boat which he had just left.

Throughout the rest of the Bible, Jesus is constantly reaching out to save people. In the post-resurrection days, Jesus reached out to the Emmaus disciples. He came up to them unbidden, when their minds and hearts told them that it was just simply impossible that Jesus could come be with them. Hadn’t they just witnessed his execution? Then a week later Jesus overcame the intellectual and emotional faith-blockers erected by Thomas, the one we call “doubting,” by inviting Thomas to take hold of him and touch him. Then again with Peter Jesus bridged the gap which Peter’s volatile emotions had created by having three times denied the Lord, when he assured Peter of forgiveness. And, of course, we can’t forget the way the Lord came unbidden to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, called him to faith, provided him with a teacher, and sent him out into the world as Paul the apostle.

The later history of the Church is just as full of stories of people who erected intellectual, emotional and physical roadblocks to Jesus when they were also professing to be seeking a serious relationship with the Almighty. These stories climax with the Lord breaking through by means of the same tools he has always used to make himself known among people.

Wouldn’t it be great to have been that close to Jesus? As close as the 5,000 people fed by his hand; as close as the disciples in a storm-tossed boat, as close as Peter reaching up to catch the outstretched hand of Jesus. Yes, of course. But it really is still the same now as it was back then.

Jesus still overcomes all our roadblocks and difficulties in order to come to us. He still wants to be with us, befriending us, nurturing us, guiding and helping us. How can this happen now? Through those same tools he has used over the years.

In Baptism, for example, Jesus sends us his Spirit to work faith in us, even — for most of us here — before we could speak coherent sentences. He reached across the intellectual roadblocks of infancy to come into our hearts.

In the Eucharist, we might also throw up intellectual difficulties, but there can often be emotional ones as well, blocking us from community with fellow believers and then also from community with Jesus. Jesus overcomes them by coming to us all in an equal fashion. Wherever the Sacrament is administered in the way he intended, we are fulfilling his prayer that we would be one even as he and the Father are one.

In the Word, Jesus overcomes the physical boundaries we throw in the way to keep him out. God’s Word is not only infinitely portable in space, able to be carried from place to place and not held captive in a church or monastery or shrine; but it is also infinitely portable in time, bringing us its benefits centuries and centuries after they were first written down in ways that are as fresh and meaningful to us today (should we only read or hear the Word) as they were to the first hearers and readers.

And, finally, though not in quite the same way as with the “means of grace” Jesus comes to us through our fellow Christians. As we gather with them here, or in our backyards, at coffee shops, by hospital bedsides, or wherever we might meet other believers, we are strengthened in our relationship with the Lord Jesus through the conversation and consolation they bring us.

God did indeed reach out to people in miraculous and powerful ways in the past, as recorded in the Scriptures, When he reaches out today, it is no less powerful and no less miraculous. He has this driving desire to connect with us, to be in a relationship with us, to love us dearly. And Jesus intends to overcome every obstacle that we put up in his way. Thank God for that. If it were up to us, we’d concentrate on building the barriers. Jesus constantly bursts through, forgiving us for separating ourselves from him and giving us the power to believe in him. He loves us that much. What a miracle!

Amen.

And may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.

S.D.G.