NRS Matthew 14
22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. 25 And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."
28 Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."
29 He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" 32 When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.
33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

May the blessing of the Lord rest and remain upon you always, for the sake of Jesus the Messiah. Amen.

None of the gospels offers us anything near to an exhaustive account of the life and times of Jesus. For all the stories, parables, and sayings in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John don't tell us everything about Jesus, including some stuff we'd really like to know. For example, we know next to nothing about Jesus' family, his education, or the years leading up to his public ministry. The gospels don't really delve into the psychology of Jesus or how he came to be aware of his Sonship and mission to the world. The Gospel of John admits as much when in the last verse of the last chapter the evangelist concludes, "there are many other things that Jesus did: if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (21:25).

Since the time of John's gospel, lots, and lots, and lots (!) of books have been written about Jesus, more than any of us could ever read in a whole lifetime. Many of those books explore subjects that the gospels don't directly address and try to fill in their gaps, delving into things like the history, politics, and social dynamics that underlie the ministry of Jesus. But other scholars take another tack, and in their books they look at what the gospels do tell us about Jesus and ask, why? Why this story? Why this saying? Assuming that the gospel writers had plenty of material to choose from in telling the saga of Jesus, why did they select this miracle or that healing, or why did they tell it in this particular way? What was going on in the lives of the people for whom they were writing that influenced the way the evangelists each shaped their unique gospels? Those are tough questions, and for some gospel stories, the best answers we can come up with are pretty sketchy. But that's not the case for today's gospel.

Matthew, Mark, and John, but not Luke, all include some version of Jesus walking on the water. At the heart of each telling is a spectacular display of Jesus' power. Not only does Jesus make the paralyzed walk, the blind see, and the mute speak, but Jesus even has mastery over the very laws of nature. He defies the physics of buoyancy, and controls the very wind and waves, a miracle that, to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, discloses him as the very Son of God. But Matthew, and only Matthew, adds to this story the drama of Peter getting out of the boat and attempting to walk out on the water to meet Jesus. Why? What was Matthew getting at that he added this special material to an already stunning miracle?

You don't have to be a great student of history to know that the people to whom Matthew was writing were in a very tough situation. Many introductions to Matthew describe his gospel as being addressed to Jewish Christians, but that's a little misleading. Matthew was writing to Jews who believed Jesus to be the Messiah and the bringer of God's rule to earth. Their separation from what we now call Judaism was not yet complete, but the writing was already on the wall. Matthew understood that if he and his people continued in their allegiance to Jesus, contrary to the teaching of the Pharisees, they would effectively be stepping out of the boat, or even thrown out the boat. Remember, too, that in the Bible boats of any kind conjure up the image of that boat of all boats, Noah's ark. For the people of Matthew's gospel, following Jesus would be sort of like leaving the ark of salvation.

Now we might think: so they stop being Jews and start being Christians, big deal. Well, yeah, it was a big deal. Imagine your son or daughter telling you that they were renouncing their American citizenship and going to live in North Korea. It would be pretty hard not to take that personally. After the initial shock wore off, you'd probably start to get angry. You might even renounce them, throw them out your house, and vow never to have anything to do with them ever again. That was exactly the situation Matthew's people were facing. As long these believers persisted in professing Jesus Lord, they were risking total rejection by their nearest and dearest kith and kin. They would be labeled traitors to the faith of their fathers, and through this story Matthew was telling them that the only answer is to trust Jesus. The man who walks on water and controls even the wind and waves is able to sustain you, even though your family and friends reject you, your community persecutes you, and you are completely isolated from all known means of support. Jesus will keep you afloat, but you have to trust him. He won't let you drown, he'll reach out to save you, but you still have to get out the boat, and for that there must be faith.

Thank God, we don't face the same risks as those first-generation followers of Christ, but answering Jesus' call can still be kind of risky. Most of us are sailing the waters of life in boats that are pretty comfortable, usually because they're filled with people that make us feel comfortable. I was recently listening to an interview with an author who made the point that in some ways, America is much more segregated than even back in the bad old days of racial segregation. We often get our news from sources that reinforce our views and opinions. We live in congressional districts that tend to be much more politically lopsided than in the past. We make our homes in subdivisions and send our kids to schools that often directly reflect our economic and social standing. More and more, too, we are seeing communities that are age or lifestyle determined, for seniors, or singles, or childless. And of course, we frequently attend churches with people who think like us, vote like us, worship like us, and more often than not, look like us.

Getting out of that kind of boat can be kind of scary, especially as it may put us in unfamiliar waters and in contact with people who don't share our background, don't hold our values, and maybe don't even speak our language. Some years back I remember a little family vacation we took down in the Rio Grande valley. One day we crossed over the border to the town of Nuevo Progresso, and we were doing our turista thing, you know, strolling the markets and shopping for buys. Well, it got to be late in the afternoon, and I remember looking up and looking around to discover that we were the only Anglo faces in a great sea of people who didn't look like us or dress like us or talk like us. Nobody was bothering us or making any threatening gestures, but it was a little unsettling. Pretty soon we were on our way back over the border to our country and our hotel where people spoke our language and ate our food and drove our kind of cars. We were back in our boat, and it felt good.

For Matthew's original audience, the boat they had to get out of was sort of like the bosom of Abraham, the people and the place where they felt safe and secure. For us, the boat is, I think, the kind of social bubbles we tend to live in these days, and especially the social bubbles that our churches are prone to become. Jesus call us to meet him in a world teeming with people who don't know him, don't know us, and often don't want to know either him or us. The vast, vast majority of the people of the world don't look like us, talk like us, and certainly don't live like us, but for them, as for us, Jesus suffered and died and rose again. And he calls us, as he calls them, to step out and meet him, the Lord of the Universe, in the turmoil of this stormy world.

That doesn't mean that we all have to become missionaries and pick up sticks to live on the other side of the world. But it does mean we have to be in mission, and that mission might be right next door, or across town, or in your own family. Mission is answering Jesus' call to get outside ourselves, our problems and our issues, to make a space for sharing the love of God. Martin Luther once described sin as being curved in on oneself, and so redemption in Jesus is to be turned out to face our neighbor, to meet the stranger, to hear the cries of the poor and attend to the needs of the orphan and the widow. And for that, of course, we have to get out of our boats, which brings us back to faith.

Yes, I know, it's scary. It's so much easier to stick with the things we know and the people that make us feel comfortable. But it is Jesus who's calling, and after all, he rules even the wind and the waves.

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.