Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Picture yourself a disciple of Jesus (which, by the way, is exactly where we should picture ourselves as we read the gospel stories). Imagine yourself as one of the twelve, experiencing, living through, this amazing, never-to-be-forgotten day. Could anything in your life ever be the same again? Jesus, at the top of his popularity -- people turning out now not by fives and tens but by hundreds and even thousands; Jesus teaching and performing miracles all day long; Jesus unable to escape the crowds; Jesus ending his day, at suppertime, by feeding five thousand hungry people with a little bit of nothing. Wouldn't your head be spinning? Did I really see what I think I saw? How did he do that? Then, as the crowd wanders away, Jesus says to you and to the other disciples, "You guys go on. I'm staying here a while to pray." So, as darkness falls, you and the others push off in a fishing boat for the opposite shore. But, half way across the lake, a storm arises. The wind is against you. Progress is impossible. And it doesn't stop. All night long, soaked and exhausted, you fight the wind and waves, getting nowhere, just trying to stay afloat (just trying to stay alive!). And, in the early morning light, you see a figure approaching walking (the Greek word suggests "striding.") on the water. It's got to be a ghost (for no living person can walk on water) -- a ghost that has come to take you home to God, you must be about to die. And you scream, and so do all the others. But then you realize it's Jesus. Peter (old faith and foolishness Peter) asks to try that, walking on water, and Jesus bids him come. It happens in the plain view of everyone. Peter begins with some success, but his faith fails when he notices the wind, and he begins to sink. Jesus catches him by the hand and saves him. The two climb into the boat. The wind ceases, the sea calms, and Jesus sees them safe ashore.

Quite a day! What would it do to someone to experience such things? If it were you, or me, what would we now talk about at night, around the campfire? "Did you see what I saw?" "O, my God!" Matthew tells us the effect it had: "And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God." Whatever doubt remained among the twelve about who Jesus was, vanished. They were smitten. They would all live and die for this man who could walk on water, and in so doing they would change the world.

This is one of those stories a preacher might like to tell and then sit down. It speaks for itself. To expound upon it is to gild the lily. There's nowhere to go but down. Yet I will say a few words.

"Faith" can be defined simply as "belief." But one problem with that is that beliefs can be sterile. Beliefs can be so pure, so theoretical, so academic that they have no real impact on our lives: "I believe the universe is vast." So what? "I believe Columbus set sail in 1492." Or even, "I believe in God." Not necessarily important in the way we live. In the New Testament, "faith" is better defined as "trust." Trust is believing and living by one's beliefs. Peter is a hero in this story. His faith transcends belief - he actually gets out of the boat and steps on the water. That he failed (when he thought too much about the storm and not enough about Jesus) is not the main point. That Jesus rescues us when our faith fails is.

So much depends on trust. Our coins say, "In God We Trust," but that is not always the case. We used to trust things called "trust funds," only to discover that some "trust funds" (like the Social Security Trust Fund) don't even exist. We used to trust the stock market. We used to trust Arthur Anderson. We used to trust corporate executives, and politician, and clergy. But now, instead of trust, there is suspicion -- and cynicism. And a great deal of learning today (what we teach our children and what we are taught by "the experts") takes the form of skepticism and cynical disbelief: what we shouldn't base our lives upon (trust) rather than what we should. The professors don't profess, they confess. They don't say what's right, but only what is wrong. How can we build a life on that?

The bottom line, however, is that, no matter how cynical we become, we will, in fact, (we must, in fact) put our trust in something or someone. We must step out of the boat, if we are not to be swallowed by he storm. Because of that (because everyone, in fact, puts his trust in something) it is possible to read people backwards, to observe how they live and to infer from that what it is they trust. Most of us, for example, trust our own wisdom, and (along with that) we trust our own ability to control our lives. I'm a list maker. I desperately try to gain control over my life, every morning, by making a list of what I will do that day. And it never works out. And I'm frustrated by that. Why do things keep interrupting my plans? But wait a minute! Maybe it's my wisdom about what will need to be done that is faulty? Could it be that I am not nearly as "in control" as I like to believe. And, of course, when I get beyond one day of planning, the illusion of control disappears all together. When John Chancellor was diagnosed with a fatal cancer, you remember, he commented, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." Looking ahead is good. Planning is good (if you don't kick it to death), but we can't put our faith in these things. In all our wisdom, we cannot know the future.

Reading people backwards, we can see that many put their trust in families. Families are good. But even the most loving relationships sometimes break down, and some family members are very skilled at disappointing the others, and (of course) death destroys even the closest bonds. I walk through church grave yards and read the epitaphs, the touching words that someone, a long time ago, chose to express his or her deepest feelings of grief. But the words are weathered and fading, the sentiment is forgotten, and no one's been buried in that family plot for decades. Life moves on.

The Bible teaches that the only entity worthy of our ultimate trust is God. "Though he slay me," Job says, "yet will I trust in him." (Job had every reason not to like God, but he didn't know where else to put his trust.) Isaiah: "I will trust and not be afraid." The Psalmist: "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you." The whole Bible, in a way, is the story of when God's people put their trust in him and when they didn't - and what happened as the result. Faith, Paul says, is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seem." There is a world where hope is substantial and unseen things are accepted as evidence. The disciples got a glimpse of that world when Jesus fed the five thousand, and walked on water, and caught Peter, and rescued them all from the storm.

Trust means we give up the illusion of control and live as if God is in charge, not we. We trust him to meet our needs. We trust him to feed us as the birds of the air and clothe us as the flowers of the field. And we are not afraid. When I was getting ready to leave the ministry (the first time around), and was so overwhelmed and depressed by the job, I told my counselor that I felt like the captain of some great ship with too many passengers to watch out for and too much responsibility. And he asked me if I thought I could be just a passenger on that ship, and let God have the wheel. Which was right on the mark. I had taken it all on myself, and forgotten to trust God.

In medieval monasteries each monk, one day a week, would be sent out into the community with a begging bowl. Whatever was put in his bowl that day was what he would have to eat, and no more. It wasn't to save money for the monastery. It was a teaching tool for the monks themselves. It taught them faith and trust. It reminded each monk, every week, that he could give up the security of the cloister, go out into the world with nothing, and God would take care of him. He could trust God to be faithful to his promises, in other words. He could put his hand into God's hand, and not insist on knowing the future. We need to learn the same lesson. The God who could feed five thousand with nothing will feed us. The God who rescued the disciples from the tempest will keep us safe through the storms of our lives. The God who could walk on water will enable us to do amazing things, by faith, by trust in him. And the God who rescued Peter, when Peter's faith began to slip, will rescue us. That way we can live, not by foreknowledge, nor by fear, but by faith and trust in God, our Father.