Matthew 14:22-33
Gospel Reading for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Water is chaos.
I feel like that is one of the first things I learned in my college Intro to Biblical Literature class. When Genesis 1 describes the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, it sets the stage for God to bring order out of chaos. When the Great Flood swallows the earth, it is the chaos of pre-creation consuming life. When the Children of Israel cross the Sea of Reeds on dry land, they find God’s peace in the midst of chaos. When Jonah tries to run away from God rather than go to Nineveh, he finds himself sinking into the sea until a great fish provides an unexpected respite from chaos and death. The stories we see in the Bible have God bringing life out of the madness.
Until I started writing this, I had never considered the juxtaposition between the Spirit of God hovering over the waters in the Genesis 1 creation account and Jesus walking on the water in the gospels. Jesus touches the water. He is not removed from it. The chaos splashes around his feet, the waves soak his robe. It is true that he walks on the water, but Jesus is in the thick of it.
And really? Thank God for that because we find ourselves at sea often in our lives: the illness of a loved one, a child going through a difficult time, a broken relationship, a lost job, living with depression or anxiety, tragedies that seem to happen repeatedly in a sick cycle, hurt, loss, death, uncreation, the dark and stormy nights of the soul when you wonder if God is even real. In the midst of that, I want a God who does more than hovers over the waters, but one who is in the midst of the stinging spray of the sea.
I think that I need that more than the calm that comes at the end of this story. Don’t get me wrong, there are seasons of my life when I wonder where the hell God is in the midst of the storm. Times when i want that calm right now. It’s the echo of another stormy sea Gospel story: “Lord, don’t you care that we’re about to drown?” Yet at the end of the day, I don’t know why some storms pass and others rage far longer. I will drive myself up the wall trying to find the answer to that question. What I do know or, at least, what I hope is that God is with me through those storms however long they last.
Because when you are in those times when life seems to be overflowing with chaos, the one thing you want to know is that you are not alone. You want to know someone has been through this before. That there is someone to pull you out of the water before it fills your lungs. Again, that is why Jesus being human is so important to me. Not just the death and resurrection but because he was hurt, tired, hungry, heartbroken, felt betrayal, felt lost at times. He felt it all: the chaos and beauty of what it means to be human. That is good news.
In the midst of that, there is a reminder for those wishing to imitate Christ that we must be there for others who are battling the stormy seas of this life. We are called to love as we have been loved and thus called to brave the waves to offer a hand or simple presence to our neighbor.
So as you go into this week and face wonderful and terrible things, remember that you are not alone. Christ is with you everywhere that you go. Even if the storm does not subside, Christ will be by your side. And may that give us all the courage to go to the side of our siblings at sea.