Walking On Water

There is a narrative whose presence in the Gospels leaves me feeling slightly off balance. Its like a splinter in my imagination…

6 times the story of Jesus and his followers out in a boat on wind blown waters at night appears in the gospels. In each telling some elements of the story remain the same – the disciples, a boat, the wind, their unbridled fear – yet the identity of Jesus is elastic and ambiguous !

In some instances Jesus is in the boat and in other instances he is out of the boat walking on the water. The disturbing thing is that when Jesus is in the boat up close and personal, those who know him best are left asking the question, “What sort of man is this ?”  Out of the boat he appears at distance like some kind of ghost or phantasm and the disciples cry out in fear and terror. Neither option brings relief.

As the boat moves out onto the water, away from the crowd and the safety of the known, it is as though it slipped through a crack between the worlds. The disciples took Jesus out in the boat ‘as he was’ yet out on this margin Jesus expands and intensifies. In sleep his dreams evoke the restless, primordial, creative possibilities of Genesis – the storm like ‘a wind from God over the face of the waters’ – pregnant with change & newness. Likewise his prayer alone on the mountain evokes Moses and encounter with holy Otherness – the storm moving before him like ‘the voice of the Lord… over the waters… the God of Glory… thundering’ – powerfully declaring the One who walks on water.

John captures this ‘holy otherness’ when he tells the story. In his telling, Jesus doesn’t calm the storm. He instead reveals himself to them as ‘I am – do be afraid’ & when the disciples try to take him into the boat, they instantly arrive at the their destination. What happens in-between happens on Jesus’ terms. And Jesus will not be contained or domesticated.

The Rock From Which You Are Hewn

God’s story woven into lives of ordinary men…

There’s an interesting word of encouragement that the prophet Isaiah gives the Jews when they are in Exile, when they were poised between the choice of assimilation and despair. It says,

‘Listen to me you that pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him and I blessed him and made him many’. 

I like what Walter Brueggemann says about theses verses. He says that Isaiah is saying if you want to seek God, look to the oldest, most embarrassing beginning we ever had. He says firstly, remember Abraham. On the one hand, he is the strange, impressive father of the faith who leaves his home at God’s command & goes out on a long journey. On the other hand, Abraham is also a pitiful figure – often helplessness and filled with fear.  Two times he gives his wife Sarah away to other men to save his own skin. Despite God’s promise of a child with Sarah, he sleeps with Sarah’s servant Hagar, to get an heir.

Often Abraham appears so confused, so unsure, so barely faithful.

And when you are done reflecting on Abraham, remember Sarah your mother. Sarah is the beautiful woman who other men desire. She is also the mother of Isaac, the promise carrier. However, when you remember Sarah, remember her oldness, remember her barrenness, remember her mocking laughter in the face of God when He promises her a son.

Yet when you remember Sarah, remember that this old and pitiful woman now laughs a new laugh – an Easter laugh. God uses her very barrenness to create newness. Sarah is the example for all barren people, who have within them no gift of life, no capacity for faith – yet God does something new and unexpected in the face of all the evidence.

What impresses me about this foundational story of Scripture, is what it says about the way God’s story is unfolding among us. Abraham and Sarah are people we can identify with because they are fragile and tentative, often moving forward with fear & hesitation. These are people just like us.

You know, God’s story often isn’t in the grand epics of history, the stories told by the winners. When I read the large sweep of Scripture, it seems to me that God’s story is mostly unfolding quietly, below the radar, twisting and turning – always with the very real possibility of failure. Yet when we remember this story of faith, remember that it is told and retold through the same fragile stories of other biblical characters. Remember the scheming of a timid Jacob, the stuttering of a reluctant Moses, the paranoid actions of a bipolar Saul, the treachery of a wife stealing David, the depressed and suicidal Elijah…

The very wonder of God’s story is that he achieves his purposes in the world through broken ordinary people, just like us.

Bruggemann says we remember these stories because they model faith and they invite faith.

We remember these stories because when these fragile people centered their stories in God’s story, they lived life BIG – filled with purpose, newness and imagination.

Deep Channel

The Cross of Jesus underlines, it says very plainly in the brokenness of the body of Jesus, that there is no place of god-forsakenness, that there is no place where God doesn’t suffer with us, no place where He isn’t profoundly present. 

God takes the selfish and sinful actions of men and women and their debilitating effects on others very seriously. The reason is whenever compassion & sensitivity to the Spirit of God are extinguished by human selfishness, wherever justice and mercy drown in the deep arrogance of people, the Kingdom of God is diminished. The death of Jesus on the cross reveals the overwhelming violence of men but it also speaks of the One Man, the Son of Man, the Messiah Jesus, enduring suffering and death. As a result he saves the cheerleader, he saves the world. 

The good news is that while the evil & selfish ways of too many people often overwhelm the Kingdom of God, they never extinguish it. At the point of god-forsakenness, God is most wonderfully present. All it takes is for one righteousness man who is willing to follow God where he leads and this action of the one unleashes the redeeming action for the many.

Think of Noah, think of Abraham, think of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Deborah, Elijah, Nehemiah, Esther, Isaiah, Jeremiah and then think of Jesus. This is one deep channel of men and women in the Scriptures being sensitive, responsive and obedient to the Spirit of God. Each time God uses them, they unleash the flood gates of his Kingdom into the world. And the result is always… exponentially… so much more.