Take heart, it is I
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
Take heart, it is I: 7th August 2011: am: The Very Revd Frank Nelson
- Psalm 105
- Genesis 37: 1 – 4, 12 - 28
- Romans 10: 5 - 15
- Matthew 14: 22 - 33
In the far recesses of my memory is a picture of the front lawn of our garden. I spent my early childhood in a little village just outside Pretoria, called Irene – which means ‘peace’. Carved out of the farm belonging to the Boer War General Jan Smuts, it included a cemetery for women and children who had died in the concentration camps. For us children, it was an idyllic place of trees and open spaces, endless sunny days and warm fires on winter nights. The particular memory is of a green two wheeler bike and my first attempt at learning to ride solo. My father is there, holding the front handle bars and the saddle at the back. Slowly we set off around the lawn, taking care to give the big tree in the middle of the lawn a wide berth. As one does at first my balance is not very good, my arms are stiff with concentration and I navigate in straight lines with sharp corners. We go faster and my father lets go of the handle bars. I hear him beginning to pant and then, suddenly, I know I am on my own. There’s a glorious sense of freedom as I stay upright on two wheels for the first time ever. But then there’s the tree. It’s coming at me. My arms lock. I can’t turn. I can’t stop. The inevitable happens. My father is there to pick me up, dust me off, check me over, give me a hug and help me up again.
Fifty years later I am in the passenger seat of the car on a quiet stretch of road at Petone beach. In the driving seat is my daughter, her first lesson. We talk about the clutch, the brake and the accelerator, steering wheel, the gear lever. Ready now, I talk her through. A few bunny hops, but we’re moving. Stiff arms mean straight lines with sudden turns rather than a smooth curve round the corner, but we’re doing well. In the distance a car appears. Move over a little, I say. Her arms lock. She can’t turn. She can’t stop. A solid wooden bollard at the edge of the road jumps out to meet us. Two weeks later I sign a rather large cheque at the panel beaters.
I’ve always been fascinated by today’s Gospel story of the disciples in their boat, battling the waves and the wind through the night, the sudden appearance of Jesus and the invitation to Peter to join him on the water. Peter’s bold step out of the boat and then the panic. The rescue, the rebuke, the reaction of the disciples. There has never been a problem for me in seeing this as an allegory – not needing to take it literally.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells his version of this allegory of how he and the President wanted a quiet talk together away from reporters. They took a small boat and rowed out on to the lake – as the black man, Desmond explained, he had to do the rowing. A puff of wind dumped the president’s hat a few metres away. Quick as a flash the Archbishop jumped out, ran across the water and returned the hat. Next morning the papers carried the headline: Tutu can’t swim!
By the time Matthew came to write his Gospel, allegory was a well-established method of teaching. Jesus himself uses it to explain the parable of the Sower. There’s no need to get hung up about the literal meaning of today’s reading. Far more important to ask what it meant to Matthew when he wrote the Gospel, and what it has to say to us today. As with any writing there are clues and signs just waiting to be picked up by the alert reader. So imagine you are Matthew writing about 80AD – perhaps forty or fifty years after the events recorded in the Gospels. The fledgling church is struggling to keep its head above water (interesting how that bit of metaphor popped up naturally in my writing?). There’s quite a lot of opposition. Christians are no longer welcome in the synagogues. They are having to define themselves against their Jewish background – and it hurts. Stephen has already been killed. Peter himself knows what the inside of a prison looks like.
So they go back and see what they can learn from Jesus. All those wonderful stories, all that teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven – what has happened to it? It’s all there in Matthew 13. You remember it? The Kingdom of Heaven is like the sower, the farmer who woke to find both wheat and weeds in his field, the woman who lost a coin, the merchant in search of fine pearls who sells everything he owns to buy the ultimate find. It’s also about opposition – Jesus ridiculed and then rejected in his home town. “We know who you are – the carpenter’s son. We know your brothers. We remember you as a child. Don’t come with all this fancy talk.” Who says Kiwis have a monopoly on cutting down tall poppies? (See Matthew 13: 54ff) That truly awful story of Jesus’s cousin John. In a fit of drunken lust, Herod had him killed and his head brought out on a platter. The challenge of feeding all those people who flocked to hear Jesus in the wilderness.
The imaginative story of Jesus walking on the water is full of allusion to the deep story of their faith, their life, those things that defined who they were. It would be impossible for someone steeped in the stories of the Old Testament, especially the great story of the beginning of all things told in Genesis, not to make associations. Jesus went up the mountain – the place par excellence to meet with God. The disciples get into a boat and set out across the lake. The water, the wind, the storm, the darkness – all speak of chaos, life without God. It’s Genesis chapter 1 - the watery abyss of chaos, the wind from God moving over the waters, the calling forth of light from the darkness. Alone, fearful, tired, in the dark the disciples see one they take to be a ghost. On top of all the other things, now they have someone from that scary underworld approaching. Their fear is palpable.
“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” It is I. The words are the same as those given to Moses at the burning bush. Who are you? It is I. I am who I am. (see Exodus 3: 14) You don’t understand, you can’t comprehend – but it is I. It is I. It could be a Tui moment! And Peter falls for it and does a very silly thing. Never ever ask God for something you don’t expect to happen. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Well, what could Jesus say? Peter steps out and then, like the little boy on the bicycle, realises what he has done. He looks at the waves, feels the wind, and panics. Jesus is there and brings him safely into the boat.
As an allegory of the first century church it is a powerful story. Not surprisingly the church has often been likened to a boat, sailing on dangerous and hostile waters. It often seems that Jesus has deserted us, the waves threatening to swamp us. We don’t always understand; faith seems to be a crazy thing to hold onto. Jesus’s words sound cruel. ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ How those words have been abused and misused. British comedian Mark Thomas, who describes himself as a ‘born-again atheist,’ tells how he lost his childhood faith. “There was a bad preacher who came along to Sunday school when I was about eight. He would do magic tricks followed by a parable. He got a cup and turned it upside down and said: ‘All we need is faith.’ When he turned the cup over again, it was full of money, which he put in the collection box. I said to him, ‘Can anyone do that?’ He said, ‘Yes, all you need is faith.’ So I went home, and got an old cigar tin, and a bit of lathe from my dad’s wood box, and I sat there for an hour, with faith….I came out an atheist.” (Interview in Church Times 15 July 2011, pg 27)
What can we say? How can I end these few minutes of thinking brought on by today’s Gospel reading of a storm, a boat, an invitation to join Jesus on the water? Perhaps by noticing how Matthew chose to end the story. “And those in the boat worshipped him saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’” (Matthew 14: 33) It’s frequently at those times when we least understand, when we are most unsure, that we turn to worship. After all, isn’t that the mystery behind the burning bush, the name of God, the words of Jesus to the terrified disciples? I AM.
