Sermon: If you want to walk on water, you better get out of the boat! Mt 14: 22-33:
1. Introduction:
I would like to focus on two particular verses from our Gospel reading today.
They occur in the middle of the story of Jesus walking on the water.
The disciples have run into a storm on the middle of the Lake of Galilee – and Jesus comes out to them – walking of the water.
Peter sees Jesus and asks him if he can come out join him. And Jesus replies:
“Come”
Then Peter got out of the boat, walked on water and came towards Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and began to sink.” (Mt 14:29-30)
When people preach on this passage they almost always seem to focus on Peter’s lack of faith.
But I want to talk about Peter’s faith because I think Peter gets a bad press on this.
I’d like to look on Peter’s actions in a more positive light.
I know of ONLY two people who have walked on water – and one of them was Peter.
PETER WAS PREPARED TO GET OUT OF THE BOAT AND WALK ON WATER.
2. Peter’s Experience of Walking on the Water
When I think about it - what amazes me was that Peter had faith to get out of the boat IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
Having been on the Lake of Galilee in a squall, I know I would not have wanted to get out the boat in a gale.
I know I wouldn’t have the guts – but Peter did.
NONE of the other disciples joined Peter on the Lake!
Are we prepared to get out of the boat?
The question I would like to ask today is:
If Jesus called you to walk on water in the storm, would you be prepared to get out of the boat.
Story: On 28th August 1963, Martin Luther King gave his famous speech “I have a dream” at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.
Who then would have dared to dream that 50 years later we would have had an African American President?
Yet Martin Luther King’s dream, I believe, had much to do with Barak Obama becoming the 44th President of the United States, as did Barak Obama standing as the Democratic Candidate for President in 2008.
We need people who are willing to swim counter current to the popular mood, when inspired by God.
We need those who dream of God’s Kingdom coming here on earth.
Quote: It was the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who wrote:
"If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away. "
Who is the drummer that WE are listening to?
Dreaming dreams is quite biblical actually
2.1. Dreams
God often gave new directions as a result of dreams in the Bible.
2.1.1 Jacob
Jacob had a dream after he has duped his older brother and is fleeing for his life (Gen. 28:10-22).
He was alone, running to his mother’s relatives. But he had stop to sleep.
In this condition, he was a good candidate for an intrusion from beyond.
He dreamt of angels coming and going, messengers and promise-makers.
He heard the voice of God and this holy voice promised to be with this fugitive and to bring him safely home.
2. .2. Pharaoh
Pharaoh, the mighty king of Egypt had a dream that troubled him (Gen. 41:14-24).
Who would have thought that this powerful king would be so vulnerable?
His dream involves a confusing scenario featuring cows and shocks of grain.
He has no clue to the meaning of the dream.
After Pharaoh’s "intelligence community," (Pharaoh’s magicians) failed him, he summoned an outsider, a slave on the advice of His Cupbearer, an Israelite Joseph who had no worldly credentials at all.
As we know Joseph told Pharaoh the meaning of his dream: there would be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine that would destabilise the empire. God tells Joseph how to deal with the problem and Pharaoh listens to Joseph and then tells him to carry out God’s plan.
Truth in the night is spoken to the one who has power in the daylight.
2.1.3. Nebuchadnezzar
In a similar way, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that Daniel interpreted (Dan. 4:19-37).
The dream foretold the imminent judgement that God was going to visit on King Nebuchadnezzar for his arrogance towards God.
But for a year Nebuchadnezzar did nothing to change his ways and so God’s judgement came to pass.
The King lost his mind, was driven out from civilised people and lived for a time like the wild animals around.
However one day Nebuchadnezzar lifted his eyes to heaven his mind returned as he gave glory to God.
And with that he was re-established as King and he made a proclamation recognising YHWH as the one true God.
2.1.4. The Magi
Perhaps the best-known biblical dream appears at the conclusion of the visit by the Wise men (the Magi) to Jesus and his parents:
St Matthew records that "having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road" (Matt. 2:12).
Here Jesus’ life is being threatened by King Herod and so in order to secure a future for the child, the voice of the Holy One intervenes in the night when the royal menace is at rest.
2.1.5. Pentecost in Acts 2
Dreaming dreams has a place in the Christian Church today
On the Day of Pentecost when the power of the Holy Spirit falls on the community, Peter explains what was happening was a fulfilment of a prophecy given 900 years earlier in the book of Joel.
Peter quotes Joel 2:28 which the prophet speaking the voice of God says
“And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.
People dreaming God-given dreams is in fact a Christian gift that goes hand in hand with prophecy
3. The Crossroads
Today, we live at a crossroads in our society so far as making disciples and being Church is concerned.
With our churches being in lockdown people are despairing of how we continue to make disciples and keep our churches going.
Many Christians in our communities feel they are in a storm that threatens to sink the Church, much like the storm Peter and the disciples experienced on the Sea of Galilee in our Gospel reading
However to deal with these gigantic waves around us we need to look to Jesus as Peter did when he walked on water
A Revolution in preaching the Gospel to our parishes and beyond
For me COVID-19 has thrown up a remarkable new form of fulfilling the Great Commission, making disciples and indeed being Church.
And that is using the Internet.
My sister tells me that the Roman Catholic Church has already enthroned a Bishop, based in the USA whose sole remit is to broadcast and reach those Catholics out there in the world via the Internet.
As I am reminded that John Wesley once said: “The world is my parish.”
Because of the Corona Virus, I believe we may well be on the cusp of a new revolution, in the way THAT we are Church and in the way we preach the Gospel, a revolution not seen since the Reformation.
Why do I think this?
4. The Reformation
The Reformation took off, not because of the doctrines of Luther and Zwingli or because of those of Calvin.
No - the Reformation took off because
i) the Reformers provided translations of the Bible into the contemporary language of the Day and
ii) the Reformers used the latest invention of the day the Printing Press to produce copies of the Bible in the contemporary language of the time:
People like William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale translated the Bible into English and their translations were the forerunner of the Authorised Version of the Bible known colloquially as King James Bible
Martin Luther translated the Bible into German.
and Luther’s Bible defined the German language and the spellings that we use today.
Before the Printing Press copies of the Bible were scarcely available. They were handwritten, usually by monks for a patron
And the Bibles would be in Latin or the original languages of Greek for the NT and Hebrew and Aramaic for the Old Testament.
These were languages that only scholars could read and understand.
Tyndale summed up the mission of the Reformation was to provide the Scripture in the vernacular of the days and in sufficient quantity so that
“a boy that driveth the plough, would know more of the Scripture than the Pope does.”
As an aside have you ever thought how long it would take you to copy out the Bible (not including the Apocrypha)?
The Saint John’s Bible was reputed to have been the first completely handwritten and illuminated Bible written since the invention of the printing press
It took a team of 5 scribes about 12 years to complete it with 160 illuminations.
In contrast the Gutenberg printing press enabled the printing of multiple copies of the Bible, at a single page at a time.
So you are looking at printing say 1000 Bibles at one sitting and it takes about half a day to print a page (well 1000 pages for 1000 copies) then taking one of my Bibles - that has about 1200 pages for the Old and New Testament, you can see that 1000 copies of the Bible would take 600 days to produce - that is just under 2 years
So even with the Gutenberg Printing Press you can see that you can produce the Bible for mass consumption far quicker than by hand.
Today we have the first important ingredient of the Reformation
We have the Scriptures in our modern-day languages
But today we have been presented with a better method than making books to get the Gospel out.
With waves of lockdown, people more than ever are turning to communicate via the Internet
For many of us, it seems to be that a storm has broken out on our little lake and the waves seem to be more than just lapping up around us.
And we wonder, as our Churches are shut down for months at a time, how we can continue to preach the Gospel without them
Yet I believe that Jesus is calling us to step out of the boat – out of our comfort zone – in the way in which we continue to preach the Gospel.
6. Broadcasting on the Internet
Story: Last November – before the effects of the Corona Virus were widely recognised and the Government decided to lockdown the country to try to contain it, Maddy said to me that she thought the Lord was calling me into broadcasting.
I had a similar feeling but couldn’t see myself joining UCB or any other of the Christian broadcasting stations.
Yet since the lockdowns of the Coronavirus, I have been broadcasting Prime (that is an Anglican version of a Morning Prayer service) during the week and Holy Communion on Sundays on my Facebook account to reach my parishioners
And it has been a fast learning curve though I have been helped by an ex UCB broadcaster Martin Purnell and Tim Barker in Huntingdon – to get going.
And what has been really surprisingly is that I have been reaching more people this way than the usual Sunday congregations.
Indeed even some people in the parishes who don’t go to Church have told me that they have been watching.
And people as far away as Canada and Kenya, Austria and Switzerland have picked up the broadcasts.
We are living in times where ministers in our Churches are being called to minister differently to the way they were taught in theological College.
The Internet is going to become as important for us as the Printing Press was for the Reformation.
But it is not just broadcasting that we can do with the Internet
7. Publishing sermons on the Internet
I have been putting my sermons up on www.Sermoncentral.com since 2001. I originally did it as a form of back up should my computer crash.
Just recently Sermon Central has started to let its contributors how many hits a week we are having on all of our sermons
And I was surprised that I have reached over 3 million hits – that is people who had clicked into one of the 350 sermons I have put up on the Sermoncentral site since 2001.
And through them I have reached People from all of the various Continents of the world, not just Europe and North America but also Africa and Australasia and South America.
And I have had a number of useful pastoral questions put to me through these sermons published on Sermoncentral.com
8. The Perils of the Internet
But the Internet can be perilous.
There a lot of scammers out there.
Let me give you a couple of examples I have had:
1. If the scammers break into your email account, they can send bogus messages to your friends.
i) One such message was sent from my hacked account to a number of my friends including a Nigerian pastor who is a friend of mine.
It purported to ask him to send me five thousand pounds to help me because I was on holiday in Italy. Actually I was at home in Tilney St Lawrence
The scammer said I had been mugged, had lost my passport, all my money and all my cards and needed money to pay the hotel bill.
In the next sentence the scammer said that I promised to repay my friend.
My Nigerian friend fell for the scam and emailed me back saying he was sending the money off that evening.
Fortunately the scammer had left my original email address on the scam emails and so I was able to get another friend to go over at 10 o’clock at night to stop my Nigerian friend from sending the money.
2. Another scam that I receive more often goes like this
It usually comes from Africa from places like the Ivory Coast and Nigeria and starts “Dearly Beloved”.
My antennae always go up when someone writes to me in Prayer Book English and then very poor English for the rest of the mail
The essence of the scam is this.
The scammer tells me that her “ late husband, who was President of the Bank of Nigeria, has died and has left me with 5 million pounds that I need to get out of the country but I need a UK account to do so.
She goes on to say “I know you are a man of integrity so if you can help me by providing your account details, I can pay the money in and I will give 20% of it for your charity.”
However please can you wire me £10,000 just to get the transaction flowing.”
I innocently wrote back suggesting that she take the £10,000 out of my cut to get the transaction moving.
Surprisingly I never heard back from her!
So if we are going to use the Internet, we need to be careful when we get messages from people we don’t know and also strange emails that purport to come from friends too.
As a friend of mine once said” If it looks like an unbelievable offer – then it probably is!”
So if we do use the Internet to preach the Gospel be on your guard.
9. Conclusion
But going back to the Gospel passage today, it was the very waves that caused Peter concern that eventually caused him to look to Jesus for the solution
“Lord help me, I am sinking”
I think it is these very concerns that should cause us to turn to Jesus for advice as to what to do next.
Perhaps you aren’t a preacher but are very good with IT. Then you can help your minister to a good broadcast out. And at the very least you can pray for your minister as he or she broadcasts over the Internet
John Ortberg has written a fascinating book with the title “If you want to walk on water you have to get out of the boat”
He tells this amusing story and with this I will close
John and his wife decided to take a balloon ride with another couple.
Once they got in the air, it became obvious that John’s wife was terrified.
To calm her down he struck up a conversation with the pilot. He knew his response wasn’t going to help when the pilot began with, 'Dude. It’s like this.'
When he was done with telling Ortberg how he got the job as the pilot, John’s wife responded,
“You mean to tell me that we are a thousand feet up in the air with an unemployed surfer who
started flying hot-air balloons because he got drunk, crashed a pickup, injured his brother, has never been in this one before and doesn’t know how to bring it down?”
Then the wife of the other couple looked at John Ortberg and spoke—the only words either of them were to utter throughout the entire flight.
“You’re a pastor. Do something religious.“
So I took an offering. !!!!
More seriously John added :
But the great question at a moment like that is,
Can I trust the pilot?"
Can we trust Jesus when he calls us out of the comfort of the boat into the raging storm?
If we are going to be effective witnesses to Christ, in the 21st Century we need to stop looking at the waves as obstacles and see them, instead as a call to get out of the boat – and as an opportunity for mission.
Amen
