Stepping Out (On A Sea Of Uncertainty)

"Stepping Out (On A Sea Of Uncertainty)
Matthew 14:22-33


A man was producing a film titled, “Circus.”  One of the acrobat members of the cast pointed to the high trapeze and said to the producer, “Why don’t you try it?”
The other performers heard the challenge and joined the chant, “Try it!  Try it!  Try it!”
Eyeing the large safety net under the swinging bars, the producer cautiously replied, “Well...why not?”

Very slowly he began to climb the small rope ladder.  Twenty feet...thirty feet..forty feet...until he crawled onto a minuscule platform.  He looked down.  Something I would have never done.  He felt like he was miles above the assembled cast below.  The once, large safety net had shrunk to an unbelievably small size.

“Go ahead, you can do it!” the performers shouted up to him.  Taking the trapeze bar in his perspiring hands and steadying his shaking knees, he prepared to jump.  Across from his platform, a young man was ready to swing out the empty trapeze.  Mustering up all his courage, he cried, “Go!” and went swinging out into space.

“Jump!  Go ahead!  Jump!”  On the third arc he did.  Flying through the air, he reached out and grasped the empty bar with his fingertips, went swinging to the other side, and was pulled safely to the platform, amid the applause and cheers of the cast below.

The producer, once safely back on the ground, made three observations.  First, you can’t hold on to one bar while grasping for the other.  You must let both hands go and leap.  Second, it is frightening and threatening to let go of your security.  And, thirdly, you don’t have forever to make up your mind.  It is a leap of faith and courage.

Not many get the chance to fly on the high trapeze.  I confess, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to do it.  But I think most of us can easily identify with the three observations the producer made following his experience.  We know his learnings are true because of the way life situations challenge us to take a great risk from time-to-time.  With that risk comes the possibility of upsetting the relative security of our lives.

The producers experience, and Peter’s brief walk on the water, are great examples of what is involved in the life of courage and faith with Christ.

The first thing we must deal with is the relative safety that is symbolized by the boat in the story of Peter and the trapeze bar in the story of the producer.  What we must always keep in mind is that in the boat, Peter is still in danger.  There was a storm raging, don’t forget.  That storm was pushing their little boat here and there, up and down, upon the waves.  Water was spilling over the sides.  The boat may have been floating, but the danger was real.  For the producer, there was danger just hanging on to the one trapeze, swinging back and forth, with the possibility of a long fall beneath him.

Both places, the boat and the trapeze are not safe.  There are many situations we get into where we think we are, or would like to be, safe.  But safety is a matter of degrees.  There is often a fine line between safety and tragedy.  Boats can be fine on a relatively calm sea.  But caught in the juggling waves of a sudden storm at sea, and you can feel like you’re only sitting on a cork.

Life is not a safe proposition.  Safety is one of our ultimate concerns as human beings.  A case could be made that the striving after safety is one of our biggest idolatries.  Think about how much we do in life trying to insure our safety and security.  We make the assumption that we can create for ourselves, for the most part, a life of safety.

But then something comes along that totally disrupts that assumption.  A car accident.  A house fire.  A tornado.  A life-threatening diagnosis.  Someone at a school with a gun opening fire.  Three boys in Oklahoma who killed a girl just for the fun of it while she was jogging.  Much of our anger in those kinds of life circumstances, really comes from that assumption that we thought we were safe.  All of a sudden we have to reassess our expectation that life should be safe, and that we have done a really good job to keep it so.

I remember an old “Frank & Ernest” cartoon that showed the two men in a fancy restaurant.  They are looking at the menu, while the waiter stood with pencil and order pad in hand waiting for their order.  Ernest says to the waiter, “I’ll have a plate of escargot and a blindfold.”

That’s often how we sit at the table of life.   We are actually being served something dangerous, and we think we can make it less so, if we just put on a blindfold.  We’re safe, we think, as long as we don’t look around at the storm, or down at the net.  We climb onto the platform, or out of the boat, and close our eyes tightly thinking that will somehow lessen the danger of flying out into mid-air, or walking on water in a storm on a lake.

All of this goes to say that life itself is not a safe proposition.  The multitude of little safety nets we carefully build under ourselves, and the ones we love, belie the fact that we need a lot of security to go on with what we do.  There is fear and there are misgivings in every minute of living every day.

I really like something Helen Keller once said.  This is what she said:  “Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Hold that thought as we turn back to our stories.  Peter decides to take a walk out of the rattled safety of the boat and on to the darkened and raging lake.  The producer decides to let go completely of his trapeze bar and suspend his body totally free in mid-air, high above a “safety net.”  You might wonder why these two men would take such a risk.

There are a number of aspects of our Peter story that arouse our sense of danger and a feeling of a lack of safety.  For one thing, it was late at night--the fourth watch.  The fourth watch was between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.  It was the last watch of the night.  If you’ve ever been out during that time period, think what the world looks like at 3 a.m.  Think how it feels to be up at 3 a.m., tired but unable to sleep, looking out the front window of your home at a world that is dark, lonely and inactive.

Next, into that 3 a.m. world, a fierce wind blows in.  Being out on the lake, it’s not just the wind that’s the problem.  It’s the waves that are being blown and frothed by that wind as well.  The word that Matthew used to describe the lake surface literally means “tormented.”  These waves are not just semi-mild white caps.  This was a scary, foamy mess.

When I was on my trip in Israel, we took a boat trip out on Galilee lake.  It was a beautiful day when we started out.  But then, just as suddenly as that night with the disciples, a wind storm blew across the surface of the lake.  Everything changed, and it was scary.  And we were in a big tour boat, not a little fishing boat.

It was so severe, that the dock at Capernaum where we were to land, was sunk by the waves and the wind.  Our tour guide, Joseph, got on the boats intercom and announced what happened.  Then he said, “Well, folks, we are in the middle of a storm out in the middle of the lake.  We will all have to get out of the boat and walk from here.”
Everyone laughed.
Then he got back on and said, “What? You have no faith?”  We had to go back to where we started and take a bus up to Capernaum.

Because Matthew tells us what time the disciple left, and then tells us what watch of the night it was, we know the disciples had been rowing six to nine hours.  Galilee isn’t that big of a lake.  Six to nine hours of rowing on a calm day would have taken you across the lake and back, and maybe back again.  But rowing that long during the storm had only gotten them to the middle of the lake.

All these factors put together create one scary scene.  Any sense of safety went overboard hours ago.  But all of that wasn’t what put the disciples over the top, in terms of dealing with the fear factor.  It was when they saw Jesus walking on the water and thought he was a ghost.  Matthew tells us, “When they saw him walking on the water, they were terrified.  “It’s a ghost!” they said, and screamed with fear.  It’s kind of fun to think of a little boat full of disciples screaming like 10 year old girls.  But there was nothing they could cling to that was going to make them feel safe at that point.

So what does it take to do so?  The first word Jesus speaks to his disciples from atop the frothy lake was, “Courage!”  That’s what Jesus assessed the disciples needed.  Courage.

Peter hears that word, and decides to take a risk or courage.  “Lord, if it is really you…”  Peter isn’t sure.  “Lord, if it is really you…”  If it truly is Jesus standing upon the aggressive waves, then what must Peter, or any of the others do?  The answer is simple.  If you want to see if it’s Jesus, and you have the courage to do so, you must go to where Jesus is.  Out on the chaos of the waves.  You have to go out on the deep and storm-tossed lake, in a 3 a.m. darkened night.  You have to go out into the chaotic world, not stay in the assumed safety of the boat.

The question we must ask ourselves, as individuals and as a congregation, is, “Would we take such a step out of the boat?”  Would we climb from the safety of having our feet on something solid, and climb out on the liquid surface of the water?  Would we take the trapeze bar in hand and swing out away from the platform?  Would we show that kind of courage?  Because courage is going places with Jesus, and toward Jesus that are totally unsafe.

Most people can stay within the relative safety of their ordered lives.  Most people can keep their feet on the ground and watch others take daring risks. Most people can marvel, while watching the TV news from their couch, at how others are so courageous.

A few decades ago, a wealthy woman from New York city was touring the west.  She arrived one day in Santa Fe.  She noticed an old Native American with a necklace made of curious looking teeth.  “What are those?” she asked.
“Those are grizzly bear teeth, madam,” the man replied.
“Ah, yes,” she nodded.  “And I suppose they have the same value for your people that pearls have for us,” she said snootily.
“Not exactly, madam,” the man replied calmly.  “Anyone can open an oyster.”

When an extraordinary opportunity presents itself--like seeing and meeting the Lord out in the chaos--which involves facing grizzly sized problems and danger--getting out of the boats of our false security so that we can come face-to-face with Christ, how many step overboard?  And how many stay in the boat opening oysters?

What gives a person the ability to walk not through seemingly impossible challenges to go out and meet Jesus where he’s at, but to walk over and on top of those challenges in courage and faith.  That’s the point Jesus was trying to get across, not just to Peter, but the others in the boat.

Two guys were riding a tandem bike when they came to a long, steep hill.  It took a great deal of struggle for them to complete what proved to be a stiff climb.  When they got to the top, the guy in front turned to the other and said, “Boy, that sure was a hard climb!”
The guy on the back seat said, “Yeah, and if I hadn’t kept the brakes on all the way, we would certainly have rolled down backwards!”

I think that’s what Jesus was trying to tell Peter and the disciples once they got back in the boat, after Peter lost courage and sunk.  Jesus called him “Faintheart” asking him why he lost courage and faith, why he put the breaks of doubt on when he was in the midst of an adventurous challenge.

The challenge is going out to meet Jesus where Jesus is at.  It’s not waiting for Jesus to come to us, to show up for us.  Jesus is out there.  On the waves.  In the chaos.  It’s interesting that the boat was an early Christian symbol for the church.  Many wonder, in telling this story, if Matthew was encouraging early Christians to get outside the safety of the church, and get out into the scary world where Christ really is, and is at work.  It’s an important question for the church at any time.

Why climb to the platform of the high trapeze, but then just stand there and never swing out?  Or, at least, as Peter did, taking a few courageous and faithful steps toward Jesus out on the stormy lake.  We are to be bold and courageous in taking steps that will eventually lead us to a greater and deeper faith in what Christ can do in us.  We, as individuals or as a congregation, must be willing to take courageous risks, in which we step from the relative safety of the boat.  Only then will we discover what is possible.  That is our challenge.