Who Was That Masked Man?

"Who Was That Masked Man?
Matthew 16:13-20

Comedienne Lily Tomlin once said, "I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific."  Funny.  But nonetheless true.  Too many people have not been specific enough about the somebody they've always wanted to be.  Too many settle for something less than they should or could have been.  Or chase after being someone that just doesn't fit who they really are.

And some, in the pursuit of becoming that somebody, lose sight of who or what that is.  In a biography of the actor Peter Sellers titled, The Mask Behind the Mask, Peter Evans says that actor Peter Sellers played so many roles he sometimes was not sure of his own identity. Approached once by a fan who asked him, "Are you Peter Sellers?" Sellers answered briskly, "Not today," and walked on.

Don't you feel like that some days?  In the push and shove of life, some days our identity does get lost.  There are days our anger goes full flush and we lose who we are in that red, hot-faced state.  There are days we may be so depressed that self-identity is hard to come by at the bottom of that kind of well.  And there are days we are putting out so many fires, trying to take care of so many people's needs, we forget who we are and that we need to remember to take care of ourselves.

When we think of the identities we have, the kinds of persons we are, the kinds of people we think we are, we must realize that a good part of that identity is not of our own making.  That's often a painful realization especially in the teenage years.

What we soon realize is that others have just as big a part in shaping our identities as we do.  We may not want to admit that, but it is true.  Alistair Cooke was, prior to his death, best known in America as the stately host of the PBS show, "Masterpiece Theater."  But in his native England, Cooke's fame rested largely on his "Letter From America," a 15 minute essay broadcast weekly over BBC radio to more than one million Britons.  When asked hew he felt he was perceived by his two across-the-pond audiences, Cooke responded, "It's comical but true.  I seem to be seen in America as a benign old English gentleman, and in England as an enlightened American."

The point is, no matter how we think we really are, people will have their own perceptions, and act towards us according to those perceptions.  Montaigne once said that, "A man is hurt not so much by what happens as by others opinions of what happened."  That's the sad truth.

We can expand on that statement in terms of our identities.  A lot of times it is not so much who we are as it is people's opinions of who we are that shape our identities.  That's what Jesus is wrestling with in this story that was read from Matthew.  Jesus knew who He was.  But He is not sure anyone else does.  Other people seem to have charge of His reputation and identity through their opinions and conversations with each other.

Jesus can't find that out by Himself.  When people have opinions about others, that have to do with their perceptions of those others, the others are usually not in on those kinds of conversations.  We do not tell others, to their face, how we perceive them to be, what kind of person we see them to be.  We talk about those kinds of things behind others backs.  But Jesus has 12 spies—the disciples—who can infiltrate the crowds and find out what the people are saying about Jesus.

Jesus found out from his opinion poll taking disciples, that there are three general perceptions being held about him by people.  Everyone is looking at Jesus, but coming up with different perceptions.  Those visions of what kind of person they thought Jesus was were attached to two figures from the past history of the Jewish religion, and one who is a contemporary of Jesus.  All three were larger than life kinds of people.

They were Elijah, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist.  They were people who any of us would be proud to be associated with.  Certainly Jesus must have felt that way.  Or would he of?  Why did the people choose these three men around which to focus their perceptions of Jesus?  Why not Moses?  Or Abraham?  Or David?

There are interesting qualities of Elijah, Jeremiah and John the Baptist that may be coming into play from the people's perspective.  I want to highlight those qualities because I think they are still being used in our current evaluation of Jesus.

Let's look first at Jeremiah.  He was, without a doubt, one of Israel's greatest prophets.  He was a spokesman for God during some of the darkest hours in Israel's history.  But this opinion of Jeremiah is one gained looking back on things.  It is after the flow of history has shown us that what Jeremiah said was true, and came about, that we hold him up as a great voice of God.

But what is interesting, yet tragic, is that while Jeremiah was alive, and trying to be a faithful witness of God's word, not many paid attention to him.  And those who did, tried to avoid him.  He was imprisoned.  He was thrown down old wells and left to die in the mud.  But more importantly, no one took him, or his words, seriously.  He was ignored.  No one understood who he really was.  In the end, Jeremiah was stoned to death by his own people.

So, when people said they thought Jesus was another Jeremiah, are they really saying, "Here is a person who is fun to watch, but for the most part we can ignore"?  Are they saying, "His message is interesting, and he's a good storyteller, but we don't have to take him with much seriousness"?

That has to be the majority opinion of our modern, general population towards Jesus.  That Jeremiah overlay upon Jesus is the most prevalent today.  People, for the most part, just don't pay attention to Jesus.  He is not someone who is taken seriously in the modern flow of culture.  People listen to his words but go away as if they had been entertained rather than engrossed by them.  We hear what he says and live as we please.

"Who do people say that I am?" Jesus asked.
"Some say, 'Jeremiah.'" is the answer.

Others said Elijah.  Elijah's life provides some of the best reading in the Old Testament.  He was someone who had God's ear and spoke with God's voice, and summoned the very powers of God out of the sky.

He is reported to have never died.  When he was walking with his protege, Elisha, one day, this amazing fiery chariot appeared out of the sky, drove between Elijah and Elisha creating a whirlwind.  The whirlwind caught up Elijah and pulled him into heaven.

Because of that, the tradition was that Elijah would return to earth as a forerunner to the coming of the Messiah.  Elijah was to pave the way, and be the herald for the coming Savior of the world.

So when people looked at Jesus and perceived him to be Elijah, what they were saying was, "Yes, this guy is important, but he is not the Savior."  They were making the evaluation that Jesus did have some religious significance but that he was only the warm-up act for the real show.

It isn't hard to see the modern applications of that perception of Jesus.  Yes, Jesus is important as a moral teacher, as a spokesman for God, but He is not the great liberator of God, sent to save us from our maladjusted selves.  People can accept Jesus as a great man, but taking that next step of accepting Him as Peter did:  "…the Messiah, the Son of the Living God," that is the hard part.  We can accept Jesus as an Elijah; accepting Him as a Savior makes us squirm too much.

And again, who pays much attention to the warm-up act before the real show?  We paid our money to see the real thing, and if we can make Jesus out to be the warm-up act, then we don't have to take Him with much seriousness, and with only half our attention.

The last of the three people identified with Jesus was John the baptist.  One of the qualities of John the Baptist was shared by the other two men:  John really knew how to stick to his verbal guns.  He, like Jeremiah and Elijah, was fearlessly outspoken about what was right and wrong, what was a proper lifestyle and was not for the people of God, and would not back down on any of their words even if they were spoken against high and exalted rulers.  For Jesus to be associated with that kind of forthright speaking must have been a compliment.

But another quality that John shared with the other two men was that they were all a bit odd.  Their very message, and often the way it was delivered, put them at odds with the social and religious order of things.  Jeremiah walked the streets of Jerusalem bare naked with his arms tied to an ox yoke, and as he walked he would shout out, "As I am, so will Israel be when the Babylonians come in and destroy everything."

Elijah was the bi-polar figure who at his heights called down fire out of heaven and destroyed idol worshippers, and then would turn around and be found cowering and whimpering in a cave, all depressed thinking he was all alone in the world.  And John the baptist—I mean the guy dressed in these weird animal furs like a Neanderthal, and ate bugs for his food.

These guys aren't the kind of people you would invite over for a poker party or backyard barbecue.  We would look at these three and either say out loud, or at least think to ourselves, "He's not one of 'our' kinds of people."  They were strange.  They were odd.  They were non-establishment kinds of men.

The point should be clear.  For Jesus to be seen as a John the baptist, as an Elijah, or as a Jeremiah by the people of his day is to say, "Jesus is a little odd."  Being closely associated with Jesus may knock your social standing down a few notches, so it is something you better keep quiet about.

We steer clear of odd people.  Or we try to.  Like the guy who found a large, mangy looking mutt in his front yard.  On the collar of the dog was a note that read, "If found, don't bother to return."  That is the way it is with the John the baptist types we run into.  It is amazing who we must pass by each day.

In one of Kurt Vonnegut's short stories, he tells about two women.  One is a corporate executive, smartly dressed, driven to be the best, powerful.  The other woman is a bag lady, living in a cardboard box, apparently eking out a living from her collection held in her stolen shopping cart.  At the end of the story, you find out both women are the same woman.

It must be frustrating when you have a sense of your identity, who you are, what kind of person you are, what you are about, but other people, through their misguided perceptions take charge of your outward reputation.  When that happens, there has to be the wish, especially by Jesus in this case, that at least someone out there knows the real truth about who you are.  Someone who gets it.

And in respect to Jesus, the majority will come up wrong.  The majority will always be trying to figure out how to keep Jesus in safe categories, stuck with labels of impotence.

But there will always be a few, a minority, who will really see, who will through direct relationship, take the time and risk the effort to really know this Jesus, whom the world doesn't pay much attention to, treats him as only a warm-up to the real thing, or as a very odd, non-establishment sort of person.  There will be a few who will close their ears to hearsay and gossip, who will look beneath the surface, and discover the liberator, the Son of God.  Are you one of the few?

Breaking The Law

"Breaking The Law"
Matthew 15:1-20

A book titled, Odd Laws, has compiled laws that are still on the books in some states.  For instance,
In Oregon, it is illegal to hunt in cemeteries.  (You might accidentally kill a dead person!)
In New York it is illegal to arrest a dead person or charge them with some offense.
In Massachusetts it is illegal to sell exploding cigars.
In Tennessee, if you leave a person's gate open you can be fined up to $10.
Also, in Massachusetts, it is not legal to stable a horse on the second floor or higher of a building.  (But I guess it is OK to stable your horse if you are in a ground floor apartment.)
And, in Wyoming, it is the law that spittoons be emptied and cleaned daily.
In Lawrence, Kansas, all cars entering the city limits must first sound their horn to warn the horses of their arrival.
Also in Kansas, rabbits may not be shot from motorboats.

It seems there are laws for everything and every circumstance.  As I have just shown, a number of these laws were written to cover some offense that may have been important decades ago, but are not important anymore.  Yet they still remain in force.  And that is the question with these old laws:  who is going to enforce them?  I mean, are you going to put up a surveillance camera at your gate, if you lived in Tennessee, to see who leaves it open and should therefore be fined?

Should these antiquated and unnecessary laws be kept on the law books?  They are laws, after all.  But just because they are laws, does that make them sacrosanct, unalterable, and therefore unremovable?

A bigger, more philosophical question might be, Why do we need all these laws?  What really is the most important thing to remember behind all these laws?

And an even bigger question is, What does God really expect from us?  How does God really want us to be?  Does it matter to God if we break the law, and keep our horse in our third floor apartment?  Or if we do not clean our spittoon every day?  Or, as the Pharisees confronted Jesus that day, if we do not wash our hands properly?  What is most important to God?

Notice that in this conversation, Jesus ends up talking with three different groups of people.  First, Jesus talks with the Pharisees and Teachers who are concerned only with the fine nuances of the Law of Moses.

At this time, Jesus was in Gennesaret.  This delegation of Pharisees and Teachers of the Law of Moses came from Jerusalem.  It was an approximately 90 mile trip.  On foot, it would have taken 3 or 4 days.  On horseback, maybe a day and a half.

This was an investigative delegation, most surely sanctioned by the Sanhedrin, which was the main Jewish ruling council.  This wasn't a sympathetic delegation that was truly interested in Jesus.  Reading Jesus' words to them over and over, it is clear to me that his tone is one of exasperation and frustration.

Certainly Jesus must have been wondering why they came all that way, on foot, to ask him why his disciples don't wash their hands according to the Jewish religious traditions.  Why not a better or more profound question like, Will Wile E. Coyote ever catch the roadrunner?  Or, What is the meaning of life?  Or, Is there life on other planets?  Or, What does God really demand?

Instead, they ask the weighty question about hand washing.  Here is what the law required.  Jewish law requires that the water used for ritual washing be naturally pure, unused, not contain other substances, and not be discolored. The water also must be poured from a vessel as a human act—that is, the water can not flow out of a tap. Water should be poured on each hand at least twice. Contemporary practice is to pour water on each hand three times for most purposes using a cup, and alternating the hands between each occurrence.

But nothing is said about the towel used to dry your hands.  I'm not sure what is supposed to happen if, earlier in the day, unbeknownst to the adults, their kid came by and wiped his nose on the drying towel.  All that hand washing for nothing.

Notice, also, how the Pharisees qualified and substantiated how important it was to wash hands in this way:  “Why is it that your disciples disobey the teaching handed down by our ancestors?"  This is just another way of saying, "We have always done it this way."  To the Pharisees, the only reason hand washing is important is not for hygiene or some other logical reason.  It is only important because it was an ancestral law.  "We have done this for a long, long time."

Jesus' reply uses their rationale against them.  He questions their disobedience to a not long held tradition, but to God's law in the 10 Commandments.  Specifically, "Honor thy father and mother."  The Pharisees got around that Commandment in the following way.  It became Jewish tradition, according to this Commandment, that the children are to take care of their parents until they are dead and buried.  This means take care of them in every way, but most importantly, financially.

But the Pharisees got around that by saying they could dedicate their wealth to God and God's work, and thereby not have to be responsible to their mother and father financially.  They make an oath to God about what they do with their money, and an oath, according to Jewish law was irrevocable.  What the Pharisees had come up with was just traditional law based on one of the Ten Commandments, but the traditional teaching usurped and was given more weight than the commandment itself—which was from God.

So, what the Pharisees and Teachers of Jewish law were saying was, if you want God to like you, you better follow the rules and traditions that have been held on to for centuries.  But what Jesus was replying back to them was, If you want God to like you, if you really want to know what God expects, your heart and God's heart must beat as one, and your thoughts and God's thoughts better be in synch.


Next, the conversation shifts to the crowd.  In the previous chapter of Matthew, we find out that this crowd was made up of "all the sick" in that area, including those who carried or brought the sick.

Matthew says that Jesus called the crowd together.  In other words, he was very intentional in who he was addressing next.  He wanted them specifically to listen to what he had to say.

Most of those in the crowd, being sick, diseased, or touched such people would have been deemed "unclean" by the Pharisees.  Being unclean described, from the Old Testament times, a person or thing who contracted ritual "uncleanness" (or "impurity") from a variety of ways: by skin diseases, discharges of bodily fluids, touching something dead, or eating unclean foods.

An unclean person in general had to avoid that which was considered holy and take steps to return to a state of cleanness. Uncleanness placed a person in a "dangerous" condition under threat of divine retribution, even death, if the person approached the sanctuary. Uncleanness could lead to expulsion of the unclean person from the community. In order to avoid being expelled, the unclean person had to undergo purification.  Hand washing was one of the ways of purification—to become clean again.

Jesus, in one brief statement to the crowd, wipes away all Jewish traditional teaching about what is considered clean and unclean.  Because, as I just stated, the Jewish leaders used their traditional teachings about cleanness and uncleanness to keep people away from God.  Jesus would have none of it.

Hand washing, what you can eat or not eat, whether you have a physical malady or are healthy—all that doesn't matter anymore in the big scheme of things.  Those rules are simply externals.  As Jesus stated in verse 9, "…the (Pharisees) teach human rules as though they were my laws!’”  Jesus alone, as the Son of God, knows what God is and is not interested in.

This must have been great news to the sick and infirm, as well as to those who brought them.  According to Jesus' statement, now it is not a matter of formalistic legislation and tradition.  That is too easy.  Instead it is a matter of the heart:  to love and live with the unlovely and unloveable; to help the needy at the cost of one's own time, money and comfort; to forgive what we think is unforgivable.

What matters to God is not so much how we act, but why we act.  Jesus is saying the how will follow the why, once we get that right.  Legalism and keeping the law can not substitute for, or assume a relationship with God exists.  It just means you are following the prescribed laws and traditions.  And the opposite is also true, to the delight of the crowd:  neither can we assume that some physical or mental condition automatically excludes us from relationship with God.


Lastly, Jesus has a conversation with the disciples.  They were, especially Peter, worried about how Jesus had insulted and offended the Pharisees and Teachers of traditional law.  Instead of trying to patch things up with the Pharisees, to Peter's horror, Jesus insults them even more deeply, making his statement about the blind leading the blind so that both fall into the ditch.

One of my favorite Farside cartoons shows a posse with torches being lead by a bloodhound through a dark forrest.  The bloodhound is thinking to himself, I can't smell a darn thing."  It was evidently important to Jesus that those who are leading others, especially in terms of relationship with God, know where they are going.

The significant question here is, Who is Jesus' intended audience for his blind leading the blind statement?  The assumption is the Pharisees and Teachers.  That would be a safe assumption.  But what if Jesus was doing a bank shot off the Pharisees at his disciples?

Peter kind of gets that it was a bank shot statement.  He asked Jesus the meaning of the ditch parable.  What Peter is really asking: “Are we the ones you are talking about?  Are we the blind?  By taking sides with the Pharisee delegation about them being miffed, are we not understanding something significant here?  Are we, by being sympathetic to the Pharisee rule mongers, missing something important?”

Soon, Jesus will be turning the whole Gospel operation over to the disciples.  If they don't get grace, if they don't get what God is about in God's opened armed embrace of everyone, then they will only become blind guides, leading themselves and others into the ditch.  If they go the way of rules and judgement, of exclusion and hatred, and not love and grace, they will be failures in God's eyes.  Instead of what God wants from us, we will become the hate mongers, the divisive, the KKK, the white supremacists of Charlottesville.  The ditch, and not God, will become our future.


Jesus talked to three different crowds that day.  His message was the same to all of them.  Deciding who is in and who is out of the club is not the way of Jesus, and is not to be the way of Jesus' followers.  Making rules that exclude and demean others is not the way of Jesus or of his followers.  Majoring on the minors is not the way of Jesus or of his followers.  Those who push only the rules of exclusion are only demonstrating the truth that their hearts are empty of love as God loves.  That they have gotten something so basic and so Godly so wrong.  That they are in the ditch.  And the only way to get out of the ditch is to break the traditional laws of hate and exclusion.

If You Want To Walk On Water...

"If You Want To Walk On Water..."
Matthew 14:22-31

One time I was fishing with my Uncle Sonny in Puget Sound.  This one day we put the boat out from Neah Bay, which is on the tip of the peninsula on the state of Washington.  It's the place where Puget Sound, the watery gap between the peninsula of the state and the mainland of the state, meets the Pacific Ocean.

It's a much better ride in the boat if you can get positioned inside the Sound and away from the mouth of the peninsula where the Sound meets the open Pacific Ocean.  This day we were just inside the boundary waters of Puget Sound, but not far enough in.  We were fishing for King Salmon, fish that were as big as me at that time.

I actually hooked one that trip.  It jumped out of the water, full length, and Sonny gave out a shout.  I was pulling back on the pole as strongly as a kid could.  The pole was bent in a perfect letter C.  But it was hard to hold on, and it was hard to play that huge fish for one reason.  The swells.  The swells are huge rolling waves, and they were as high as a two story house.  The little boat would slide up to the top of a swell.  It seemed like we were on the top of the world.  Then we'd slide down the watery wall of that swell and I was afraid we were going to scrape the ocean bottom.

Up and down, and back and forth we'd go, me trying to hold on to the pole, as well as trying to hold down my breakfast.  It didn't take long for me to lose both.  The line snapped and I lost my King Salmon.  And with one more lurch of the boat on a swell, I hung over the side and lost my breakfast.  I drank a lot of ginger ale the rest of the day.  And as far as our fishing luck went, we never had another bite the rest of the day.


The disciples in the fishing boat maybe faced swells half the size Sonny and I rode that day.  They couldn't put up the sail, or the wind would have ripped it apart.  They were rowing.  Rowing on swells that were taking them up and down.  Rowing on whitecaps that were throwing water into the boat almost faster than they could bail it out.  It was not just a scary situation because they were hanging over the side seasick, with a storm blowing.  It was scary because they thought they were literally going to die.

Then, Jesus entered the scene.  Where had Jesus been?  He was at some lonely place praying.  When Jesus went into the wilderness of temptation, he prayed and fasted for 40 days, then the temptations started.  In the Gospel of Mark story of the healing of the demon possessed boy, the disciples asked why they couldn't force out the demon.  Jesus said it can happen only by prayer.  (Mark 9:14ff)  In this walking-on-the-water story, Jesus prayed and then faced the forces of chaos symbolized in the turbulent lake.  Jesus prepared himself to face all forms of chaos and evil in prayer.  Pray first, then stand up to the powers.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the great preachers of any time, wrote a letter to a woman in Missouri who had recently had a nervous breakdown.  Fosdick himself had suffered such a breakdown.  Listen to what he wrote in his letter to this woman:
Just one thing more:  There are two techniques for living.  One is willpower and drive.  The other is inward receptivity and spiritual hospitality toward God.  I judge that you have excellent willpower and that you have relied on it, but now you face the baffling fact that in a nervous breakdown your willpower is sick.  What you try hard with has gone to pieces and the harder you try the worse off you are.  Let go and let God in.  You must work on that other technique—receptivity.  As all your physical strength comes not by willing it but by absorbing…so your spiritual strength comes by intake of inward hospitality towards God.

Jesus  was all about making that inward hospitality towards God his main priority.  It was from that absorption of God through prayer that gave him the strength to face all the chaos and evil he did.


This scene that Jesus entered, in this story, is a boat with twelve men scared stiff.  The boat was considerable distance from land.  Land represented safety, so the boat was nowhere near safety.

The boat and the disciples were probably far enough out on the lake that going back would have been just as far as going forward.  But going back would have been with the wind and a quicker journey to land and safety.  On land, they could wait until the storm blew by and then sail calmly to the other side.  Why did they keep rowing hopelessly, slowly, fearfully against the wind?

The story says the boat was being "pounded" (NIrV).  The word in Greek literally means, "tormented."  That speaks not to what was just happening to the boat by the wind and the waves, but also what was happening in the boat.  Everything about this scene speaks about torment, which describes an underlying chaotic and mindless evil at work.  It wasn't just bad weather.  It was something much more malevolent.


And the story tells us that when Jesus arrived on the lake it was "the fourth watch."  The daytime was split up into four watches, four quarterly segments.  The fourth watch was between 2 a.m. to sunrise in the morning.  If you are ever up at 3 or 4 a.m. and you're looking out your front window, what does the world look like at that time?  What kinds of feelings do you have when you're up alone at 3 a.m.?  Add that feeling to the rigors of rowing constantly against the storm and you'll have an inkling as to what the disciples are feeling.

This little detail about the watch lets us know how long the disciples have been in the boat.  Six to nine hours.  Six to nine hours!  On a calmer day they could have been back and forth on the lake at least a couple of times.

Having spent this amount of time on the lake, struggling against a foaming storm, it begs us ask the question, why didn't Jesus come sooner?  In the raising of Lazarus story (John 11) when Jesus heard about Lazarus being ill, instead of going immediately, he delayed for two days.

Then Lazarus died.  Both Lazarus' sisters, Mary and Martha, said to Jesus, "If you had been here our brother would not have died."  Both seem miffed at Jesus' supposed intentional delay.  Jesus told the disciples that he delayed so that they "may believe".

Doubting Thomas had to wait a week for the appearance of the Risen Christ.  So this part of the story makes us face the fact that Jesus did things according to his own timing—God's timing—when everything would be just right.  Even though the timing may not be best according to our own estimation.

It is into this scene that Jesus walked.  On the surface of Lake Galilee.  To a tormented boat, full of tormented disciples, on a tormented lake surface, Jesus walked.  Seeing Jesus, the disciples did what any self-respecting disciple would do—they all screamed like little girls thinking they were seeing a ghost.  Real people don't walk on water, especially when that water is one big storm.

But what other options would you have, looking at that figure out on the waves, if you were a disciple in the boat?  Is it a ghost or phantom?  A hallucination?  Or was it really Jesus?  We have to decide if the gospel writers knew what they were talking about or not, in writing this story down.  Either it happened or it was made up.  Those are the only two options open for us.

So if you think the gospel writers were on the up and up, then you have to ask the next question:  "Why?  Why did Jesus walk on water?  Was he just taking a short-cut home hoping the disciples wouldn't spot him?  Was he playing a prank on the disciples, hoping to scare them out of their tunics (which he pretty much did)?  Is this all just a bit of that Son of God sense of humor ("Ha ha; gotcha!  You all have to change your underwear, don't ya?").

Peter isn't sure.  Notice what he says to Jesus:  “Lord, is it you?  If it is…  "If."  Jesus must be standing still, on top of the water, some little distance from the boat, no longer coming toward the boat.  The only way to find out if it's really Jesus, within the bluster of the storm, is to get close to him.  The only way to get close to Jesus, to see for sure, is to get out of the boat and go see.  Jesus wasn't coming at them; they'd have to go to him.

No one in the boat is evidently rowing the boat toward Jesus either.  They want to know, but they don't want to know.  "Lord, is it you?  If it is, don't come to us; we'll send someone over to you.  Peter, go see if it's him!"  Because part of what's going on here is that if it really is Jesus then the disciples have to reevaluate who Jesus is in a major way.  Before, they may have thought he was a great guy who told fun little stories.  Now he's someone who walks on water in the middle of a storm.

Something else that's going on is that if you want to see Jesus, where do you have to go?  Not to some monastery where he's sitting in front of his prayer candle chanting scripture.  If Peter, or any of the other disciples want to see Jesus, to really see Jesus, they have to get out of the boat and step into the chaos.  They have to step out onto the deep, onto some place where they can get way over their heads very quickly.  They have to step out on the water, where everything is fluid, everything is moving, everything is not steady or solid.  They have to be willing to go into a chaotic world, not stay in the safety of the boat.

And when you realize that, when you ask Jesus if you can step out of the boat, move away from the safety of the church (if the boat represents the church), and you ask Jesus if you can come to him, out there, you better be ready for his answer.  To Peter, Jesus said, "Come."  Jesus didn't say, "No, no, no; that's OK Peter; I'll come to you and the others.  You guys just stay there in the safety of your little boat."  No.  Jesus said, "Come."  "Get out of the boat Peter."

And notice something else.  Jesus didn't promise Peter anything.  "It'll be fine.  Easy peasy.  C'mon Peter.  No problem."  Jesus simply says, "Come," then it's up to Peter to deal with his fears and see what the measure of his faith really is.

Mother Teresa told the story about a young French girl who came to Calcutta to work with the Sisters of Charity.  The girl looked worried.  She went to work in the home for the dying destitute.  Then, after ten days, she came to see Mother Teresa.  She hugged Mother Teresa and said, "I've found Jesus!"
Mother Teresa asked, "Where did you find Jesus?"
The girl responded, "In the home for dying destitutes."
"And what did you do after you found Him?"
"I went to confession and Holy Communion for the first time in fifteen years."
Then Mother Teresa asked, "What else did you do?"
"I sent my parents a telegram saying that I found Jesus."
Mother Teresa looked at her and said, "Now, pack up and go home.  Go home and give joy, love, and peace to your parents."  Then Mother Teresa wrote,
She went home radiating joy, because her heart was filled with joy; and what joy she brought her family!  For if we want others to become aware of the presence of Jesus, we must be the first ones convinced of it.

Peter steps out of the boat.  What's going through his mind?  What would be going through your mind, as you hoisted one foot and then the other over the side of the boat and stepped out on the raging surface.  Would you be asking yourself, "Can I do this?  Am I convinced of that?"

In order to get to the answer to that question, the only way you are going to find out is if you get out of the boat.  And you aren't going to get out of the boat unless you are convinced.  When I'm thinking about some huge project or challenge that I'm facing, I assess my own abilities and strengths.  I compare those assets to the challenge in front of me.  "Can I do it?"

That's what Peter did before and during the point he stepped out on the lake's surface.  He heard and felt the wind.  He took a bracing gulp as he felt the cold water on his feet.  But he also had to be measuring his own faith against the power of the waves.  He's being forced not only to see the waves; he's also seeing his answer to the question, "Can I do this?" and his answer is "No."  That's when he sinks.

If we're honest, that's most of our answers.  Most might risk getting out of the boat, but at the same time that voice in our heads is saying, "I can't do this."

And that's exactly what Jesus wants us to find out.  Focusing only on ourselves we are incapable of handling the chaos of the world.  We ask ourselves the question, "Can I do this?"  No, you can't.  But if you asked the right question, "Can WE (me and Jesus) do this?"  The answer is, Yes.

When Peter began to sink, the story tells us that "right away" Jesus reached out and grabbed Peter, keeping him from sinking.  To his credit, Peter walked out and got close enough to Jesus that Jesus could reach out to him.  Jesus' hand is always ready to catch those who risk coming out into the chaos of the world to meet him and do his bidding—even though we may get over our heads.

After Jesus grasps Peter they have a brief conversation.  "Why did you doubt?" Jesus asked.  The answer is fairly obvious, and Jesus wanted Peter to struggle with the answer.  Peter focused on the wrong question:  "What can I do?" rather than the right question:  "What can WE do?"  Peter focused on the storm and decided he wasn't going to measure up to that.  Had Peter kept his focus on Jesus, the storm wouldn't have mattered.  Peter was so close.

And here's a bit of a twist.  What if Jesus didn't ask his question to Peter, but to the disciples still inside the boat?  What if Jesus was asking why they doubted, and showed that doubt by not getting out of the boat as Peter did?  Then Jesus' question becomes our question—aimed at those who are too afraid or doubting to take their faith outside of the boat, outside the walls of the church, and into the chaos of the world.

Do you want to walk on water?  In other words, do you want to express your faith and not your doubt?  Do you want to be out there where Jesus is, even if it is a scary place to be?  Do you want to be more than yourself, and be that self with Jesus at your side as your strength?  If you want to walk on water, then you'll have to step out of the boat.

Chiselers

"Chiselers"
Genesis 32:22-31

Because Jacob's story is written up in the Bible, we make an automatic assumption that he must have been an OK kind of guy.  Isn't getting into the Bible better than getting into "Who's Who?"?  But the truth of the matter is that Jacob is an out-and-out scoundrel.  He is a shyster and chiseler of the first order.  He is an unscrupulous rascal who would stoop to any level to get what he wanted.  He was a cheat, who took advantage of his own family more than any others.

People in ancient Israel were named according to some personality or physical trait, and Jacob was given the right name.  His meant, "a heal", "a cheat", or, "a trickster."  It is fabled that the Greek god, Prometheus, was such a trickster that he changed into any person he chose to be.  He changed into so many different people, he eventually forgot who he was.  Jacob never forgot who he was, but he played out his conniving and manipulating like an expert, double-talking Prometheus.

Reading through Jacob's story, one would be hard put to find any kind of confession of faith on his lips.  His story begins in the 25th chapter of Genesis, and the first time he even prays is at chapter 32.  In this prayer, he has the sense of himself that he hasn't a leg to stand on before God other than a promise God made to him long ago.  That's the thing that makes the whole story of Jacob so odd—in spite of it all, he was blessed by God.


From the very first, Jacob had been wrestling with someone.  And I mean from the very first.  In chapter 25 of Genesis there is the story of Jacob wrestling with his twin brother Esau in their mother's womb.  Mothers who have carried active babies know what Rebecca was going through, maybe only partially.

Rebecca had been unable to have children, so her husband Issac prayed to God on her behalf.  With such a violent pregnancy, she probably wished that her husband had kept his prayers to himself.  At one point she screams, "Why should something like this happen to me!?" (25:22)  It certainly must be a question that has echoed across the ages by most women living through a tough pregnancy.  When the twin boys were finally born, Esau came first, but Jacob was holding on to his brother's heal as a close second.  (25:22-26)

The sibling rivalry was to continue, as Jacob cunningly wrestled away Esau's rights of the first born.  Taking advantage of Esau's hunger after a long hunting trip, Jacob demanded those rights of the first born from his brother for a bowl of red bean soup.

Then, with the less-than-scrupulous help of his mother, Jacob duped his father into thinking he was actually Esau.  The ailing and sightless Issac knew none the better, and gave his last will and testament—the fatherly blessing reserved only for the first born—to Jacob.

Esau, once he found out what his no-account brother had done, was livid, and vowed to kill Jacob the moment their father died.  When Rebecca heard of Esau's vow, she quickly sent Jacob off to uncle Laban's, nearly 400 miles away.  Now you might think Jacob would give up his wrestling ways now that he and Esau had put some miles between each other.  Not so.  This kind of rivalry must have run in the family.  No sooner does Jacob arrive at uncle Laban's then they start making deceitful deals with each other—mostly about Jacob's desire to marry Laban's daughter, Rachel.

Jacob and Laban continued their conniving and contriving ways with each other for over 14 years, until Jacob had, according to Laban's son's telling of it, "got all his wealth from what our father owned" (31:1).  Jacob the shyster had taken his own uncle for everything he had.  When Jacob saw that the handwriting was on the wall—that his days were AGAIN being numbered—he took all he had accumulated and headed for home.


It does not appear to be a very edifying story.  What I mean is, if Jacob, as the result of duping his brother, his blind old father, and his uncle Laban, had fallen on evil times, if he had been ostracized by his family and friends and sent off into the wilderness somewhere to suffer the pangs of a guilty conscience and to repent of his evil ways, then of course the moralists would have an easy time with this story.  As a man sows, so shall he reap.  Honesty is the best policy.  But this is not the way things fell out at all.

On the contrary, far from suffering for his dishonesty, Jacob clearly profited from it.  Not only was the blessing his, not to mention the birthright, but now he had tremendous wealth.  There are certainly no signs in this story that Jacob's conscience troubled him in the least.

The first Christian emperor was Constantine, who in 311 A.D. stopped the pagan persecutions and granted enormous favors to the Christian church.  Yet as a Christian, Constantine ruthlessly suppressed non-Christians, coerced the faithful, and even murdered some of his own family.  As if to take no chances on less than a thorough conversion, Constantine postponed baptism until the moment before his death.

Like Constantine, the story of Jacob's life, to this point almost seems to be saying "dishonesty is the best policy."  I do not mean extreme dishonesty such as larceny, blackmail, or perjury.  I mean Jacob's kind of dishonesty, which is also apt to be your kind and mine.  This is a policy that can take a person a long way in this world, if that is our wish.

This is not a very noble truth about life, but I think that it is a truth nonetheless.  It has to be faced, just as this ancient cycle of stories faced it.  It can be stated quite simply:  the shrewd and ambitious person who is strong on guts and weak on conscience, who knows very well what he or she wants, and directs all their energies toward getting it—the Jacobs of this world—all in all, those kinds of people do pretty well.  Again, I do not mean the criminal actions of a person, that might break the law to get what they want.  I mean the person who stays just within the shadows of the law and who from time-to-time simply manipulates that law a little for their own purposes.

There was a cartoon that showed a guy in prayer.  He was saying, "God, can you help me but sort of make it look like I did it all myself?"  That was Jacob, only he never took the time to ask God to help him that much.  He just went ahead and grabbed what he wanted along the way.

There is no law against taking advantage of somebody else's stupidity, for instance.  The world is full of Esaus—suckers, that is—and there is no need to worry about giving a sucker an even break.  Chances are that he will never know what hit him anyway.

And the world has its share of people like Issac (Jacob's father), of people who cannot help loving us no matter what we do.  The Jacobs of this world will use and abuse that love pretty much as they please, knowing perfectly well they will be loved anyway.

Only, what does it all get Jacob?  The Jacobs of our world are not going to be ostracized by too many people, and may not even be too strongly criticized.  The world may see him as a "good guy."  This policy of dishonesty where necessary can get the Jacobs a great deal:  the invitation, or the promotion; the job; the pat on the back, and the admiring wink.  But it also gets him something that he does not expect:  a confrontation with God.


Jacob was on his way home.  He had overstayed his welcome with uncle Laban, his father Issac had died, and it was time to take possession of the land that God promised to Abraham, to Issac, and now to him.  When he reached the river Jabbok, which was the last border to cross before entering the land of promise, he, in an act of cowardice, sent his family, servants, and livestock ahead of him to face his brother Esau first; but he remained behind to spend the night safely on the near shore alone.

And then it happens.  Out of the deep of the night a stranger leaps.  He hurls Himself at Jacob, and their bodies are lashed together in a struggle through the darkness.  It is terrible enough not to see your attacker's face, and the stranger's strength is more terrible still, the strength of more than a man.  All through the night they struggle until just before morning, when it looks as though Jacob is going to come out on top, again—as he usually does; as he would expect he would.  The stranger cries out to be set free before the sun rises.

Then, just as suddenly, all is reversed.  The stranger merely touches the hollow of Jacob's thigh, and in a moment Jacob is lying there crippled and helpless.  The sense we have, which Jacob must have had, is that the whole struggle was from the beginning fated to end this way.  That the stranger had simply held back until now, letting Jacob exert all his strength and almost win so that when he was defeated, he would know that he was truly defeated.  That he would know that not all his shrewdness, will, conniving, or brute force he could muster were enough to win this battle.

Only then does a hint of realization of who he is wrestling with begin to dawn in Jacob's mind.  At first, Jacob wrestled God as if God were an adversary.  When realization came with the light, he clutched to God for a blessing, for forgiveness, for life.  Jacob would not release his grip.  Only now it is not a grip of violence but of need, like the grip of a drowning man.

After asking—nay, demanding— of God a blessing, God asks Jacob his name.  As I mentioned before, the name had to do with the way a person was, what their character was.  For Jacob, to tell his name was to reveal to God, and to himself, all that he was, his whole shady nature.  Instead of hearing a name of honor, Jacob hears his name, and sees himself for who he really is and has become:  a heal, a cheat, a chiseler, and a swindler.  By saying his name, God is getting Jacob to make a confession of sin.

But God then takes the next step.  His sign of forgiveness is a new name:  "Israel" which means, "the man who struggles with God."  Something new opens up before Jacob, now Israel, that was not seen before.  In each relationship before, he was a struggler.  Now that he had been touched by grace, he saw the need for reconciliation.  He saw that there was great power in humbly reconciling with his brother.  When daylight finally came, the "Stranger" was gone.  And so was Jacob.  There only remained Israel.


Michelangelo is known, among his other artistic achievements, as a master with marble.  He often went directly to the marble quarries to select his own stones.  On one occasion he found a huge block of marble that had been discarded.  He purchased it at a minor cost and set to work with chisel and mallet.  The flawed portions in the block were removed or worked around, and the great sculptor took two years to finish the world-famous statue we know as "David."





















Jacob certainly was a chiseler in the negative meaning of the word.  Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are available to the Jacobs of this world.  But little do the Jacobs realize that God is also a chiseler of a different sort—the Michelangelo sort, who takes us with all our flaws, slowly and painfully begins to chip away, until God's work of art is done:  a person at peace with God and with his brother.  God is the one who chiseled away at Jacob all along, but put the finishing touch on him there by the Jabbok river.  God chiseled away all of Jacob's flaws, but then added one of His own, a mark, like some characteristic mark which was part of every piece God the Artist worked on.  For Jacob, it was the limp.  That way each piece that God works on would know who their Artist was.

Beware of the chiselers.  The Jacobs.  But also beware of The Chiseler, the great Artist who makes great works of art out of flawed stones, Israels out of Jacobs.  And remember the last glimpse we have of Jacob, now Israel, is a humbled figure, silhouetted against the brilliance of dawn, limping home.  He bore on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which was in truth victory, the victory of the human soul being chiseled by the touch of God.