Blogging Towards Sunday
August 10, 2008

Matthew 14:22-36

What does living a faithful life look like in terms of family? environment? political involvement? solidarity with the poor and overlooked?
What does it mean to be a person of faith? Do such people doubt? and what does that look like?

Fear comes in many forms. It seems to be dominant today in our culture, societal system and world outlook: Fear of gasoline prices, energy shortages, our decreasing purchasing power in the light of elevated and escalating prices for food, clothing, and other daily items, the mortgage meltdown and foreclosure escalation, the rise of China and India (and how we're told to be afraid of that), the continued talk of the need for war against terrorists both near and far, both known and faceless.

President Roosevelt said, "The only thing to fear is fear itself." Hopelessly hopeful, deep and complex. Yet those words don't always comfort in the dark of the night. They didn't encourage me per say when I had to choose several years ago between buying diapers or groceries one fateful day in a difficult season for our family. Yet as a follower of Jesus on the way I come back to the larger question of faith in relationship with fear. I did buy the diapers that fateful day, and none of us starved. Did I have faith? Yes. Did I have doubts? I was riddled with them.

Culturally we tend to oppose faith and doubt: you can't have both at the same time, you're either faithful or doubtful. Ironically in the passage for this week Jesus tells his disciples that they're of little faith. It doesn't mean that they faithless. I'm not sure it's even a rebuke. For when you read the Gospels (in particular Matthew) "you of little faith" is consistently the name - some sort of a nick-name - that Jesus gives to the disciples. Those that gave everything to follow Jesus as a new path between the oppressive power of the Roman Emperor and the traditionalist responses of religion (ranging from accommodation to revolution to seclusionary withdrawl), are of little faith. Peter, who walks on the rough raging waters of the sea, is among those of little faith. Would that we all be such people of little faith: obedient, seeking, searching, failing then getting up and starting again, succeeding and celebrating, discerning, discovering and deepening an experience of the mystery of God's power, presence and passion.

Usually I've heard this story as an illustration of what faith is: Peter lacks it so he can't walk on water. Jesus alone has it so he can. Yet I don't think the whole walking on water part is what it's about. Jesus sends his friends to the other side of the lake (v. 22). Once Jesus saves them from the distraction of the destructive storm, they actually get to the other side of the lake: Gentile country, the foreign place of those that were forgotten, overlooked and excluded by the people of God. It's there that Jesus continues his ministry of healing, teaching and compassionate solidarity. The point was to get to the other side.

How often today do I - do our churches - get lost in the chaos of the storms we encounter (which I don't mean to downplay), and completely forget about what we're called to do - get to the other side, to go to those on the other side to show compassion, live in active solidarity, and point towards the one that we believe saves us from the storm, from our own fears, our own selfishness, and the fear of scarcity that drives our multinational commercial system. Several secular books I've read in the past 6 months [Presence, Bobos in Paradise, The Post-American World] talk of the need for spiritual people, who have a larger perspective or world-view, to engage in the world, making their belief community actively present in their context. In a sense the lift up what Jesus teaches through this passage: go to the other side - to those on the other side; boats are made for boating, not simply keeping tethered to the dock when the waters look rough. Maybe we who claim to follow Jesus (historically in the church community which is traditionally represented by the figure of a boat) with big, visible faiths, should take a lesson from Jesus' call to be like those he knew who were of little faith?