Scriptures: Matthew 14:22-33; Philippians 2:13-14
I don’t know what made me think of “faith” as the topic for today’s sermon or the theme for my preaching for the summer. It’s probably too broad as a topic. Just about every sermon I give I hope touches on faith in some way or another, and there aren’t any urgent reasons why I should be talking about faith today or over the next few months. I don’t know what made me think about it.
But I do know that the word faith is one of those words we use often but don’t stop to think about very often. And so I do think there’s some purpose in doing that—stopping to ask ourselves what we mean by the word faith, what it may mean to “have faith”, or to be a person of faith.
One time not too long ago that I remember having to stop and think about this was when I was filling out what is called a ministerial profile. It’s like a resume for ministers, but it comes in standardized form. Everyone fills out the same form. One of the forms in the profile is a whole page full of qualities that a minister might have—probably 40 or 50 of them—things like “is a good preacher”, “makes hospital calls”, “is a good counselor”, “works well with children”, “fixes toilets”, “loves the United Church of Christ”, things like that—you get the idea—as I say, 40 or 50 of them.
The minister filling out this form is supposed to pick the top 10 ways he or she would describe him or herself. You’re saying, “This is how I see myself”. The people you have chosen as references are also asked to fill out the same form. “This is how others see me.” And the church search committee also fills out the form. “These are the top ten qualities we’re looking for in a minister.” The idea, of course, is that everyone is looking for a reasonable match.
One of the choices that appears on this form is: “is a person of faith”. I remember that one because I paused and pondered over it. What do they mean by that? What do I mean by that? I checked it. I honestly did—and do—feel myself to be a person of faith, even if I don’t have words for all that might be a part of that feeling, and I would have been more comfortable if the form had said “is trying to be, is in the process of becoming, a person of faith”. But then that’s a common experience, wanting to rewrite the categories someone else is trying to put you into.
Some, but not all, of my references checked that as one of my top 10 qualities. I never asked any of them why they did or didn’t. I don’t remember if Sojourners said that was one of the top ten qualities they were looking for, and I don’t think I asked the search committee why they did or didn’t. But I’ve asked myself. In fact it may be that that question—“Am I a person of faith? What does it mean to be a person of faith?”—pretty much lingers with me all the time. And actually the fact that I don’t seem to be able to get rid of that question may be one of the things that makes me think that I am, or am trying to become, a person of faith.
But before I get to reflecting a bit more on what faith is, let me try to say a few things quickly about what faith is not.
For one thing it is not, in the way I see it or feel it, adopting a set of beliefs or being able to say you subscribe to some list of dogmas set down by the church. Having faith, or being a person of faith, is not a matter of believing this or that about God, or Jesus. We talk about it that way sometimes, but I think it is not helpful. A person can be a person of faith without having a whole belief system in place. And a person can have such a belief system and not be a person of faith. Let’s be clear. Being a person of faith is not accepting some system of belief. For some that may be part of it, but it is not the same thing.
On the other hand, faith is also not some general desirable approach to life. That idea too creeps into the ways we talk. When discussing troubles, people say to each other, or perhaps more often say to themselves, “Well, I guess you just have to have faith,” meaning maybe “I guess you just have to hope for the best” or “I guess you have to believe that things will turn out all right”. A positive attitude is no doubt helpful in many situations, and is almost always better than a negative attitude, but it is not the same thing as faith. Again, for some people it may overlap or be part of faith, but it is not the same thing. A person of faith is not necessarily someone who is upbeat, optimistic, and hopeful.
So what does it mean to have faith? There are probably dozens of definitions, more or less true definitions, that might be helpful and that I could talk about. One reason we don’t step back and ask such large and basic questions—like what is faith?—very often, is that there is no one right answer, no one phrase that will “say it all”. Something like faith needs to be talked about in a bunch of small ways rather than all at once.
Today, instead of proposing any one definition, I want to talk about faith by looking at a Biblical story and some of the images in it. This is one of the things I find helpful about the Bible—when it helps us to approach things through stories and images, which is pretty much the way our lives take place—in the form of stories and images.
So here are the disciples out on the Sea of Galilee in this boat. A storm comes up so suddenly (people who claim to know say that this can happen on the Sea of Galilee) that it takes them all by surprise, and it is so violent that they are in real trouble. Jesus is somewhere, elsewhere. Great! He’s off someplace saying his prayers, while the disciples are out on the water bailing and rowing for their lives.
Then here comes Jesus walking across the water, first appearing more like a ghost and then coming closer and Peter gets all excited and wants to do it too, asks Jesus to allow him to come to him over the water too, jumps out of the boat, walks a few feet, begins to sink, gets saved by Jesus, and then upbraided by Jesus for having so little faith.
Now as I say, I find it helpful to turn to the biblical stories to help us think about all sorts of things, but there is something I usually don’t find very helpful, and it’s more a problem with us than it is with the story. We are so amazed, so befuddled, so mystified by this business of people walking on water that we just stop right there. We get fixated on the miracle. Some, taking the Bible at its word, will see this is proof that Jesus had supernatural powers. Others will dismiss the story as being too fantastic to be taken seriously. And in between are a great many who will wonder what we are to make of this story where the main action is this miraculous event.
But we need to be able to get by the miracle. There is always that question when we approach the scriptures. How do we deal with the miracles? But if that’s all we ever deal with, then we miss a whole lot of the story, since there’s a lot more to it than just the miracle.
In this case, the more has to do with the storm and the water and the evil forces inhabiting the water. In the ancient world, water, large bodies of water, were symbols of death, of chaos and destruction, of everything and anything that might overwhelm us, swallow us up, take us in, destroy us. The sea was this place of deep mystery and horror, and it showed no respect for human beings. In the Bible the water was the dwelling place of every force that is against us.
We don’t have the same mythology surrounding the sea. Of course, we don’t believe that there are evil monsters living in the sea bent on our destruction, (although I’m not so sure some of that primitive feeling isn’t still with us). But with or without the symbolism, we can identify, maybe, or at least we can appreciate what the disciples were feeling there in that boat on the sea in the storm.
They were being undone. And how many things are there that can threaten to undo us, to break our lives in pieces. Cancer, greed, AIDS, boredom, racism, loneliness, violence, depression. We know the evil forces don’t dwell just in the sea. Of course the ancients knew that too. But the power of this story comes in the way it represents the uncertainty, the insecurity of our lives, the frailty and fragility of what and whom we hold dear, the frailty and fragility of our hopes for what life on this earth could be, the frailty and fragility of life itself.
I think that is what we are meant to feel as we read this story. Then we see Peter getting up, asking Jesus to invite him to step out of the boat and also walk on the water. We see him walking, sinking, and then being miraculously sustained.
I have always seen Peter as the hero of this story, as I guess most people have, though I perhaps don’t see him as the hero in exactly the way that most people have. The sort of conventional interpretation would say that what you need to do is keep your eyes, and mind, and heart fixed on Jesus. That’s faith and it’ll keep you up, it’ll keep you safe, it’ll keep you from sinking and drowning. What Peter did was to take his eyes off Jesus, to look down at the water, at the trouble and insecurity, and it was then that he began to sink. And so Jesus scolds Peter for having not enough faith. If he had kept his eyes and his spirit full of Jesus, everything would have been o.k.
That’s the conventional interpretation, but I have to say that it’s a little too neat for me. A little too simple, or simplistic. I do believe that one way to look at faith is to say that it’s that quality of life that allows us to say somewhere deep down inside: it’s gonna be O.K.…but only after we have also recognized that in a practical, earthly sense everything may not be, or may not turn out, o.k.
Faith does not offer us a serene stroll over the top of the waters if we will just hold on to Jesus. For me Peter sinking, Peter recognizing that the threat is real, Peter knowing that sometimes things do not turn out O.K., is all part of the image of Peter acting out faith. That’s why I chose to have Paul’s words today about working out our salvation with fear and trembling. Faith is not about achieving some state of serenity. If we don’t have the fear and trembling of knowing how insecure our lives are, if we don’t experience the fear and trembling of knowing that things don’t always turn out o.k. then we haven’t arrived at that point of faith where we can say that even though things are not o.k. and don’t always turn out o.k., still in some unearthly, holy way, it is true: it will be o.k.
Let me try it another way. There is something in us, in me, that says no, I will not be taken in—I may be sinking down, from time to time, but I will not be taken in—by the sea, by the monsters, the demons, the fears, the sorrow, the trouble. Maybe faith is what allows us not just to walk on the water, but to dance over the water. Maybe that is how I really want to imagine Peter, and Jesus too for that matter. He is the Lord of the Dance, and he invites Peter to come to him dancing on the water. Even when we’re at our most vulnerable and the threat of being done in is most serious, to dance—tap-dance over that water, clog over it, waltz over it, jitterbug over it, soft shoe our way over those troubled waters.
Isn’t that what faith is about? It’s not about easy moralisms such as “keep your eyes on Jesus and everything will be o.k.” It’s about things that are deeper and much, much more difficult—whatever it is that allows us to dance on the waters. And whatever it is that allows us to dance—and we may not have a name for it—whatever it is, our relationship to that nameless, holy, power is faith. To know ourselves in need of that relationship is faith. To live our lives within that relationship is faith. I would still say, as I finally did on the profile, yes, I am a person of faith, though I say it with fear and trembling, and I would much prefer to say that being a person of faith is something I am in the process of becoming…by the grace of God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
July 1, 2001