ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST (13 August 2023)
Matthew 14. 22-33. Romans 10.4-15
Oh, it’s a marvellous story, Jesus walking on water, calming the crashing waves, and stilling the storm!
Although its waters were used for baptism, and provided fish, a staple food item, in 1st C times the ocean was viewed primarily as a malevolent, threatening thing, a place of dark mystery. Who knows what sirens, mermaids, sea-dragons and fearsome creatures lurked in its unplumbed depths? Perhaps, people thought, if the wind took you too far, you would fall off the ends of the earth! The sea was a place of death, claiming many lives, when the winds picked up and the water came in and the boat went down.
Although the Sea of Galilee had known boundaries, yet the mystique of the ocean hung about it, and it was – and is - notorious for sudden, fierce storms that blow up without warning. It must have been one of those that caught the disciples unawares.
This story is rich in powerful metaphors – the boat, for instance.
From Klaksvic [Denmark] to London and the USA Mr Google can show you dozens of churches either shaped like boats, or boasting upturned boat ceilings, e.g. St Peter’s in Antigua [Caribbean]. There’s a boat-shaped altar in Magdala in the Holy Land, and a floating church at the Spit, in Sydney. One Scandinavian church has a huge ship hanging from the ceiling.
The boat has long been used as a metaphor for the Church: for those safely held in her motherly bosom could be ferried across the dangerous seas of life and the world, saved from being drawn into the depths of hell, and delivered into the heavenly harbour.
And, indeed, where else can we hear of God’s eternal love and mercy, revealed in the Incarnation of Jesus the Christ? Where else can we find food for our souls and guidance from the Holy Spirit herself?
The boat is sometimes seen as a metaphor for physical life, too. Then the boat is our whole person, and our journey from birth to death becomes the dangerous ocean of life, teeming with relationship difficulties, illnesses, accidents and other misfortunes – currents that drag us this way and that, threatening to drag us under. It can be a frightening experience to feel out of control; helpless, or as if you are being carried off course by powerful forces. People can feel swamped by circumstances and anxieties, or as if they are drowning in sorrow or grief – in those circumstances you need someone to ‘bail you out’, you are ‘up the creek without a paddle’, you feel ‘out of your depth’.
Note how our language still uses the metaphorical language of the sea to describe situations of fear and great anxiety?
In the spiritual life - the life of faith & prayer - the ocean is sometimes envisioned as a metaphor for life; and the soul is the little boat, giving herself trustfully into the hands of Spirit, as she is blown she knows not where. Braving the fiercest storms life offers, she may be almost swamped by towering waves; or becalmed for long periods of time, when spiritual hunger, thirst, loneliness and a fear of abandonment tempts her to take a contrary course. ‘Monsters’ are not lacking in this spiritual journey either, they are within and without herself. Occasionally however, the clouds part and the soul catches a fleeting glimpse of the splendour and glory of God, whose loving presence lifts her heart to heaven again, its molten golden warmth comforting and strengthening her for the buffetings which soon follow. The little soul barely stays afloat at times, but keeps trusting, trusting, trusting that the Spirit will guide her into a safe harbour at last.
It is Jesus, of course, who makes himself apparent when she thinks all is lost, who walks across the choppy seas of life to take her hand and draw her out of danger. It is Jesus who stills the storms, who sits beside her in the boat ‘till the harbour is reached. It is his name she calls when her spirits are low or her anxieties high, his arms around her – he fends off her ‘demons’. It’s the hope that she will be with him for ever that keeps her going.
There are times when we 21st C Christians need to remind ourselves of something the early Celtic Church knew so well… God is close by, not far away in heaven, nor deep in some hidden abyss, as St Paul reminds us. And the Word – that’s the living Word, none other than Jesus himself – is closer than our breathing; alive, ready to answer our calls. Everyone, Paul says, who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
This prayer is attributed to St Brendan the navigator, a bold Irish missionary and monastic founder, who set out for places unknown in a little coracle with a few companions, to spread the Gospel:
Help me to journey beyond the familiar,
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with You.
Christ of the mysteries, I trust You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times, even now, are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You."
God’s peace be with you.
Pirrial