Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Matthew 14:22-33, Job 41 (selected verses)
March 3, 2002
As Laura Simms tells it, there is a Norwegian fairy tale which features a hero at an intersection looking at three signs. The first reads: “He who travels down this road will return unharmed.” The second: “He who travels down this road may or may not return.” The third: “He who travels down this road will never return.” As the fairy tale tells it, the hero chooses the third.
Most of us wouldn’t, of course. At least, not knowingly. For even though Thomas Wolfe won all kinds of kudos for his novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, it’s comforting to think he could be wrong.
Now my grandmother, she knew whereof Wolfe spoke. As the youngest child of a brick maker in northern Yugoslavia, she knew, once her mother died, that home held nothing for her. So at age 13 she went to a neighboring town to cook, clean and take care of kids for a family who gave her room and board. Then, four years later (at age 17), she answered a blind offer to sail to New York to keep house for a Jewish jeweler and his wife who lived in an apartment on Central Park. I once asked her if she knew, at the time of her departure, that she would never return. To which she said: “Yes.” For, in truth, she never did.
By contrast, her grandson….her only grandson….at whom you are looking….and to whom you are listening….has spent 37 years of ministry within an 18-mile radius of his boyhood home (a distance Jim Rillema could run in slightly over two hours). But even I made a handful of decisions early on….the first one when I was about 13….that set me on a course that took me as far away from my point of origin as that ocean-crossing boat took my grandmother from hers.
When last I occupied this pulpit, I told you that Lent is something of a road show. Jesus is breaking camp….moving out….moving on….moving down (as in south). Who’s gonna go? Who’s gonna stay? You gonna go? You gonna stay? Those who went never came back. Not because they lost their lives….although some did. Not because they lost their map….for, in truth, they never had one. But because they found something worth dying for….something worth living for….something worth giving their lives to that made all the difference, don’t you see. A world of difference, don’t you see. So the decision to go from a place they once were was really a decision to go from a life they once knew.
I don’t suppose the mode of travel is important. Although I had a friend….in seminary….in the sixties….who (with almost no thought whatsoever, and scarcely time to throw some socks in a sack) boarded a bus going to Birmingham…..the other Birmingham….the Alabama Birmingham….the at-that-time racially-segregated Birmingham. And when he got out of jail and returned to New Haven a few days later, he said: “I’ll never be the same again.” And he wasn’t. He simply wasn’t.
As I recall, the disciples boarded no bus. But they did board a boat. Because Jesus told them to. Rather strongly, as I read it. The text reads: “He made them go.” Either because he’d had enough of life. Or enough of them. I mean, everybody gets that way sometimes. So he told them (hopefully in a nice way) to get out of his face, he had to go pray. Which they did. By boat. At night. Right into a storm. Which wasn’t very nice of Jesus to send his little 12-member church out into a storm. Except he still does. Send churches into storms, I mean.
And they were every bit as weary as Jesus. So much so, that it showed. They weren’t cutting it. And the wind was cutting them. We’re not talking gentle breeze here. We’re talking killer breeze here. I ask you: “Has anybody here ever felt that you were going to die in a boat?” See me later. I want to hear your story.
By now, some of you are saying: “Bill, didn’t you preach this story before….like right after you came here?” Sure did….three weeks running. Great sermons. Really great sermons. Except that I know something now I didn’t know then. That happens, you know. If you keep your head open, stuff just kind of wedges itself in.
Actually Carl Price preached this text within the last several months. Most perceptively, Carl made a big deal about the fact that the storm was at its worst during the “fourth watch of the night”….meaning three o’clock in the morning. Carl then said something to the effect that “three o’clock in the morning faith” is always the hardest faith to come by. Which one fellow thought was the greatest idea since sliced bread. And which led me to wonder how he missed it when I said it in 1993. Had he been off that day? Or had I been off that day? Which is when it came to me. That fellow had yet to experience “three o’clock in the morning” in 1993. But I know him well enough to know he is experiencing it now.
But a lot of you know what it’s like at that hour. It’s been dark for a long time. And it’s going to be dark for a long time. Everyone else is dead to the world. But you feel like you’re dead in the world. Life is blanketing you. Worries are blanketing you. Things that, at three o’clock in the morning, you can’t do anything about, you can’t stop thinking about.
When I am overstressed, I have trouble sleeping. And a funny thing consistently happens. No matter what time I go to bed, I wake up at three o’clock. Not two o’clock. Not four o’clock. But three o’clock. Oh, it might be five minutes after three. Or five minutes till three. But not much more by way of variance. I don’t know what gets into me. But, given the number of years I’ve been preaching this text, I think it’s the Bible that gets into me. My body has bought this text, to the degree that I can faith it or fake it till three, but then my body clock tells me: “Ritter, wake up. This is more than you can handle.”
Sixty-one years into history….37 years into ministry….nine years into you….it still swamps me sometimes. But I never seem to figure out that it is swamping me until my body figures it out for me….at (you guessed it) three o’clock in the morning.
Well, you know how the story goes. Jesus comes walking. Right on top of the water. I talked to a man the other night. He goes to a different church….one of those churches where (by his claim) they are a whole lot more effusive about loving Jesus than the rest of us are. Except that, for the last several years, he hasn’t much cottoned to his preacher. So he simmered and stewed. And finally enough other people felt the same way, so the church got rid of him. Their preacher, I mean. And they went out and found themselves a new one. One who walks on water. How do I know that? Because that’s what this fellow said. “Our new minister walks on water.” In response to which I said nothing. Why poke anticipatory holes in a self-bursting bubble?
But Jesus is walking on the water. Jesus is scaring everybody half to death. Especially Peter (“It’s a ghost”), who doesn’t believe what he is seeing. And, when Jesus finally speaks, Peter doesn’t believe what he is hearing. I mean, how could this be happening? Water skis? Float boots? Intuitive knowledge of where the rocks are?
Darned if I know. Darned if you do, either. But I’ll tell you what I do know….and what I want you to know….is that “how” is not the appropriate question here. “Why” is the appropriate question here. To which Fred Craddock supplies an answer:
The point is this. Only God can walk on the waves. That’s what the Bible says. In Job. In Isaiah. In Habakkuk. In the Psalms. In Bible-speak, it is God who walks the sea….calms the sea….tames the sea….parts the sea. Why? To show a miracle? To say: “Hey, lookie here, I’m walking on water”?
Don’t be shallow. In ancient times, the sea was the place of evil. The evil monster was there. The Leviathan (Job 41) was there. The enemy of everything right and good was there in the water. In the Bible, the water is the dwelling place of all the forces that are against us. And here (in this story), God, in the person of Jesus Christ, walks on the sea….walks over the sea….strides through….steps on…. making his way across the sea….putting everything that is oppositional to God and oppositional to us literally under his feet.
In other words, there is no power….no storm….no wind….no force in the world that God cannot conquer. And there is no evil over which God is not, at the end of the night, superior. Which makes this something of an announcement story about who is in charge, and whether the one in charge has any power. To which the answer is: “God is….and God does.”
We don’t….the story also says. Have similar power, I mean. Peter jumps overboard and starts walking, only to wind up sinking. Which is what happens to me every time I water ski. Not right away. I can get up. I can get going. I can even keep going. Until I start thinking. Which is when I start sinking. But I am in good company. If Peter can’t make it….and if Peter is the prototype (as in “poster child”) for all who would faithfully follow Jesus….what makes me think that I won’t sink (or stew, or sweat, or succumb, or crash, or burn, whatever)?
We’re all out there in our little boats trying to make it alone. And we can’t make it alone. Oh, we can do some amazing things….have done some amazing things….will yet do some amazing things. But not consistently. And not without help. People in little boats know that. People in big boats tend to forget that. Just like people in 12-member churches know that. While people in 3,000-member churches tend to forget that.
One of the things I used to enjoy but, for some reason, got away from, was stone skipping. If you get just the right rock (thin, smooth, with a flat edge)….and give it just the right spin (with a quick, hard flick of the wrist)….so that it hits the water at just the right spot (not into the face of the ripple, but on the near-back-edge of the crest of the ripple)….you can keep the thing afloat for eight, ten, maybe even twelve skips. Skill and dexterity count for a lot. But when the rock slows down….well, you know what happens when the rock slows down. Rocks that slow down, go down.
So what do I do at three o’clock in the morning when I’m awake and you’re sleeping like a baby? Well, I toss and I turn. I factor and I figure. I look at it this way, that way, every which way. Sometimes I get up and get myself a glass of chocolate milk….or go to my chair and read something….or go to my desk and write something.
Do I pray? Sure, I pray. Does it work? Sometimes. Is the solution instantaneous? Erroneous. Sometimes I just say to God: “Take it off my plate for a while and let me rest” (figuring that if God “slumbers not nor sleeps,” there’s no use in both of us being awake).
I am mildly embarrassed to admit that when I first encountered the antiphonal response that a lot of folks are using in worship,
Leader: God is good
People: All the time.
Leader: All the time
People: God is good.
it left me cold. It sounded too simple….too peppy….too happy. Until I realized we weren’t saying: “Life is good….all the time.” Because it isn’t. Good. All the time. But there is a goodness to God….a consistent goodness to God….that transcends the bobbings and weavings of life.
And then there’s this (right out of the text). God’s a grabber, don’t you know. That’s right, a grabber. I believe in a grabbing, clutching God. Who power lifts.
Did I say any of this in 1993? No, not in so many words. And after Friday’s front page, I am not even going to rip off my own words. Except for these….which I stole from an old hymn (picking it up halfway through).
Still the master of my fate
heard my despairing cry.
From the waters lifted me,
now safe am I.
Love lifted me.
Love lifted me.
When nothing else would help,
love lifted me.
Love lifted me.
Love lifted me.
When nothing else would help,
love lifted me.
Note: I have been preaching this text for a number of years. My first attempt was entitled “Savior By Storm Light” and significant portions of that sermon were reproduced (with permission) by Maxie Dunnam in a book entitled That’s What The Man Said. In 1993, I revisited this text for a trio of sermons that keynoted a stewardship emphasis known as Water Walkers. The “new idea” that led me to preach it again was my discovery of “the sea” and the demonic powers contained therein. This was first pointed out to me by Will Willimon and subsequently enhanced by Fred Craddock. The Craddock quote obviously embellishes his position. It was also his suggestion that led me to reconsider the youthful practice of stone-skipping, although I took the illustration in a somewhat different direction.
Ironically, I heard several “boat stories” after preaching this sermon. I was surprised by how many of my parishioners “almost died in a boat.” Finally, the oblique reference to Friday’s newspaper near the end of the sermon concerns a well-known and esteemed colleague who has been suspended by his denomination for the sin of plagiarism.
