Walk on Water
This title is also a song I have heard sung by the late Eva Cassidy. In this case I am looking at the lectionary passage from Matthew for next week when I preach back at my old church. Shaw United Reformed Church saw my longest period at a single church so far. I left in September 2004 so it is almost four years since I was there. The passage from Matthew's gospel is about Jesus walking on water in stormy conditions. Peter asked if he could walk on the water and Jesus said, "Come to me." All was well as Peter looked at Jesus. It was when he looked down at the waves that he got cold feet and began to sink below the waves.
This is a problem we all have as we try to get through life. When we look at Jesus all things are possible but when we look elsewhere we start to lose our nerve and harbour doubts about what we are doing. So, we find it difficult to be Christians and work for God. But that is nothing new. Christians have all found it difficult to work for God. It is the nature of the work we choose that there are difficulties. One reason is that we are dealing with people and that is what makes the job harder than we think. Take any cross section of people, be they churchgoers or not and you will find them difficult to deal with.
Many, many ministers have become disheartened at the poor response they have had from people who profess themselves Christians. I know one who sometimes walked home from Church Meetings in his Congregational Church crying. How was he to get them to do the Christian thing? It is soul destroying to be a minister because they experience people's fickleness on a large scale.
Going back to the gospel reading we see that Peter gets the colly wobbles when he looks down as the waves bounce up his legs and body. Yet we get the classic scene of Jesus reaching down to Peter to save him from drowning. Always it seems that we do not get the message from Jesus and we start to get nervous. Whenever I visit a swimming pool I swim on my back because I am fearful of swallowing too much water otherwise. If you swim on your back your mouth is further away from the water level and so you are safer that way.
If I go snorkeling when on holiday in Greece I am happy because I have mastered the art of breathing through the mouth only. Anyone trying to breathe through the nose will experience problems because the air tube is feeding air to the mouth only. Some years ago I had a problem because I had tried to dive and hold my breath, trying to grab a sea urchin shell on the sea bed. The problem arose because I did not have fins on my feet and I could not kick downwards to reach the sea bed. Luckily a friend saw me in difficulties and helped me out. It was a frightening moment.
Christians often experience difficulties when they serve God because of the problematic nature of such service. The job is often much harder than we anticipate. Last year I decided to try to help save a Welsh farmer from bankruptcy. Along with a number of people I transported butchered lamb direct to the customer to get him out of financial difficulties. It became hard work as I tried to find all the Welsh addresses in the dark. Not always does your SatNav come up trumps. It was extremely difficult to do the job and I began to see what a postman's job must be like.
On one particular night I had to find addresses in Bethesda, Llanfairfechan, Y Felinheli, Brynciencyn, Llandonna, Benllech and Amlwch. Welsh addresses provide their own difficulties, I can tell you! In the end I won through because God was with me but it was not an easy task. By no means. Looking back I would not have changed position with anyone because I believed in what I was doing. But when you get addresses in a mixture of English and Welsh it is very hard.
I found it a very useful exercise in employing faith. There was no guarantee of success but if I failed then it would affect the farmer I was helping. Knowing who i was working for was very helpful. I knew the mission would not fail because it was classically God's work I was doing. Not all of us can be that sure about the tasks we do. It is not always easy to identify it as God's work so we get problems with it.
The message of Peter, walking on the water and then looking down, is one to really hold on to. If we take our eye off the final destination then we can easily get thrown off course. This is because we see all too clearly the difficulties ahead. Yet when we set out in faith it works. This is what a working Christian discovers about the nature of the job. You must never take your eye of the ball because that is the time when you will slip back into the water.
This is a problem we all have as we try to get through life. When we look at Jesus all things are possible but when we look elsewhere we start to lose our nerve and harbour doubts about what we are doing. So, we find it difficult to be Christians and work for God. But that is nothing new. Christians have all found it difficult to work for God. It is the nature of the work we choose that there are difficulties. One reason is that we are dealing with people and that is what makes the job harder than we think. Take any cross section of people, be they churchgoers or not and you will find them difficult to deal with.
Many, many ministers have become disheartened at the poor response they have had from people who profess themselves Christians. I know one who sometimes walked home from Church Meetings in his Congregational Church crying. How was he to get them to do the Christian thing? It is soul destroying to be a minister because they experience people's fickleness on a large scale.
Going back to the gospel reading we see that Peter gets the colly wobbles when he looks down as the waves bounce up his legs and body. Yet we get the classic scene of Jesus reaching down to Peter to save him from drowning. Always it seems that we do not get the message from Jesus and we start to get nervous. Whenever I visit a swimming pool I swim on my back because I am fearful of swallowing too much water otherwise. If you swim on your back your mouth is further away from the water level and so you are safer that way.
If I go snorkeling when on holiday in Greece I am happy because I have mastered the art of breathing through the mouth only. Anyone trying to breathe through the nose will experience problems because the air tube is feeding air to the mouth only. Some years ago I had a problem because I had tried to dive and hold my breath, trying to grab a sea urchin shell on the sea bed. The problem arose because I did not have fins on my feet and I could not kick downwards to reach the sea bed. Luckily a friend saw me in difficulties and helped me out. It was a frightening moment.
Christians often experience difficulties when they serve God because of the problematic nature of such service. The job is often much harder than we anticipate. Last year I decided to try to help save a Welsh farmer from bankruptcy. Along with a number of people I transported butchered lamb direct to the customer to get him out of financial difficulties. It became hard work as I tried to find all the Welsh addresses in the dark. Not always does your SatNav come up trumps. It was extremely difficult to do the job and I began to see what a postman's job must be like.
On one particular night I had to find addresses in Bethesda, Llanfairfechan, Y Felinheli, Brynciencyn, Llandonna, Benllech and Amlwch. Welsh addresses provide their own difficulties, I can tell you! In the end I won through because God was with me but it was not an easy task. By no means. Looking back I would not have changed position with anyone because I believed in what I was doing. But when you get addresses in a mixture of English and Welsh it is very hard.
I found it a very useful exercise in employing faith. There was no guarantee of success but if I failed then it would affect the farmer I was helping. Knowing who i was working for was very helpful. I knew the mission would not fail because it was classically God's work I was doing. Not all of us can be that sure about the tasks we do. It is not always easy to identify it as God's work so we get problems with it.
The message of Peter, walking on the water and then looking down, is one to really hold on to. If we take our eye off the final destination then we can easily get thrown off course. This is because we see all too clearly the difficulties ahead. Yet when we set out in faith it works. This is what a working Christian discovers about the nature of the job. You must never take your eye of the ball because that is the time when you will slip back into the water.
posted by Keith Alexander at Sunday, August 03, 2008
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