Thursday, August 14, 2014

To the other side




It’s not easy to see why Jesus would send his disciples away at nightfall to start rowing across a lake, but there might be a clue in the larger order of events in the gospel.  You see, the story the feeding of the multitude comes right after the sordid episode where Herod, the ruler of Galilee, has John the Baptist beheaded at a dinner party.  Word then comes to Herod about this new fellow, Jesus of Nazareth, and he declares that this must be John, come back from the dead.  News of this comes to Jesus, and that is the point at which he leaves town and heads out into the bush.  A great crowd goes after him—with John dead, Jesus is the only prophet they have left, the only one who can challenge the violence and corruption of their rulers in the name of God’s justice and truth. 
It’s not clear whether Jesus set out to have the great world-changing career that he did.  It seems to me that a lot of what he did was spontaneous and personal.  He had a profound personal experience of God’s love for everyone, and he related to everyone he met on that basis.  But because of his historical circumstances, every little thing he said and did to relieve people’s suffering, to satisfy their basic needs, to lift their spirits and bring them together, had revolutionary impact, and this is the point in the gospel story where that starts to be clear.  Jesus had to know that news of miraculously feeding a multitude would travel fast, and that the reaction might be swift and brutal.  Maybe he sent his disciples out in the boat that night because he feared for their lives, and decided they should slip away under cover of darkness. 
From the evidence we can piece together, Matthew’s gospel came out of a community that was crossing over from their ancestral home in the world of Judaism to the strange new reality called the Church.  It was a journey that put them in a boat with other people they would never have given the time of day before, and now they were all depending on each other for their very lives.  They were running into unaccountable hostility from their fellow Jews, who rejected and denounced and even persecuted them for preaching and praying and gathering in the name of Jesus. 
Yet it was a community that had experienced the fulfillment of what it means to be human.  In their gatherings they had received gifts of the Holy Spirit in baptism and the Eucharist.  They had died with Christ and been reborn in his resurrection to a new life of imperishable glory.  They had tasted the heavenly banquet of God’s justice and love, where all pain and grief are at an end and evil and suffering are no more.  But somehow they still found themselves on this side of things, in the world where children die of hunger and nations are laid waste in war.  Or more precisely, they found themselves in a small boat in the dark, rowing against the wind and against the waves, trying to cross over to the other side.  
The image of Jesus coming to the disciples over the sea, calming the storm, and their fears along with it, must have been a great comfort to these people.  Less comforting is the little story that Matthew works in at this point about Peter.  The troubling part is where Jesus says to Peter, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"  It has always struck me as an accusation that if Peter really had faith, he should be able to do like Jesus.  But that just doesn’t seem fair, to Peter, or, for that matter, to us.  If walking on water is the minimum standard of faith, we’re all in trouble. 
But reading the story this time around, I realized that walking on water isn’t the only thing Peter has doubts about.   Before that even happens, Jesus calls out to the terrified disciples, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." But Peter doesn’t calm down and wait in the boat for Jesus to come and rescue them.  He doubts that it is really Jesus, and he demands proof.  He wants Jesus’ power, for himself and nobody else, so he can take matters in his own hands.  “Go ahead, knock yourself out,” says Jesus, and Peter leaves his brothers behind and steps out of the boat. 
I don’t imagine Jesus was surprised when Peter started sinking.  Peter’s faith wasn’t big enough to believe that Jesus was a living man, and not a ghost.  It wasn’t big enough to just sit tight in the boat with everybody else.  So it sure as anything wasn’t big enough to walk on water.   Now just a little faith is enough, as long as it is faith in Jesus and solidarity with the others in the boat.  But it seems like there were some in the early Christian community who weren’t content with that.  They began to doubt that faith was sufficient to their historical situation. They wanted some kind of supernatural escape plan, to leave the whole soggy mess behind and walk away over the waves.
In May I was with a bunch of priests and deacons from our diocese, when Sally Hubbell, from St. Paul’s church in Healdsburg, asked the group if we knew anyone who might be able to do a service in Spanish.  St. Paul’s has a small but lively Spanish-language congregation and one of the girls from the was going to celebrate her quinceañera on August 9.  Sally would be away on vacation and neither of the priests who usually substitute for her on such occasions were going to be able to do it either.  With a certain amount of trepidation I raised my hand and said, “I can.” 
For the past six years all the time and money that I get allotted for Continuing Education has gone to learning Spanish.  I have a weekly lesson via an internet video call with a man in Guatemala, and I spend three or four hours of my free time every week doing written exercises.  Progress has been painfully slow at times, but I’ve stuck with it.  So yesterday I preached in Spanish for the first time.  The same goes for celebrating the Eucharist.   For that matter, it was the first quinceañera I’d ever been to.  When I first agreed to do it, I was excited about the chance to show off my skills.  But by the time it came around it was all I could do to get through it. 
Friday night I hardly slept a wink, and I got up yesterday morning feeling like death warmed over.  It didn’t help that I was coming down with a cold.  I made it through okay, though, with a lot of help.  I used my Spanish lesson on Thursday to go over my homily with my teacher, and he helped me polish up my grammar and use more popular idioms.  I got a lot of help from a lady named Gretta, who is a kind of bridge person between St. Paul’s Anglo and Latino congregations.  Her Spanish is way better than mine, and she was the emcee for the event.  The family had hired a fabulous trio of musicians who had a huge repertoire of Mexican folk music.  Whenever I decided I needed a little music, I’d just give them a nod, and away they’d go. 
But the biggest help of all was having someone there who was, if anything, even more scared than I was.  I mean, of course, fifteen year old Jessica Castañeda.  She was sitting in her tiara and purple dress and high heeled shoes, in the center aisle right in front of the altar, so we were physically close and looking at each other throughout the service.   We traded off being the center of attention, and had to take a lot of cues from each other.  And I think the fact that both of us were coming out in public, in different ways, at the same time, that both of us were thrilled to be there and at the same time just getting by on a wing and prayer, enabled us to help each other, to keep rowing against the wind and waves.
One year-old Ave Marie Boazman is having a coming-out part of her own this morning, at her baptism.  We can’t know how historical circumstances are going to shape her life.  I’d like to be able to say it’s will be smooth sailing, but a quick glance at the headlines, or even the weather report, suggests otherwise.  Lucky for Ava she has parents who recognize that she’s not going to get very far walking across the water.  She needs a boat, and a Lord who can still the wind and the waves.  She needs people who will stay in the boat with her, no matter what happens.  And so do we, so we are glad to welcome Ava aboard.

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About Me

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Petaluma, California, United States
I am a priest in the Episcopal Church, and have been (among other things) an organic farmer and gardener, and a Zen monk. I have a lifelong interest in social and spiritual renewal on the basis of contemplative discipline, creative nonviolence, and ecological practice. In recent years my work has focused intensely on the responsibility of pastoral ministry in the humanistic, evangelical, and catholic branch of Christianity known as Anglicanism. I'm married with a daughter, and have three brothers and two parents.