Pastor's Corner: Afraid? Stay in the boat

Fear can be a powerful motivator. Fear can make brave people do cowardly things, and it can make timid people do brave things. Fear can make you do one thing in one situation, and the opposite thing in another situation. Fear of heights might have kept me off of the church office roof a few weeks ago when our handyman invited me up, but a few years ago, when I noticed rain dripping on the sofa during a storm at my childhood home, fear of a worsening problem motivated me to climb onto the roof with bricks and a tarp all by myself. Fear can make us do strange, and perhaps sometimes stupid, things.

Matthew 14:22-33 was last Sunday’s Gospel reading for those traditions who follow the Revised Common Lectionary. In this passage, the disciples find themselves set out in a boat by Jesus, alone on the sea in a storm at the darkest hour of night. This seems to be no ordinary storm; in Greek, the waves are literally torturing the boat. Those in the boat, in the storm, and in the dark are afraid. And when they see a ghostly apparition walking toward them, their terror intensifies.

Jesus, who a few chapters ago had calmed a different storm after a nice little nap, calls out to those in the boat, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” Jesus is coming to them — Jesus, the one who they know can still the waves and quiet the wind. Yet Peter, in his own mixture of fear and impetuousness, acts before thinking and calls out, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water!” As one preacher puts it, Peter’s motto could well be “Ready, fire, aim!” Jesus is coming to them, so why should Peter go to him? Peter’s framing of “if it is you,” is very similar to the first words that Satan says to Jesus in Matthew chapter 4. It’s like he’s saying, “If you really are who you say you are, prove it.” And in his fear and in his haste, Peter climbed over the side and left behind his community of believers. He got out of the boat.

In Matthew and in the early days of the Jesus Movement, the boat wasn’t just a boat. The boat represented the church. In the very first verse of this story, Jesus commands the disciples to get in the boat. So now, in the early morning storm, Peter’s fear and hunger for proof have taken him away from the very place Jesus commanded him to be: in the boat. Carefully walking on the waves away from his fellow believers, he falters, he fears, and he begins to fall. But Christ’s grace catches and carries him back to the boat.

Fear makes us forget that we’re all in this together. Fear atomizes us, cuts us off from the very relationships that make God present in our lives. Fear divides and isolates. Fear of people who look different or act different or think different might cause us to “circle the wagons” and cut ourselves off from the people we are called to love, the people called to love us. Fears like that have become codified into laws, like homeowners’ associations that wouldn’t allow a family of color to buy a home in their “safe” neighborhoods or anti-miscegenation laws that barred interracial marriages. Fear can make us treat the foreigner like a criminal, isolating them and in the process, ourselves. Fear can make us even turn on ourselves and become a stranger in our inmost being.

In response to Peter’s fear, Jesus stilled the storm, took Peter by the hand, and led him back to his community. “You are not alone; I am with you. Your shipmates, your fellow disciples, are with you.”

This story can remind the church of what kind of community it is supposed to be in response to times of fear. And church architecture offers another reminder that the church is called to be the ship of christ. The place in churches where the people sit is called the nave. Nave, from the Latin word for ship (think, navy). Naves are even designed to look like the hull of a ship turned upside-down. Those gathered in the nave are gathered into the ship of Christ. Not a canoe built for one, but an ocean liner with rooms for many. In the storms of life, we are not alone. And we are not meant to act as if we were. We are a life raft with space for everyone.

If you are beset by fear, don’t attempt to go it alone. Stay in the boat, stay connected and committed to your fellow disciples, and trust that Christ will find his way to you, gracing you with peace even amidst the storm.

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Pastor Megan Hoewisch

First Lutheran Church