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on our way into this familiar and beloved place. Tonight many of us took advantage of the encounter with the water, waiting quietly in the font to refresh our memories. I imagine that for many of you

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, as for me, the day of first encounter with that body of water now lies so far in the past that there may not be much that could actually qualify as a baptismal memory, at least in

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any cognitive sort of way. But we've all seen that little damp spot of hair or the bead of water running down a cheek or knows, and maybe we've even held the little body high, not so

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much for air drying or to keep the nose above water, but like a mirror of the church, just to refresh all our memories of how tender is the loving hand of God moving across the surface of

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our days sometimes. But tonight, and in the lectures of this session of midwinter's larger body of water is at stake, and the hand of God upon it is anything but tame. Here are the disciples

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crossing the sea of galilee, not a particularly wide expanse of water, but apparently one of those volatile basins where heavy weather can be upon you in a heartbeat. And if on that baptismal day of the

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past, each of us took a little spray over the rail. These days we have to face the larger truth about water. The contents of the font and the dark heaving swells are the same stuff,

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and on that day when they baptized each of us into this body, there is one thing they decorously left out of the liturgy, though they must have known we'd find out eventually. This is a boat

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in a storm. Yeah, now, so we shouldn't take anything for granted. I suppose it's gospel news that there is a boat that it holds together stays afloat, offers what refuge it can from the

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winds and swells and is going somewhere. But a house on the shore would be even better news, it seems to me safer drier. Sure, er carefully sighted to stand upon the rock. Of course

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. Something in a nice neo gothic maybe it's odd when you think about it, considering that we're creatures who resolutely make our home on land. Except for that comment to peter about building on the rock,

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there's no suggestion from jesus that we'd ever end up sheltering this body of his in anything more stable than a fishing boat. In fact, the heaving sea is so intrinsic to what we're about, so much

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of the essence of the story, that we just have to keep a piece of it right at hand . Even in the most familiar and beloved and terrestrial of places tonight and tomorrow night in worship with the

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courage and candor and comfort of tom and Lillian and craig for nourishment as they hold the mirror up to us, the church well, consider the work of going and coming tonight and the work of staying tomorrow

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night. Both kinds of work have their own complications . And each of the gospel stories will hear begins in the apparent absence of jesus absence. That is not in the sense of utter spiritual desolation, but

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at least in the sense of feeling far away from any reassuring clarity about how to proceed through the heavy weather of uncertain times. As the disciples set off across the lake, jesus isn't all that far away

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just off by himself, up on the mountain. He's been trying for a chapter or two of Matthew's narrative to find some space to refresh his memory, exhausted by the public demands of his ministry. As

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it gathers more and more attention now, the moment of respite has finally come and in it, of course, we see reflected something familiar, knowing as we do, how easy it is to let several

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chapters of Living go by before we find time to refresh our memories of the tender hand of God moving across the deep of us. This is one of the few times when the gospels ever let us catch

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jesus, functioning as that kind of familiar human animal . Gospel piety seems to preclude any glimpse of him with a cold or a headache or doubled over with laughter or coming to life in the morning under the

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influence of a first cup of coffee. But here he is so hungry for a few minutes to himself that is, the sun finally begins to set on another exhausting day. He practically chases away the crowd

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is gathered and then dispatches the disciples on a leadership development exercise, getting themselves where they need to be next for once he'll stay and put them to the work of coming and going. It's easy to miss

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in the narrative, That's something like six hours go by with the 12 of them struggling in the boat as the weather worsens six full hours before Jesus comes to join them again, the greek text says it

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wasn't until the third watch of the night, which is something like three a.m. Anxiety and struggle can leave you pretty raw after that much time. And what's happening to the boat is actually a lot stronger in

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the greek to something closer to tortured than battered. How brave of Matthew really to include such an image of what he was writing to invite us into. You can scan the view books, the view book

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websites of any number of theological seminaries, in vain for an image of any anxious boat full of retrofits , sweating and straining against changing weather, and nothing tame on the surface of sky or water over a

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caption maybe that reads a lively and engaging place to discern your call to lifelong service. Truth to tell this boat actually seems to be a bit of a storm magnet. You may remember that there's another story

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in Matthew a few chapters earlier, in which jesus with them in the boat from the beginning of that crossing actually soothes the sea back to the tidiness of a baptismal bowl. This time, the crisis at

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sea is intensified by his absence. In fact, the sense of the text is that Jesus compelled forced the disciples to embark without him. So by the time Jesus finally appears, there must be layers of

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anxiety at work among them, Fear of the storm , fear of failure, fear of being abandoned, and perhaps fear of the anger that abandonment inspires. That helps explain why his memorable way of catching up

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to them halfway across the lake provokes not sighs of relief, but intensified fear that the whole thing, the whole gospel project, the whole trust they've put in him and in each other must be no more

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than a nightmarish figment of their imaginations. The kinds of anxiety that pile on in the storm around the boat, adjusted only slightly for century and culture start to make the voyage and the vessel seems strangely familiar

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. The moment of church we're living now is ripe with flashback. It's maybe at this point that the thorny old notion of the fear of God might actually help us. The kind of fear that in the

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proverb constitutes the beginning of wisdom, fear not in the sense of cowering or paralysis, but fear in the sense of deep sobriety fear, in the sense of riveting mindfulness of consequences and dangers stakes Godly fear

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. Perhaps fear that God must surely share in contemplating the scars that the oblivious greed of this culture of ours leave upon the poor of this planet, or the ravaging of its climate by those who are unwilling

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to believe the science. God gave us minds to pursue so much of the ethos of recent theological conversations in some circles has been about replacing the fear of God with the friendship of God and for good reason

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. I suppose considering that down through the centuries, some of the heirs of those disciples in the boat , used fear of the power of God to inspire fear of their own power and used our doctrines to

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reinforce their hold on power. That in a nutshell , is what the undergraduates I work with tell me , lies behind their almost unanimous preference for spiritual, over religious, as a descriptor. What they fear

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is coercion by the self righteous. What they reject is judgment by the sanctimonious, But when Jesus appearance walking upon the water puts the fear of God into the 12 of them, it's not a punitive,

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arbitrary or for that matter, doctrinal God who rocks that boat in a storm. It's the God whose power turns death into life. The same power that launched those three women running from the empty tomb at

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dawn on the first of easter like them, like the disciples in the boat, we may find that God has the power to pull courage out of us . The power to utterly transform our priorities and reconfigure

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our landscapes, the power to heal us of debilitating wounds we've grown accustomed to. In any case, I think the focus of the picture that belongs in the church's view book is not any jesus to the

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rescue feet of aqua barracks, but Peter's sudden discovery of something that he must do. Fear of the storm, fear of all he knew about himself and all that he didn't yet know. Fear of being

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in the presence of the deepest and truest good he had ever known. All those layered anxieties were more than offset by the simple words of jesus Take heart , I think of Peter stepping out over the rail

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and standing on the storm in those few brief buoyant moments, and I see nelson Mandela emerging into the sunlight of freedom after half a lifetime in a prison of apartheid, walking back out into the world of

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his jailers and then staring them down, staring the whole system down with for parents and respect something that must be done crossing those kinds of boundaries. We'll take more than a little spray over the rail nowhere

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do any of the gospels record the baptism of Peter ? But he sealed himself with that watery crossing and with wet hair and a wet nose back in the boat, evidently he believed in a way he hadn't

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believed before, even the words jesus spoke to him , which on first hearing sounds so much like a reproach. Oh, you of little faith. Why did you doubt seem kinder and more up building when

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you hear them? After the audacity of what Peter did. Oh, you you whose faith is always coming and going. You could have gone further. If you'd left your fear behind, don't get in

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your own way, reach for my hand, take heart and here in the boat, even with the storm raging, we're practicing saying peter's words. We get together to say them together every now and then

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bid me come to you across the water. The wind is real, the anxiety is high, there is much to fear, but we say it together to the one who comes to us who extends a

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hand who lives with us into the work of coming and going through the heavy weather of fear and of faith, bid me come to you across the water . This boat in a storm faces a crossing now

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that will surely pull us through battering winds and across thresholds of risk Two. Whatever comes next, that's we're saying these days and this boat will be for us again, as it has been in the past

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Bulwark, A place beloved and familiar place for the honest naming and the prayerful healing of our fears. We will take those fears as seriously as they deserve to be taken. We will refresh our memories by

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the watery sign of grace, and here again and again. The strong, tender exhortation. Take heart , and we will row on across to the other side to take up the work that lies before us

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. Now, even in the teeth of the storm , bid us come. Oh, Lord! Only