New Sermon -- Excluded Middle

For St. Paul Presbyterian, Aurora, Colorado

Text: Matthew 14:22-33

I’m going to begin this from what will seem like a weird place.

I don’t know, because I’ve only visited here a few times, but it seems unlikely that you’ve heard many sermons that have started from this place.

You see, the thing is, for years when I’ve read this text, one of the first thing that has come to my mind has been what a jerk Jesus is in this passage.

There, I said it, for a long time I have though that, in this passage, and in particular in his interaction with Peter, Jesus is a bit of a jerk.

I mean c’mon, Peter steps out of the boat, Peter walks on water, then Peter realizes how amazing, how incredible what he’s doing is, has a moment of hesitation and starts to sink.

And what does Jesus say to him, to the only other human who has even come close to having enough faith to be able to walk on water?

Not “Good try, buddy,” or “Great start, you’ll get it next time.”

Nope, all Jesus has to say is, “You of little faith.”

“You of little faith.”

Jerk.

If Peter, who comes this close to being able to walk on water, is “You of little faith,” what does that say about me and my faith?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that on of the fundamental rules of doing biblical exegesis or of studying the Bible in general should be, “If your reading of the text leads you to the conclusion that Jesus is a jerk, you need to go back and try again.”

So let’s back off a bit and try again.

I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid. To be honest, I still watch cartoons.

Watching cartoons in my childhood was different from watching them today, we didn’t have nearly as many choices, there was no Cartoon Network, no Nickelodeon, and no cable.

It could be said that there was only one real choice: Disney or Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers or Disney.

Sure, there were also Hanna-Barbera, Rankin Bass, and others, but I think the real question still came down to Disney or Warner Brothers, because I think it’s more than just questions of who’s cooler: Bugs or Mickey? Or could Donald beat up Daffy?

No, I think those two studios represent diametrically opposed worldviews.

A friend of mine once explained the difference like this:

In Disney cartoons, no matter how strange things seem, there is an underlying normality to what’s going on.  Sure, it’s mice and ducks and all acting, but for the most part the cartoons still take place in a place that is recognizable as our world.

In Warner Brothers cartoons, on the other hand, no matter how normal things seem to be, there’s an underlying foundation of the weird, the bizarre or the wacky. It might look like our world, but it’s clearly not.

Having said that, I’m sure Cleve and Nancy will tell you that it is absolutely no surprise that I’m a huge fan of Warner Brothers cartoons.

And because I’m big fan of Warner Brothers, there was a thought that kept coming back to my mind as I read and re-read this text:

Simon Peter reminds me of Wile E. Coyote.

You remember the Road Runner and the Coyote?

The Coyote would chase the Road Runner all over the southwest and he would build these elaborate traps, usually with supplies purchased from the Acme Company, to try to catch it.

Of course, all of his schemes would go terribly wrong and would end up crushing him, launching him into the air or blowing him up.

There’s one image in particular that I’m thinking of. The Coyote would be chasing Road Runner on foot, running for all he was worth, the Road Runner would make a sudden turn and the Coyote would just keep going because he couldn’t make the turn or stop and he’d end up running off a cliff and out into the thin air. Then he would finally get himself stopped and just hang there in space. He wouldn’t fall until he looked down and saw where he was.

Remind you of anybody?

So there you have it: Jesus is a jerk and Peter is Wile E. Coyote.

But, in all seriousness, I think there is something important to talk about in both Peter’s and the Coyote’s experience.

It’s the story of the middle. It’s the tale of what happens in between, and how often what happens in the middle is more important that what happens at either end.

We love celebrating beginnings: a new job, getting married, going back to school, a new home. We have a big party, we gather around them and we congratulate them and encourage them. We say things like “A journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single step.”

Then, too, we love to celebrate endings, graduations, and victories. The biggest parties are reserved for those who have “made it.”

But what happens in the middle?

What happens after the friends and family have stopped actively cheering you on, after the thrill of starting something new has ended and the doubts about what’s to come have started to sink in?

There are a lot of messages in our culture that tell us not to worry about the middle.

Yoda tells us, “Do or do not . . .There is no try.”

Nike tells us “Just do it.”

Then there’s the eternal chant of children on trips everywhere, “Are we there yet?”

When we have troubles or grief in our lives, there’s always someone around to tell us to “Just get over it.”

People in 12 step programs are counseled to “Fake it ‘til you make it.” That is, pretend you’re at the end, even when you’re not.

It’s much easier for us to think about beginnings and endings.

The middle is hard, the middle isn’t clean or easily definable, it’s messy and tiresome. The middle is about trying, not about doing or not doing. The middle is not about just doing it, but about keeping on. In the middle, we are not there yet; we have yet to get over it. Which is why we tend to ignore it.

Hippies and those spiritual types talk about the importance of the journey, but serious people, successful people are all about the goal, the end, where you want to get is all that is important.

I think it’s safe to say that Peter is a very serious person. Peter is one of those people who get things done, who looks at the big picture and focuses on the goal. You can see in this passage that his thought process is, “I’ll just step out of the boat, then I’ll be with Jesus. No problem.”

Peter only thought about his first step into the water and the moment when he would get to Jesus. Just like the Coyote, who only thought about starting the chase and catching the Road Runner, but not at all about what might happen between those two moments, Peter only got into trouble when he got to the middle and realized where he was.

For both Peter and the Coyote,their biggest problems come from not thinking about the middle.

The coyote visualizes his goal, catching the Road Runner, and dives into his plan, without a single thought as to what might go wrong in the middle. And only very rarely is he aware that he’s doing it.

I was watching one of the cartoons the other day, it turns out you can download them from iTunes, and for one brief moment, too late, he had a flash of awareness that maybe his monomaniacal focus on the end was not such a good thing.

In this particular episode, “There They Go-Go-Go,” his scheme was to drop a load of rocks onto the Road Runner as it ran by; so he found a place on there road where there was an overhanging cliff on both sides and rigs a trap door between them and piles rocks on top, so that he’ll be able to pull a string to open the trap door and all the rocks will fall down on the Road Runner.

Naturally, it doesn’t work, because the rocks have gotten wedged between the two cliffs. So first he runs up to the top and jumps up and down on the rocks, but they won’t budge, so he runs down to the bottom, grabs a long pole and starts poking at the rocks from below.

After a few seconds of poking, as dust and pebbles start to fall onto his forehead, he stops and holds up a sign that reads, “In heaven’s name—what am I doing?”

By then, of course, it was too late and all the rocks came crashing down on his head.

The Bible tells us that after he had taken his first step onto the water, “Peter noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and began to sink.” But it’s not that hard to imagine that the words, “In heaven’s name—what am I doing?” or at least the Aramaic equivalent were running through his mind.

In heaven’s name—what am I doing? Could be the official motto of people in the middle, and the truth is most of us spend most of our time in the middle in one way or another.

We may want to celebrate beginnings and endings but that is not where we spend our lives. We spend our lives in between, feeling the waves beneath us and the wind in our faces, wondering how we got here and how we’re going to get to where we’re going.

Five years ago, in the summer of 2003, I left the safety of my first career and of my home church and moved to a new city and began the journey toward ordination as a minister.

Since then, there have been goals reached, receiving my M.Div in 2006, for example. But there have also quite a few “In heaven’s name—what am I doing?” moments.

In the fall of 2006, my presbytery voted to remove me from the ordination process, and I noticed the strong wind, became frightened and began to sink. I looked down and realized that I had run off a cliff.

Since then I feel like I’ve been wallowing in those waves quite a bit, knowing that even now I’m still at least two years away from my goal.

That’s probably why Jesus word’s to Peter sound so harsh to me, because I feel like I’m in the same place as Peter, and I’m waiting for the “Good try, buddy,” and all I’m hearing is “you of little faith.”

But there’s good news. We’re not alone in that middle time. You can tell because the Bible seems to have been written by and for people in the middle. By and for people who are asking, “In heaven’s name—what am I doing here?”

In the Old Testament, the most obvious place to look for people out in the middle, away from the celebrations of a beginning triumph of reaching the goal are the Jewish people who spend 40 years wandering between the joy of being freed from bondage in Egypt and their goal of entering the promised land of Canaan.

But there’s more than that, the Old Testament as a whole is the story of a people who are asking, “how did we get here?” and, “how are we going to get where we want to be?”

Many scholars today believe that most of the Old Testament was written or came into its final form during the time of the Babylonian exile, as an attempt to tell the people about what had happened and to let them know that God was still with them and was still working for them and their redemption.

That means that the Old Testament that we know today came into being specifically to answer the questions and the cries of a people who had been set adrift, who were stranded between the safety they had known and the freedom they dreamed of for the future.

All of the Old Testament is designed to answer two questions, “How did we get here?” and “Where are we going?”

And in the New Testament, one of the first things that Jesus says in his ministry is that the Kingdom of God has come near, we may be in the middle, but the end is near. It’s what seminary students talk about as “already and not yet.”

In today’s epistle reading, Paul tells us that despite our fears and doubts, “the word is near you, on your
lips and in your heart.”

Our God, is God of the middle, of the in between, and Peter, a good Jew, should have known that. He should have known that for the whole 40 years that the people wandered in the wilderness, God was right there with them, feeding them, giving them water and guiding them. He should have known that throughout the exile God’s people were never alone, God was always with them and God was always working for their redemption.

And that’s where Jesus’ comment to Peter comes from. Jesus doesn’t say “You of little faith” to chastise Peter, he’s not saying to Peter “You loser you should have been able to do this.”

No, Jesus is not being a jerk. Jesus is reminding Peter of something that Peter knew all along, that God is and has always been there in the middle.

And that is good news indeed for me and all of us who spend our lives in the middle, wondering if the next step will be the one that sinks us.

Comments

[Sue Crannell]

Great sermon, Megan!!! As someone who has gotten really impatient with being in the middle and has finally decided to accept it, I felt like what you said makes a lot of sense! And . .
you saved Jesus in the end! Do you think Jesus was shaking his head and laughing a little when he said that to Peter?

[welderasf]

I can see that, although I imagine he was getting a little frustrated with his disciples by this point.