"God's Help and Our Hope"
Preached on August 8, 1999
by
The Reverend Joanne S. Miller
Recently, for some not yet understood reason,
my husband's grandmother has become quite interested in whether
or not I have been practicing the piano. Often, when she sees
my husband now, she asks him if I have been playing. A few weeks
ago when I saw her after my vacation which I spent at home,
she asked me if I had played the piano every day.
"No," I said.
"Oh," she said, "I imagined you were playing
every day." She has also suggested to my husband that I get
up five minutes early every day in order to practice just for
five minutes. Every time the concern is raised my answer is
the same: "No, I haven't been practicing."
You know, there are other things I should be
doing too. There is a list of things I feel I should be doing.
Yet I don't do them. I have good intentions, but they are not
enough to motivate me. All these things require time and like
everyone else, I have had to set priorities and do what must
be done, and some things I have chosen to put aside for now.
There are many activities in life which simply
require practice and discipline in order for them to be maintained.
Work skills need to be used, hobbies need to be honed, good
habits need constant attention. To be at your best in whatever
you choose to do, requires regular and consistent involvement.
The same is true of our faith. Faith must be
practiced and exercised or it will wither away like an unused
muscle. Faith must be taken care of and tended to in order for
it to be a dependable resource for us. We tend, however, to
think of faith as something passive, something that does not
require any action on our part. We view faith as a noun, as
a possession. You either have faith or you don't, and the goal
is to have it. Yet faith is always, a verb, never a noun. Belief
is not a possession, but an activity. As one biblical commentator
put it, "Faith is like a song that disappears when we stop singing."
Now if asked, probably not one of us would say
that we wouldn't mind if our faith disappeared. We do care about
out faith and want it to make a difference in our lives. Yet
there are times when we do not give our faith the time and attention
it needs to remain strong and secure. Faith needs to be practiced
too. And in order to practice our faith, we need to take risks
in faith. We need to risk believing in the goodness and promises
of God when circumstances might indicate there would be no reason
to believe. We need to risk believing in the love and power
of God in those times when we might be tempted to try to manage
on our own. To believe in the saving power of the God we know
in Jesus Christ is to take a risk that in all circumstances,
God's goodness and love can be trusted.
In today's Scripture reading, Peter takes a
risk in faith. He practices his faith by reaching out to Jesus
in a time of crisis. This is a story that is our story, for
Peter, like us, possesses a faith that is mixed with doubt.
He represents all who dare to believe Jesus is their Savior,
who believe Jesus is able to sustain them, and who then forget
to keep their gaze fixed on him instead of on the towering waves
that threaten to engulf them.
In this story, seeing the strong wind on the
sea, Peter is afraid and begins to sink. He calls out, "Lord,
save me!" and what follows is one of the most comforting passages
of Scripture. The very next words after Peter's cry of fear
and doubt are: "Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught
him."
For the author of the book of Matthew, the purpose
of this story of Jesus' miraculously walking on the sea is to
reveal the nature of God in Jesus Christ. Our God is a God who
is quick to respond to our cries and come to our aid. God is
not remote and indifferent, but close and compassionate. God
is ever ready to help us, to calm our fears, to ease our anxiety,
to save us from our doubt. In times of weakness, when we reach
out to God, God is present and faithful, sustaining us and empowering
us.
David Wolpe, in his book, Teaching Your
Children About God, tells the story of a father and
his son. They were walking along a path when they came upon
a large rock, and the son said to his father, "Do you think
if I use all my strength, I can move this rock?" His father
answered, "If you use all your strength, I'm sure you can."
The boy pushed as hard as he could to move the rock, with no
success. Dismayed, he said, "You were wrong, Dad, I can't do
it," to which the father replied, "No son. You didn't use all
your strength - you didn't ask me to help."
Sometimes, we simply need a strength beyond
our own. Sometimes the little faith we have is not enough to
sustain us, and we need to ask for God's strength. Moving the
spiritual rocks in our path, the rocks of doubt and little faith,
require the strength of God. That's what God's people throughout
Scripture have discovered. Throughout all the ages, God's people
have never been promised easy times, times free of doubt, free
of questions, free of confusion. From the slavery of the Hebrews
to the hardships of the disciples, from the top of Mount Sinai
to the hill called Calvary, from Job to Jesus and the Patriarchs
to Paul, the biblical story paints a picture of a people who
have known times of doubt, pain, and death, as well as moments
of comfort, joy, and the fullness of life.
But that same biblical story tells us of a God
who never abandons people or leaves them alone in the face of
life's difficult experiences. The biblical story is the story
of God's involvement with humanity right in the midst of difficult
experiences. It is the story about our relationship with God,
our relationship with one another, and our relationship with
ourselves. And the truth is that relationships take time and
trust and patience and practice.
The Old Testament lesson for today is the story
of the calling of Moses, commonly called the story of the burning
bush. A rabbi has spoken of this story in a refreshing new way.
"Too often," this rabbi woman said, "we have been so enthralled
with the picture of that bush that was not consumed as it burned
that we have missed the real miracle. The real miracle was not
that the bush was not consumed by the fire. The real miracle
was that Moses stopped and watched long enough that he was able
to figure that out. How long do you have to watch something
burn in order to notice that it is not being consumed? But Moses
took the time, Moses had the patience, to pause and observe
long enough that he noticed. That was the miracle." And the
rabbi continued, "How many times have we missed an encounter
with God because we did not have the patience to hang around
long enough for God to speak to us?"
What a great question! Could the growing popularity
of certain meditation movements be due to the fact that they
help people to stop long enough, be still long enough, be quiet
long enough, that they can begin to notice the presence of God
who was with them all the time?
Only by practicing our faith, by taking the
time to enter into a relationship of faith with God will we
begin to be able to recognize that Divine presence in our midst.
If we take the time to develop a relationship with God, we will
begin to recognize the look of God, and the sound of God, and
the feel and touch of God, so that we will have some clue, and
a clue may be the best we will ever get, that we are following
in the right direction. Following after the way of God in the
world requires faith precisely because there are no simple,
easy, clear directions. But there are directions we will travel
because all the clues seem to point toward that way. Faithfulness
requires practice, and the difficult work of seeking to be open
to the presence and the power and the movement of God.
Practicing our faith means remembering that
God is the source of all goodness, and that in all times, even
in times of joy, faith can be nurtured and strengthened. If
in the days to come your doubt becomes stronger than your hope,
if the burden of life seems bigger than its sense of purpose,
if failure seems to loom larger than success, then remember
the story of Peter. The love of God sustains you and upholds
you with a love and a strength that will never let you go.
We will conclude our worship today by singing,
"Kum Ba Yah," Come By Here. At the roots of our faith is the
deep conviction that the Source of Life, the God of Creation,
the One who can bring help for all our brokenness, the one who
hears our cries, has come by here. God, in Christ, has come
to dwell with us, has promised never to leave us, is still working
among us and in us and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
That is the truth we discover when we reach out to God in faith.
In the face of all that, all you can say is,
"Thanks be to God!" Amen.
