Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City,
August 7, 2005, The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
by The Reverend Barry M. Signorelli

Jonah 2:1-9
Psalm 29
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:22-33

I hate, fear, and avoid small, enclosed, dark spaces.  I won’t say that I’m claustrophobic, since that would suggest I’m uncomfortable in elevators or crowded rooms, which I’m not – but the thought of being stuffed inside some container, feeling the walls touching me all around, truly makes me anxious.  Some of my most vivid nightmares have involved caves, or tight tunnels, the places those spelunkers go, the cave-explorers on Discover Channel specials, squeezing their bodies into tight configurations of rock deep below the earth’s surface.  At the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, they have an exhibit which demonstrates how some animals function without sight: it’s a carpeted tunnel about three feet wide that goes around in a circle, changing levels all the time, and you crawl on your hands and knees to go through it, completely in the dark, no visual cues at all.  Now they do have infrared cameras on you all the way through, so that if you happen to freak out, they can open it up and get you out…well, I didn’t make it as far as the first camera!  To my lasting embarrassment, I had to back up, tush-first, apologizing to all the folks who were eagerly waiting to clamber through behind me.  I don’t like tight, dark spaces. 

That’s the feeling I get when I read about Jonah in the belly of the great fish.  When I was a kid in Sunday School, I always thought of the fish’s belly like the scene from Pinocchio, when he and Jimminy Cricket get swallowed up – my picture book showed it to be a wide, spacious place, plenty of headroom.  But as I grew older, I realized that Jonah was trapped in much tighter, intimidating quarters; no picture-book luxury here.  He was swallowed up, and had no expectation of ever being liberated alive from his prison again. 

Now, why did Jonah end up in the belly of the fish?   

Because he was afraid.  You see, Jonah was prejudiced.  God had called him to prophesy to the city of Ninevah; that was the capital city of the Assyrians, who had conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel a few hundred years earlier, causing their political annihilation.  Jonah, being a prophet from the North, was not favorably inclined toware Ninevah for that reason (grudges die hard in the Middle East).  Jonah was actually afraid that the Ninevans would heed the call and repent, and that wasn’t something he was prepared to let happen, no matter what God thought.  So, to thwart God’s will, he ran, and caught a ship; and a storm blew up, they were in trouble, and Jonah knew it was his fault, so he told them to throw him overboard to appease God.  So they did, and apparently it worked: the storm stopped.  But God didn’t want Jonah to drown, so a great fish was sent to swallow him up.  Jonah ends up alive, but in a small, dark, enclosed space with no hope of escape.  Until he recognizes the wisdom of God, which sets him free. 

You know, I wasn’t always so afraid of small, enclosed spaces.  I remember when I was four or five years old, my parents had a house with a small crawlspace under the entryway – I used to love to go in there, I felt safe and secure, like it was a place scaled just for me.  It was almost – dare I say it? – womb-like in its comfort and protection.  I know now that many small animals have an instinctive desire for such surroundings; they are most secure when they can feel their shelter touching them all around, when no enemy can get at them.  But then, most small animals can easily navigate such tight quarters, even turning around in small tunnels if need be.  My fears come from being held tight and immobile in a tunnel I’ve wormed my way into, can’t get out of, and end up stuck in place. 

Our language in full of references to how fear immobilizes us: “he was paralyzed with fright;” “when she heard the intruder, she froze.”  Even Jonah, when he was driven by his fear to run, ended up unable to move, held tight by his marine captor.  And if that were that, we would be constantly restrained, unable to escape the predicament in which we find ourselves.  But, you see, we’re not unable to escape this predicament…because, to God, the predicament doesn’t exist.  In most cases, when we’re “too scared to move,” it’s because are terrified of what might happen if we do anything.  In short, fear can paralyze us at any time we let it do so…and that may be oftener than we think. 

Now, the thing that makes me even more fearful than small, tight spaces is deep, deep water.  The thought of drowning in the ocean or a deep lake is another secret terror of mine; to this day, I refuse to watch the movie “Titanic,” because I know how it will end, with hundreds of people plunging to their watery death ( I hope I haven’t given away the ending to anyone).  So I have  a certain empathy for Peter, who sees Jesus walking               on the water, and in a fit of – loyalty? bravado? – steps out onto the water and joins him in this miraculous activity.  Now, I don’t know how Jesus managed to walk on water, or how Peter imitated him as well, but I do know one thing: Peter could have had absolutely no fear in doing the deed; he stepped out of the boat without thinking about the consequences, literally buoyed up by his faith in Jesus.  In fact, when he did begin to doubt (that is, while he was atop the wind-swept waves, where he knew he “couldn’t” be), that’s when it all began to fall apart, and he started to sink into the water.  As you or I would expect him to!  As any fool would expect him to!  You just can’t walk on water! 

Or can you?  There are some species of lizards that perform this miraculous feat every day, bouncing across the surface of rivers and lakes, using the surface tension of the water like an insubstantial sidewalk. 

Peter’s doesn’t know this, of course; it’s like the old cartoons, where the Roadrunner is constantly being chased by Wyle E. Coyote across the desert canyons.  Often, the coyote will be so intent on his pursuit that he will run right off a cliff above some great chasm; and he’ll continue to run in mid-air for a bit, perfectly fine until he looks down, realizes where he is, and only then — drops like a stone.  So long as he didn’t know he couldn’t do what he was doing, he was fine; it’s only when he thinks it’s impossible that it is. 

Peter always wants so badly to be like Jesus; he sees what Jesus does, and he seems to think, “well, if my Lord can do it, so can I.”  It’s as if Peter know instinctively that his fear has him boxed into a small, dark, cramped  space that limits him, and he suddenly has a flash of insight that he can get out.  Thus, Peter’s unusual request: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  Why on earth (no pun intended) would Peter suggest that?  Common sense would say, “you idiot, stay in the boat where it’s safe – who do you think you are?”  But Peter knows who he is, and he knows who Jesus is, and trusts that, if Jesus says he can do it, well so he can.  Peter intends to be a pillar of faith – he wants out of that box of fear.  And so, at Jesus’ invitation, he steps out onto the water, and – behold!  It’s working!  He’s actually doing it, just like Jesus!  He is, for a few precious moments, inhabiting a reality where all things are possible, and he is free from the constraints and limitations of the “real world.” 

For a few precious moments.  Because suddenly the wind picked up, and Peter became aware of his surroundings again, and all at once all those constraints and limitations came crashing back down on him – “what am I doing?  I can’t walk on water!”  And so, indeed, he no longer could.  He slams himself back into his small, fearful world, and his faith that Jesus could make him stride the sea becomes faith that Jesus won’t let him drown! 

Jesus’ question to Peter – “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” – might be heard as a pretty harsh response to someone who has just done such an amazing thing; but I hear it differently.  Instead of a rebuke, I hear Jesus’ words as a sort of encouragement: “You were doing so well, what made you let go of that?”  It also suggests that this story is about the opposites of faith and doubt: faith lets you do things, doubt makes you fail.  But I think Jesus is getting at something even deeper than that.  In a way, doubt is not the opposite of faith.  In fact, doubt is essential for the existence of faith, the two exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship: I have my doubts, yes, but I choose to believe in what has been promised despite those doubts.  Doubts are not sin; doubts help us define the parameters of our faith.  Indeed, faith without doubt can decay into a kind of unthinking fatalism: I have unwavering, unexamined faith that God will take care of everything, and all I have to do is believe.  It’s like that well-worn joke about the man who prayed every day for 30 years that God would let him win the lottery, although he never did; finally in his frustration, one day the man prays to God, “Lord, I have been faithful in praying every day to win the lottery, and after 30 years, I never have.  Why haven’t you answered my prayers?”  And God responds, “Work with me – buy a ticket!” 

It’s so easy to make the mistake of thinking that faith is a passive activity, requiring no work on our part, and that we must strive constantly to banish all trace of doubt.  But as I said before, doubt is not the enemy; instead, the enemy is fear.  It was fear that doomed Peter on the water, not doubt — I’m sure that he had plenty of doubts as he lowered his foot onto the sea – it was the fear arising out of all he thought he knew about how the world worked.  Fear strives to imprison us in a small, dark, space where we are helpless; hope releases us from that prison, and empowers us to do what we were sure we could not do before.  For a time, Peter was able to conquer his fear, despite his doubts, and for that time he stood proudly atop the raging water; but fear is powerful and Peter could not keep it from creeping back into his awareness, just as we ourselves find it hard to keep our fears at bay.  The saving grace is that, just as God cheers us on when we overcome our fears, he also stands ready to catch hold of us when fear makes us fall. 

When we submit to being imprisoned in the small, dark, cramped places that fear keeps us, gradually fear becomes our only reality; we can’t see anything else, can’t fathom any other way that things could be.  Unable to envision any alternative, our fear becomes a tomb, immobilizing us and keeping us from even attempting anything that might change our reality.  For our faith to grow in fullness, to become the kind of faith that can let us walk on water and move mountains, it must be grounded in imagination – we must be able to see a vision of the world not as it is, but as it could be, as it should be.  It’s only when we can see the possibilities that we can begin to make them real.  That’s the true power of Jesus’ teaching and example, that he prompts us to imagine the Kingdom of God around us; and once that door is open, we begin not only to imagine it, but to see it coming into being.   

God wants us to break out of the small, dark places that fear keeps us – or perhaps more accurately, God wants us to use those fears as a means of growth.  It is only natural to have fears, completely human for us to boxed in by them; but it’s up to us whether those small dark places are a tomb, or a womb.  When we remain enthralled to our fears, we are limited, closed in, trapped in a world of trouble from which we cannot escape.  We are given a promise that God does not intend for us to live in such a cramped and barren world; God asks us to see beyond our fears, to be born into a world in which the possibilities are endless, where we reclaim our freedom to live, and move, and love.  The journey to such an existence is long and fraught with pitfalls; we may sometimes doubt that we’ll make it to our destination; but if we remain faithful in the promise that God’s love is stronger than any of our fears, then at least we will not walk alone.  Jesus will be beside us all the way, just outside our small, dark, fearful prisons, urging us to come out – to come out and be reborn in hope and faith. 

Amen.

   Back to Sermon Selections