"That Sinking Feeling"
A Sunday Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Thomas C. Leinbach
August 10, 2008 - Harwich, Massachusetts

Preaching Text: "But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, 'Lord, save me!'" (Matthew 14:30)

Anna Carter Florence tells the story of a pastor friend who was interviewing at a church. It seems the search process had come down to two candidates. When her friend was chosen, there were a few on the search committee who still weren't convinced he was the right one.

On his first Sunday, in fact, one of these less convinced committee members "marched up to him, looked him right in the eye, and said, 'Buddy, you'd better be able to walk on water.'"

It reminds me of something a local pastor said last summer at a church service Linda and I attended while on vacation. He was the guest preacher that day, filling in while the interim pastor was away. He talked about how difficult it is for churches when their pastor has left and before they have called a new one. He then related a story from his own past.

As it was, he had received a call to a new church and had just announced to his current congregation his resignation. Shortly thereafter, a woman approached him and told him how despondent she felt that he was leaving. She explained. He was such a great preacher, she said. And great at visitation, too. His adult education classes had been both stimulating and informative. She would miss him terribly.

He responded pastorally by assuring her that in the long run things would be fine. In due course, he said, the church would find someone who would bring new gifts and new skills, possibly even greater gifts and greater skills. The church would continue to move forward confidently and expectantly.

"That's what they always say," she replied, dejectedly. "But every time they just seem to get worse and worse!"

Talk about damning with faint praise.

As one who's been through the interview process more than once, I can tell you that, whether stated or not, this often is the subtext of the conversation. There is this subtle expectation that the pastor is going to carry most if not all of the load. And if that pastor can walk on water, so much the better.

Yet woe to the poor pastor who actually attempts it, or, worse still, starts to believe he or she has achieved it.

In the example cited earlier, Florence says her pastor friend tried to meet these expectations. He sought to perform miracles with the youth group, education, worship, stewardship, despite, as she puts it, "minimal volunteer support and a ferociously deficient budget."

One would have thought he had achieved success when, after a few months at the church, his former detractor approached him and said, "Remember when I said you'd better be able to walk on water? Well, I think you do!"

In the end, Florence's pastor friend, despite significant gifts for the pastorate, ended up leaving not just that church, but the ministry altogether.

For you see, there is great temptation and even greater danger in buying into the notion that we pastors can be Christs for our congregations, instead of limited, finite human beings who attempt as best we can to point others to the real Christ. Beyond that, it is just as unrealistic to expect a pastor to effect, single-handedly, the varied ministries of a church, no matter how gifted or able.

Then again, you don't need to be a pastor to fall into this all-too-human trap. After all, trying to be perfect, to be everything, is hardly limited to the clergy, even if the temptation may in some sense be greater.

Part of the blame, I suppose, for clergy as well as for any and all Christians, could be assigned to this morning's gospel text from Matthew, where Jesus walks on water - and Peter attempts the same.

As Peter is sinking into the raging waters, after his failed attempt to do the impossible, Jesus says, "You of little faith! Why did you doubt?"

Now we've all heard sermons about Peter and his lack of faith. And we're all pretty well versed in the particulars of Peter's problem, as to why he couldn't walk successfully on the water.

Peter's sin, as we've heard, is that he didn't have enough faith. He failed to keep his eyes on Jesus. He let the wind distract him. And he allowed doubts to cause him to remember suddenly how reasonable fear is in a situation like that. His fears thus overtook him, and so he sank.

We extrapolate from this. It was our lack of faith that caused our church to flounder. It was our lack of faith that kept us from achieving this or that. It was our lack of faith that prevented us from approaching perfection. If only we'd had faith, we could have walked on all the various waters of our lives.

Years ago, while working as a hospital chaplain in New Haven, CT, I came in contact with a woman whose young daughter was lying in a coma after a drug overdose. Despite her best efforts to give her daughter a loving home while growing up, the daughter had gotten in with the wrong crowd, spending the better part of her teen years suffering from deep depression, with frequent suicide attempts and several hospitalizations. Only this time she had gone way too far.

As her daughter lay in a coma, the distraught mother sought to comfort her with as much love as she could muster. She turned her sterile hospital room, with its beeping instruments and sterile, institutional pallor into a place of beautiful paintings, bright colors, soft music and round the clock care.

She would talk to her constantly, as if she were capable of hearing. She sang to her. She read to her. She prayed with her. Constantly. She would have done absolutely anything for her.

She even called upon a friend of hers, the ex-wife of a famous New York newscaster who had become part of a very tight-knit Christian group. Without a moment's hesitation, this friend traveled up to New Haven bringing with her several of her spiritual cohorts. Hour after hour they would pray, standing, hands held together, in a circle around the young woman's bed.

At one point, the mother's friend told her that if she wanted to save her daughter's life, there were certain things she'd have to do, including reconciling with her former husband, from whom she had been divorced for many years and who now was living in far-off Hawaii.

Desperate to do whatever she had to do, she dutifully summoned him to the hospital, despite the many, irrevocably lost years that had come between them.

I remember the moment I got the call. Despite doing everything she conceivably could, the daughter died, at the age of 22. As I arrived on the floor, the mother quickly ushered me into a waiting room. On a coffee table was a national news magazine with starving, emaciated African children splashed on the front cover. Overcome with anger and grief, she grabbed the magazine and threw it back on the table upside down.

She then began to tell me how her Christian friend had blamed her for her daughter's death, because she, the mother, hadn't had sufficient faith! If, like Peter, she had kept her eyes on Jesus, if she had trusted in his goodness and ability to perform miracles, her daughter would be alive today. And now, like Peter, it was her fate to sink helplessly into the violent, raging abyss.

Perhaps the problem with interpreting our gospel text this morning as a call to do the impossible is that it tempts us to think that the story is somehow about us, about what we can do, about what we can accomplish. In truth, it's not really about us at all. It's about who Jesus is.

Maybe the point of the story, when all is said and done, is that Peter simply misunderstood Jesus. Because maybe Jesus wasn't calling him out of the boat to do something he could never have done in the first place. Maybe he just wasn't cut out for it. Maybe he wasn't very good at it. Maybe it was beyond his power to effect. And maybe he realized this all a bit too late.

What if Peter's "sin," in other words, was that he failed to trust in who Jesus was and what Jesus could accomplish? Or, put slightly differently, what if his "sin" was that he tried to rely on his own powers rather than Christ's? What if it was this that caused him to sink into the deep, dark waters?

Maybe the pastor, then, who tried to walk on water to please the search committee, ultimately failed because he tried to be Christ himself. Maybe he forgot that the church is the body of Christ, with many members, and that it is only when each part works together that the church prospers. No one individual has the power to supplant the fullness of Christ's body.

Maybe the woman who feared that the next pastor would only be worse failed to see that her trust had been placed in the wrong person - that it was not the pastor who was ultimately responsible for the success of her spiritual journey, but the singular Christ who lives in her heart.

Maybe the distraught mother's friend somehow came to believe that righteous human beings have power over even life and death, confusing the role of the servant with that of the master. Maybe she lost sight of the basic fact that only Christ has the power to truly and efficaciously enter the desperate places of our lives, that it is not we who are charged to be gods ourselves.

In the end, as Peter is sinking into the abyss of human delusion, a delusion born of false independence and false self-sufficiency, he calls out in his utter helplessness to the only one capable of rescuing him. Freed finally from the false and feeble belief that he was able somehow to rescue himself, he cries out, "Lord, save me!" And immediately Jesus lifts him up out of the raging seas and into the safety of the boat.

Years ago, in preparation for a mission trip to help build a hospital in the Dominican Republic, a group of us who had planned to go gathered at a local church for some information-sharing. Separated into small groups, one of the pastors asked each table to name what they hoped to accomplish on the trip.

The answers were impressive. Almost too impressive. One would have thought we alone were going to save the world!

In reality, we went, pounded a few nails, mixed and lugged a bunch of concrete, and, in the process, in some small way, advanced the project. The job of Savior, after all, had already been taken.

In significant ways, life requires that we keep this straight. It is Christ alone who has the power to change our world. As creature, not Creator, servant, not Master, our task simply is to allow Christ to work in and through us in ways that further Christ's plan.

When the roles get confused, trouble invariably ensues.

Let us, therefore, remember continually who we are and whose we are.

Amen.