Amanda McMillen, “In the Middle of the Storm”

Good morning! I can’t tell you how thankful I am to be back in this pulpit, in
this church I love. I’m so looking forward to remembering names and faces
that I haven’t seen in a few years and meeting those of you I haven’t met yet
- thank you for making me feel so welcome here.
I love this Gospel passage that we just heard, of Jesus walking on water and
saving Peter from the waves. But it is so easy to read this and focus on Peter
- what he did right and what he did wrong. And how, perhaps, I could do
better than him. Now this is an understandable and very human response to
this story. But I want to focus our attention instead on Jesus - what Jesus says
and does, and how that might be good news not just for Peter, but for you
too.
So let’s look at Jesus. Jesus walks on water, a miracle in itself, but it isn’t a
random miracle. God walking on water can be traced back to the Hebrew
Scriptures, to the God of Israel. In Genesis, when the earth was formless and
empty, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. In the book of Job, when
he is arguing with his friends about the reasons for his great misfortune in
life, Job exclaims that God “spreads out the heavens and treads on the
waves of the sea.” (Job 9:8) The disciples probably didn’t realize in the
moment of experiencing this terrifying storm how Jesus’ actions were weirdly
similar to those old stories, but in walking on water, Jesus is aligning himself
with the divinity of the God of Israel. This Jesus isn’t a random new god on
the scene - this is the God of all creation. The creator of the waters and
winds themselves.
The disciples don’t quite make the connection, and I can’t blame them. I only
made the connection because I read some commentaries on it. The disciples
see Jesus and understandably assume he is some kind of a ghost. They are
completely consumed by fear. In our New Revised Standard Version Bibles,
translated of course to English, we see that Jesus replies to the disciples’
fear: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” That phrase “it is I”, in the Greek
in which it was written, reads: “I Am”. “Take heart, I am; do not be afraid.” In
English, this is a terrible, kind of yoda-sounding grammar: “Take heart I am”.
But perhaps it sounds slightly familiar to you. When Moses encountered God
in the burning bush, way back in the book of Exodus, Moses asks for God’s
name - “when the Israelites ask who it is that is coming to rescue us from
slavery in Egypt, what shall I tell them?” And God replies: “‘I AM who I AM.’
That is what you are to tell the Israelites. I AM has sent me.”

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As he walks across the storming sea, wind whipping in his face, Jesus says to
his disciples: “Take heart, I AM; do not be afraid.” Again, Jesus references the
work of the God of Israel in his own miracle. This is not a new God, one who
is unfamiliar with the troubles of the world. This is a God who has been with
Israel, who has been with all of creation, since the beginning of the world.
There is nothing new to Jesus. He has seen it all.
Peter, in the middle of this storm, suggests that perhaps Jesus might prove
that he is in fact the God of all creation by commanding him to walk out on
the water too. Jesus plays along, and invites him: “Come”; Peter begins to
walk, then panics, starts sinking, and calls out: “Lord, save me!” And
immediately, Jesus grabs his hand, rescues him from the raging sea, and the
winds calm. The disciples reply, dumbfounded - “Surely this is the Son of
God”.
The wind was against them as the disciples did exactly what Jesus told them
to do - to go to the other side of the lake. This is curious. Jesus tells them to
go across the lake, and you would think that if Jesus told them to do
something he would have cleared a path of clear skies for them. I imagine
the disciples were surprised. I imagine they assumed that if they do exactly
what God wants them to do, they will be safe from any harm or difficulty.
And I think if we’re honest, we sometimes feel that way too. If I follow the will
of God and always take the moral high ground and do what I think is right at
all times, then it should be smooth sailing up ahead. This would only be fair,
right?
But the reality is that hardship comes for all of us. We experience storms of
difficulty, the wind raging against us, making our path seem impossible, no
matter how moral we think our choices may be, no matter how spiritual we
are, no matter how much we pray or how much we volunteer our time, no
matter how sure we are that we are doing the will of God. The wind rages
against us all.
So where is the good news? Because we cannot stop the storms of our life
from happening. We can’t control when a terrible diagnosis might hit us in
the middle of our life plans. We can’t control when the estranged child we
love dearly will finally call, with forgiveness in their heart. We can’t control
the suddenness by which depression comes to us, sucking the energy out of
another day. We can’t control the storm around us. So where is the good
news?
The good news is that Jesus, eternally begotten of the Father, the ancient
God of Israel, Jesus, the God of all creation, the God of all time and space,
the God who knows you better than you know yourself, the God who
weathered the storm of life with Job, and the God who walked with Moses
through disappointment and triumph, from slavery to freedom, is also in that

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storm. In the middle of the storm is where Jesus comes to his disciples, and
in the middle of the storm is where God comes to you. 
There may be a storm still brewing in your life right now – winds that are
against you, making everything difficult. The Gospel message is not that
your problems are solved, the storm of difficulty finally ends, and that’s how
you know God is real and with you. And actually, it’s good news that that is
not the Gospel message, because it means that if you are in the middle of a
storm right now - if you are in the middle of grief, of depression, of a
transition in life that feels overwhelming and insurmountable, if you feel like
you are drowning like Peter, then you can be assured that God is there too.
In the middle of the storm is where God meets us. God does not shy away
from our storms. Remember there is nothing new to Jesus – He has seen it
all. And if God dwells in the storm that is your life, then that means that
somehow, someway, that place is sacred. It is sacred, because your life (your
real life), with all of the anxious thoughts that keep you up at night about the
storms that are brewing, is sacred. Your real life, with all the storm that it
entails, is sacred because that is the place where Jesus reaches out his hand
to grab yours.
In the middle of the storm, we, like Peter, have trouble seeing that God is
with us. I certainly do. Perhaps your faith wavers in the middle of your storm,
in your sacred life. Perhaps you don’t feel even a speck of faith in your heart
right now. If that’s the case, then you would be a lot like Peter, the rock on
which Jesus built his church. The good news is that Jesus doesn’t wait for
Peter to prove the strength of his faith before he reaches out his hand to
save him. Jesus says “Come” and Peter comes to him. In that one word, Jesus
speaks Peters faith into existence. Peter cries out in desperation as he begins
to sink, and as quickly as his faith fails, Jesus saves him.
On the cross, Jesus reaches out his hand to you, in the middle of your storm.
The tragedy of the crucifixion, of Jesus himself being killed by his own
creation, means that God is present in our tragedy, too. As Jesus hung on the
cross, breathing his last breaths, the sky went dark. A storm had settled in
that sacred place. God placed himself in the middle of the storm of all human
tragedy, of all the storms of our lives, his hands stretched out in never-
ending rescue. And on the third day, the clouds cleared, the sun arose, the
storm passed, the winds calmed, life came from death; so, there is good
reason for you to hope for the same. But when your faith in a clear sky
falters, when your faith even in God falters, you can be assured that even
then the hands of God are there, stretched out to save you. Amen