Paul Walker, “The Future Does not Depend on You”
Public Schools begin on Wednesday, so today we have the Blessing of the Backpacks at our 9am service. Oodles of children will come forward with their school backpacks to receive a blessing and get a sticker to remind them God is always with them no matter where they go. Private schools and UVA are not far behind. We have a new crop of Graduate and Undergraduate Fellows starting soon. This always feels like the real New Year in Charlottesville, and at Christ Church.
When the cicadas reach a certain pitch, one might feel a kind of nervousness about the change ahead, the venture into the unknown. I don’t think anyone is too old to feel the familiar feelings of the first day of school. Change is afoot, new and unfamiliar territory lies ahead. The truth is life is one big first day of school. Every second of every day is a new and unexplored landscape. Change and loss are sewn into the fabric of all life. Bodies age, relationships shift, circumstances switch around. To be honest, God is the only constant in this transient life. If we don’t trust in Him, we are necessarily unmoored.
There is great example of this in CS Lewis’ Perelandra, the second book of his space trilogy. Perelandra is a planet that has not experienced the fall of man. No sin has yet entered the world. The Adam and Eve characters live in an unfixed land – waves come and go and make new islands every day. There is one fixed mountain, and they are allowed to visit it by day, but forbidden to spend the night there. That means they can’t live there, build there, set up shop there. Instead, they must trust what God gives each day in an ever-changing landscape. Their trust must be in God. And God provides for them each day.
That we are dependent creatures who look daily to God for our welfare and wellbeing is not the prevailing message of the culture, obviously. I picked up a tree identification book the other day. The opening chapter of the tree identification book was thus titled: “The Future Depends on You.” Wow. Really? The future depends on me? Mind you, this is not a self-help book, a power of positive thinking book, or a book on personal finance. This is a tree identification book.
The gospel this morning shows us the disciples in a tricky spot – their future is very much uncertain; it appears that it had better not be up to them. After the feeding of the 5000, Jesus sends the disciples off on a sea voyage while He goes up a mountain to pray. Apparently, He prays for a good, long while, because when we check in with the disciples again, the boat is far from land, battered by waves with a prevailing headwind. Also, it is pitch dark – the middle of the night. Anyone who knows the sea, knows the destructive power of the sea. (Have you seen the Odyssey?) The disciples struggle on their own, fearing for and fighting for their lives, until, as the scripture says, “early in the morning He came walking to them on the sea.”
The disciples are scared out of their wits. They think Jesus is a ghost, maybe like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, “doomed for a certain term to walk the night.” (Can’t help but pause here to point out the prescient nature of the disciples’ fears – after Jesus is raised from the dead, He also scares them out of their wits by passing through closed and locked doors.) But here it is not the Risen Lord; instead, it is the carpenter of Nazareth cum The Second Person of the Trinity who has command of all the elements of the natural world. Were they or we to encounter that person in His glory, we would be eviscerated in awe. A mere ghost would be child’s play.
Instead, Jesus, their teacher and friend, simply says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Here I want to get the main point of this short and simple sermon. What happens next? Peter, impetuous as ever, decides to go out and meet Jesus by walking on the sea. I don’t believe this action would have ever occurred to me, or most normal humans. But Jesus commands him to come. Peter succeeds until his fears overcome him. When he starts to sink, he cries out the words that need to be on the lips of every human being: “Lord, save me!”
Lord, save me! Lord, save me! Lord, save me!” What else is there to say in a life that is one big first day of school? At the moment, if Peter’s life depended on Peter, Peter would sink down to his death in Davey Jones’ Locker. The truth is that no one and nothing else has either the power or even the perfect will to save you, save Jesus Christ our Savior. Peter’s desperate plea is answered in two ways. Immediately, Jesus reaches out His strong hand to catch him. And Peter is saved. They all enter the boat and immediately the wind and the waves cease. Peter is the spokesman, but at that moment all the disciples are saved.
The second answer to Peter’s prayer – Lord, save me! – is on the cross. In Christ, we are saved from sin and Satan and death and hell. Your future is secured in the blood of Christ shed for you – and for the world. God’s saving grace is the very essence of grace
I close with this little piece by Rob Long, the one-time producer of the beloved TV show, Cheers. He envisions 2 people in heaven welcoming a someone who has just arrived. One guy, during his life, was ultra and the other guy was ultra conservative. They disagreed on virtually everything. But they are there at the pearly gates to welcome a new political figure.
“Welcome to Heaven! We know this is probably a surprise, but we want you to know that you’re here safe and sound, and we’ve been assigned to be your guides — think of us as your Afterlife Buddies — as you get settled in. The two of us had a lot of experience down there in politics and partisan media, so rest assured you’re in good hands. Just to get this out of the way: you don’t deserve to be here. We know that. You know that. We don’t deserve to be here, either. Nobody does. But here we are. And you may not even have expected to get here. You’d be surprised how often we hear that! Of the two of us, it was Rob who was most surprised to find himself here and it was Charlie who sort of “knew” (or so he said) that he would eventually get here. But neither of us expected to get here when we did, and certainly not how we did. It turns out that “grace” really is a thing and it’s all over the place up here. Which is a very lucky break for some of us. Well, a lot of us. Well, all of us.”
Lord, save me. I’ll close with the collect from the Prayer Book’s noonday liturgy. “Blessed Savior, at the hour you hung upon the cross, stretching out your loving arms; Grant that all the peoples of the earth may look to you and be saved.” We are saved by grace and grace alone.
Amen.