Take Heart: Matthew 14

Please go with me if you will to the book of Matthew, and we’re going to be reading from chapter 14.

We’ve been in a series through the book of Matthew for some time, and to understand the book of Matthew, you have to understand that in all of the kingdoms and great empires of the world—Rome, Greece, Persia—in Matthew’s mind there are only two kingdoms: the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of men, and Matthew is eager to draw your focus away from the kingdoms of this world and draw you into the kingdom of God, and it’s King.

Over and over again throughout the chapters we’ve been preaching, Jesus repeats the phrase: “the kingdom of heaven is like,” like a treasure in a field, like a small peal worth everything, like a mustard seed, like leaven in flour, like a farmer who casts his seed on road and field alike, and who waits all season to pull the weeds, lest any wheat be lost.

The kingdom of God, then, is filled with life and growth. The king is magnanimous and gives out everything he finds most valuable to all without finding fault, and those who receive his word grow and bear fruit to nourish themselves and the people around them. His kingdom is small, and sometimes dirty, but it’s worth more than any other fine thing you might hold onto.

Last week we saw, Matthew juxtaposes—literature majors love that word, juxtaposes, it helps us feel better about our college degrees being worthless. Matthew juxtaposes the two people who are king in Jerusalem, and the two feasts, to show us how upside-down, how completely unlike anything we’ve known the king and kingdom of heaven are. Herod’s palace feast turns into a nightmare of fear and death, but Jesus’ feast in the wilderness is one that heals, nourishes, and satisfies his people. The kingdom of heaven is like a king who cares deeply and serves his people, even when he is in mourning.

This week, we are witness to a miracle, one that is meant to give us courage in the dark nights of the soul. Read with me, Matthew, chapter 14, starting in v.22. [Matthew 14:22-33] This is the word of the Lord; thanks be to God. Pray with me, briefly.

This passage as a whole is about God giving us the strength to let go. Jon Foreman, probably my favorite singer/songwriter says it this way:

Oh, love, light the way home
Light up my soul
I choose mercy instead of control
My life is on loan
Forgive and let go
I embrace a belief I don’t know

What a beautiful sound
To lay your life down
Your forgiveness is where I am found
Here in your arms
I finally let down
I am lightning, and you are the ground…

Give me the strength to let go
Won’t you give me the strength to surrender?
Come on, give me the strength to stop holding on
I’ve been holding on so long
Won’t you give me the strength to let go?

Immediately, the passage says, Jesus sends the crowds away, and not just the crowds, but the disciples, too. For two reasons: one, because he is human, and he heard only this morning that his cousin had been killed brutally and unfairly. The second reason, John tells us in a parallel passage, was that the crowds attempted to seize him and make him king. So in sending the crowds away, we see Jesus’ humanity, and his humility, both.

Humility, because Christ is the only person in history who really deserves power, rule, worship, and all he ever does is give it away to the least of these, because to him, power is not a thing to be grasped. I’ve not known a king or ruler like that on earth. How strange and wonderful the king of heaven is. How strong he is, in how seemingly easily he let’s go.

Humility and humanity. Humanity because he needs to rest, to step away, stop working. Jesus, God incarnate, had limits, and needed to rest. What about you? He’s already in the wilderness, if you remember from last week, even though the crowd followed him. He heals them because of—our word is gut-wrenching—compassion, but Jesus, after he sends everyone away, he goes even deeper into the forgotten places of the world, up on a mountain to be alone. The new and greater Moses, miraculously feeding the people of God in the wilderness, then climbing a mountain to commune with God. How strong, he is, to admit his own need, limitation, and weakness. How strong he is to empty himself enough to enter into weakness, and how rarely we do either.

Jesus needed time in silence, solitude, and prayer, even if the only time he could get was the middle of the night. It’s a need for us, too, silence, solitude, and prayer, whether or not we recognize the need in ourselves. Stepping away from work and ministry, for each of us, is a reminder that we are not necessary to the work of God in the world. We aren’t called into the work of the Lord because God needs us to do his will. We’re called into the work of the Lord so we, his children, can have the joy of joining in what our Father is doing in the world. If Jesus, in his humanity, needed to take a moment of rest and silence, so do we. And for each of us, God gives us the gifts of Sabbath and fasting to step away from the screens, from the calls, from all the things which claw at our attention, just to focus on what is most important.

So we see modeled, here, in Jesus’ own life, the very same lesson he is about to teach his disciples through miraculous sign. His disciples, too, are about to hit their own personal limits, but in a very different way. They worked all day, and at the very end of the day, Jesus sends them away because he needs time in solitude, so they decide to leave the same way they came, and board a boat, probably Peter’s boat.

Travel is like surgery, in that there really never is a completely safe trip. This is how car rental places make money, by selling you insurance you probably don’t need…probably. Sometimes, you travel and everything goes well. The car has no problems, the plane no turbulence, and you arrive on time and unharmed. Sometimes, though, what happened to me this week, your flight gets cancelled and what was supposed to be a quick trip stretches for hours, and you find yourself awake in the middle of the night. Peter would have known every inch of that boat, every flaw. He’s sailed it a thousand times; but the text tells us, the wind was against them.

Galilee, like the midwestern US, is famous for fierce storms that kick up all at once. In both places, it’s because of the mountains to the West, and the way the wind and clouds are pushed into the upper atmosphere. That kind of storm can be frightening on land, and Peter is not on land. By the fourth watch of the night, he’s out in the middle of the sea, rowing against the wind.

In a time and place where there are no clocks, phones, or wristwatches, the only way you would be able to tell what time it was through the night is by the changing of the city watchmen. In Jerusalem, they would have them trade off every three hours. The first watch would be about dinner, when the disciples were passing out bread and loaves that God was multiplying, and the people were worshipping God for his provision. The second watch would have been from around nine to midnight, which is usually about the time I’m falling asleep, warm in my bed, as I’m sure the disciples wanted to be as they were boarding the ship and realizing just how far from home they actually were.

The third watch is about midnight to three, which are miserable hours if rain kicks up and you have nothing to cover you, and it’s dark and cold. Then if the wind is against you, you can’t use the sails, you have to row. So Matthew, the tax collector, think desk job, is handed an oar by Peter the fisherman and told it’s probably just a bit of rain, I hope it won’t get any worse, let’s just get to the other side so we can get home.

The fourth watch was about three, four in the morning. The storm did get worse, and they’re rowing against high winds. I rowed against the wind not too long ago. Adam and Meg got us some time on the lake, but one day I was out on a lake in a Kayak as a storm rolled in. The thing about going against wind on water is that, not only do your hull and your oar turn into sails working against you, but the water starts to move with the wind, giving the illusion of forward motion, even if you know you’re sitting still, so it’s nearly impossible to know how fast you’re going, or if you’re moving at all. As lightning flashes, you become keenly aware that you are the tallest thing for miles. I’m sure by the fourth watch, even Peter would have been exhausted, panicked, and desperate. I can’t imagine how the others would have felt who weren’t used to the water.

Oh, Peter. If you’re the oldest of a just a few fishermen out of a group made up of finance workers, seminary students, and political radicals, whether or not you want to be, you’re in charge. Peter would have been the one toward whom everyone is looking, subtle, sideways glances, to know what to do, and when to panic. Peter was out on the water with a boatful of passengers and responsibilities on what was probably one of the worst, most frightening nights of his life. And now it was fourth watch.

I’ve seen the fourth watch of the night more than I would like over the past few months, and when you’re a father, people look toward you, subtle sideways glances, to know what to do and when to panic. The fourth watch, around 3am, is when you start needing help whether or not you know to ask for it. You never intend to be out on the sea or up out of bed in the fourth watch. You only do it when something is wrong, when some kind of wind is against you in life. The fourth watch is for struggle, for those who watch, or those who weep, or both.

Most recently I was up in the fourth watch with my infant daughter. Before we really knew what was wrong, or if it could be fixed, she had been unable to eat for about four days, and so I found myself last week far from home, holding my daughter, who was starving and in pain, in the fourth watch, wondering if or when we would be able to make it home again.

There is an old prayer of the church which, in the liturgy of the hours, would have been prayed in the middle of the night, called compline. The prayer goes like this: “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.”

In the fourth watch, the prayer our faith tradition gives us is to ask the Lord to watch beside us, and having been there recently, I will tell you, in the fourth watch, your heart searches for this prayer whether you mean to pray or not. What you need in those moments of fear and panic, when you don’t know how far you have left to go, or even if you’re moving at all, what you need is someone else to stand watch with you. And we serve a God who wonderfully, faithfully, gives us what we need.

At first when Jesus shows up, his disciples think he’s a ghost, and they don’t fully believe him when he tells them it’s him. Peter’s statement echoes the serpent’s in the garden—Jesus, if it’s you. He doesn’t believe its possible, at first, that Jesus could be there with them out on the water. Which, for him, it makes sense. They left him back on the shore hours ago. For us, though, why do we never expect Jesus to be there with us in the fourth watch?

When your sin finally catches up with you, and all the sudden you’re working through shame and damage. When you feel abandoned, like you can’t trust anyone with your troubles. When you’re in the hospital getting news that changes everything. We always think we are the furthest place away from God, but then usually, in some way, he shows up. Somehow his right hand is still there to guide you. I know in our life through these past few months, we had tons of people praying for us, checking in, offering help, giving help without offering when we weren’t able to tell them what we actually needed. Annie had two friends call her out of the blue just to tell her they had no idea why, but she had been on their mind. She knew why.

But in the passage, there’s no reason Jesus should be on that boat except that his friends needed him. I don’t know if anyone else was confused by this miracle. Most miracles are signs of something God is doing more broadly in the world all the time, turning water to wine, healing people, bringing us together, but here the miracle seems to me to be just to meet a need. Jesus went out to them because they were in trouble, and it was the fourth watch, and they were afraid. He came out just to say, “take heart,” which is essentially to say, “it’s going to be ok.”

In our passage, two things Jesus says stand out to me. One, when they think he’s a ghost, and he tells them “It’s me,” what he actually says there is the same thing God told Moses when Moses asked him his name. Ego eimi. I am. He knew, in that moment of panic, they needed to know he was God, something more human, not less than human, not an illusion or even an object of faith, but a person there to help. The second thing Jesus says that stands out to me is when he tells them to take courage. And what stands out to me is that this is something Jesus says often, over and over again, and also what he always says with it.

Jesus is always telling us to take courage, in many places in scripture, and always for the same reason. Take courage, he always says, because I’ll go with you. He says it to the paralytic right before he asks him to stand. He says it to the disciples right before he was taken to be crucified. He says it to Paul before Paul goes into prison. Before Jesus asks us to do frightening things, he makes a simple promise: take courage, take heart; I’ll be right here.

I do this a lot as a dad. Every time I ask my son to do anything frightening. Most recently, it was asking a girl to dance at my brother’s wedding yesterday. He was so nervous he asked me to go with him. That was all he needed, just for me to go with him and stand beside him. I told him, “It’s ok. Go ahead, I’ll be right behind you.”

I miss that, as an adult. I mean, my dad’s here today, of course, but he’s not always here. I’ve had to do a lot of frightening things by myself. Just in the past year or so I’ve been doing a lot of watching through long nights. I know what the psalmist means when he talks about waiting on the Lord like a watchman for the morning. But this passage shows us, we’re never really alone; and it shows us God is able to sustain us through more adversity than we thought possible.

Have you ever thought about why Peter asks to get out of the boat? This picture has been in my mind all week, I want you to picture it with me: the image is this: Peter clutching the side rail of the ship because it’s pitching so violently, white knuckle grip, shouting, asking to let go. He’s probably been terrified all night of losing someone off the side of the ship, yet here he is asking Jesus if he is able to come out on the waters with the storm still raging. Anyone who’s ever been looked to in the fourth watch knows, Peter’s main desire is summed up in the two words in v.28: command me. Again, Peter was the eldest and one of the fishermen. He would probably have been the one shouting orders all night, everyone looking to him to know what to do, trying to keep everyone calm. He’s had to be the strong one. He wants to let go. He wants someone else to be in command.

And Jesus performs yet another miracle that day, letting Peter walk on the water without being overwhelmed. Peter panicking and falling, that shouldn’t surprise us. That’s what had been happening all night. What should surprise us is his being able to let go in the first place, and then what we should see is that Jesus picks him up, makes him stand again, miraculously, not only in the boat, but in the sea itself, in the very midst of the storm.

I hope you see, this choice Peter makes is a familiar choice in life. There is often through our days, a choice between mercy and control. Think about confession—the moment you finally admit a mistake you’ve made. You lose all control of people’s perceptions of you, you lose the ability to manage the situation, but you gain a chance to be forgiven—fully known and yet still somehow fully loved.

Or think about friendship, community within a church, which always begins with vulnerability. It doesn’t make any sense to let go of the mask you wear with everyone else at work and around town, unless you’re willing to risk believing that Jesus might just be there to catch you so you don’t get completely overwhelmed. Think about the incarnation in the first place, Christ leaving his throne, emptying himself. A lot of faith is represented in the idea of letting go. There is a time to stand firm, but there is a time to let go.

We need to know Christ is with us, we need to know he is God, and we need to know we can let go. At some point in your life, the winds are going to be against you. At some point, you’ll be up at fourth watch, holding someone, watching their breathing. At some point, you’ll be the person we pray for in compline: those who work, or watch, or weep this night; the sick, the weary, the dying; the suffering, the afflicted, the joyous. At some point, you’ll be the one in the boat, not knowing when it will end, or how. But at every point, you are going to need the Lord to stand watch with you.

At every point we need him near, to know he is with us, that he is God, and that we can let go, walk out into the storm itself, because with all of our skill and all of our experience and everyone looking to us to have solutions, we are still just in need of Jesus’ holding us up.

My invitation this morning is an invitation to let go. Let go of the stubborn pride keeping you from accepting Christ in the first place, the fear of being taken in. Let go of feeling like if you aren’t strong and holding everything up, life is all going to crash down. Let go of needing to be perfect and put together. Let go of needing to be the one helping instead of being the one who needs help.

“Oh, love, light the way home
Light up my soul
I choose mercy instead of control
My life is on loan
Forgive and let go
I embrace a belief I don’t know

What a beautiful sound
To lay your life down
Your forgiveness is where I am found
Here in your arms
I finally let down
I am lightning, and you are the ground…

Give me the strength to let go
Won’t you give me the strength to surrender?
Come on, give me the strength to stop holding on
I’ve been holding on so long
Won’t you give me the strength to let go?”