Sunday 4 September 2011

19th sunday in ordinary time 2011

Homily for 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time 7 August 2011

Today’s gospel is from that crowded chapter 14 of Matthew’s Gospel, the same chapter that gave us last week’s reading about the Feeding of the 5000. Both that episode and today’s account of Jesus walking on the water are telling us the same thing in different ways- they are revealing to the disciples and to us the divinity of our Lord, they are showing to us that Jesus is divine because we can see him doing god-like things, things that only God can do. Last week miraculously feeding his followers in the desert, conjuring up food out of nowhere for them, like God fed the Israelites with the manna from Heaven; this week walking on the water and ignoring the wind and the waves, as the Old Testament shows God doing again and again, controlling the elements, from that first setting of the waters behind their boundaries that allows the dry land to emerge and the world to get started in Genesis, on through the parting of the Red Sea – I’m sure loads of examples are springing to mind! A verse in Isaiah (43 xvi) speaks of “the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” and that is exactly what Matthew shows Jesus doing here.
But there is more in this passage to show us that Jesus is God. When they see Jesus walking towards them, the disciples are panic-stricken and think he’s a ghost. So to reassure them Our Lord calls out to them- and what does he say? In this translation, he says “it is I”, but in the Greek original he just says “I am” – ego eimi – “I am”. This of course is the name of God, “I am”. Do you remember when God first manifests himself to Moses in the burning bush, Moses asks God to tell him his name- (Exod 3 xiii-xv) and “God said to Moses ‘I am who I am’ and he said ‘say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you’….’this is my name for ever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations’.” So God’s name is I am- funny sort of name, you may be thinking, but I think it means existence, life, being – God is all of that, isn’t he? The force that maintains all of life in being? But we digress. Here Jesus uses the divine name of himself- we get this a lot in John’s gospel more than in the others, lots of “I am” quotes from Jesus, you can think of plenty of them I know: I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world, I am the way, the truth and the life. Here in Matthew just on its own “I am”. Another proof of his divinity- and there is one more to come.
Peter gets in a mess in this story doesn’t he, he loses his nerve and starts to sink in the water. He cries out “Lord, save me!” And we read “Jesus put out his hand at once and held him”. This too is a godlike moment, because God saves his people, and the favourite way the Jews had of describing this was to use the phrase “God stretched out his hand”, and the usual image they used of being in trouble was being in the water. For instance, Psalm 144 (vii) asks God to “stretch forth thy hand from on high, rescue me and deliver me from the many waters….” Psalm 18 (xvi) says God “reached me from on high, he took me, he drew me out of many waters” and another psalm, 107 (xxviii-ix), has “they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed”. So in this reading today we see Matthew determined to show us Jesus in his divinity- we have a Jesus who is in control of the forces of nature, and a Jesus who is always ready to save us.
And now I think we must look for a moment at Peter in this story. We are so used to thinking of Mark’s gospel as the place where we have all the little extras about Peter- after all, long tradition assures us that Mark was the confidant of Peter and that Peter’s memoirs underlie Mark’s Gospel- it is a bit of a surprise for us to realise that this episode, so typical of the rash and impetuous Peter and all the scrapes his enthusiasm got him into, is unique to Matthew. I think- I go out on my own here- that Peter is in this story standing for every Christian, he is here as an example of the typical follower of Our Lord, he is here as a representative of ordinary Christians like you and me. He is as Jesus calls him the “man of little faith”. We blow hot and cold, don’t we; we want to be good and loyal followers of Our Lord, we want to be good catholics, we want to do our bit for the Kingdom of Heaven and its advancement, but that’s on a good day! There are other days when we are not so keen on the whole damn business of the Christian life, when we feel we’ve had enough of the Church thank you, when our lives are not serene and calm but there’s a few storms brewing up and the cares of the world or the lure of its easy pleasures seem suddenly very strong and likely to blow us off course once and for all. Had any of those days? I get them quite often I must say! But here’s the important thing: we are like Peter in that we want to jump in and follow Our Lord right now, of course we do and here we go, but we are like him in that once we have set out on the Christian life, we feel the force of the wind, and we take fright and like him we start to sink. When we get that sinking feeling, we must be like Peter too- we must not hesitate but cry out “Lord, save me!” because Our Lord is there, isn’t he, always waiting to catch us!
Dear Jesus, we recognise you in all your humanity and in all your divinity. We know that shortly you will come upon this altar and be truly present to us in your body and blood, soul and divinity. You know we are people of little faith, we often feel the force of the wind, we often begin to sink. Come to us, dear Jesus, when we call upon you! Come to us, put out your hand at once and hold us! In St Saviour’s we are in the boat with Peter, the boat that is your Catholic Church, and here we bow down before you and say with those first disciples “Truly you are the Son of God”. Amen.

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