Take Heart: Walking Through the Storms with Jesus

Good morning, church.

Our gospel reading for today comes from the Gospel of Matthew,

the 14th chapter. Let's hear God's word.

Jesus made his disciples get into a boat and go on

ahead to the other side of the Sea of Galilee while

he dismissed the crowds. And after he dismissed the crowds, he went

up the mountain by himself to to pray.

When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat,

battered by the waves, was far from land, for the wind

was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward

them on the sea. But when the disciples saw

him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, it is a ghost!

And they cried out in fear. But immediately

Jesus spoke to them and said, take heart, it is

I, do not be afraid.

Peter answered him, Lord, if it is you, command me

to come to you on the water. Jesus replied,

come. So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the

water, and came towards Jesus, but when he noticed

the strong wind, he became frightened, beginning to sink,

he cried out, Lord, save me!

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him,

saying to him, you of little faith, why did

you doubt? When they got into the boat,

the wind ceased, and those in the boat worshiped him,

saying, truly you are the Son of God.

This is the Gospel of the Lord. Thanks be to God. To God.

Let's pray. Gracious God,

Eternal Father, strong to save, when life whips

up storms and our fears abound, help us

take heart. Help us trust in you. Help us find the courage and

strength to face whatever lies before us.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable to

you, O God, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Fear. This morning I want to talk about fear.

Fear, according to Merriam-Webster, is defined this

way: an often unpleasant or strong emotion

caused by anticipation or awareness of

danger. I want to start this morning by admitting to

you, church, that I am quite a fearful person.

And my biggest fear, I think it's my biggest fear, is also my

most irrational fear. I am terrified of

heights. You should see me when I fly.

I've got a whole routine, all right? I've got the noise-canceling headphones,

I got the baseball cap I have to tuck, I see a pilot back there

laughing at me. I got 2 hands, one holds Nicole's

hand because we gotta pay for the extra seats because That ain't happening by myself.

And then the other one I have, like a little wooden heart from olive wood

from Jerusalem that I like hold, and I pray this prayer over

and over again as we take off and land, praying for you and your brothers

and sisters, Kevin, flying our planes. Thank you for the nod.

It's a whole thing. Ask the youth who have flown

with me for a trip. They love to mess with me in that

exact particular moment of weakness.

Fear. It comes in all sorts of different shapes and packages,

and we have our own unique struggles with it. Take again

my wife Nicole. We fret and fear about totally different

things. A few years ago, on a whim,

she just decides on a Sunday morning to go skydiving.

And she loved it. She had like the best time ever. She like videoed it

and has a whole thing. And I, again, note that it

was a Sunday morning, I have never worked so hard, I've never prayed so hard

during a church service. So you can just imagine how ridiculous she

thinks I am anytime we go on a flight.

Fear. We confront it in new or uncertain

or dangerous situations. I mean, the ending,

right, or the beginning of relationships.

Illness or disease or uncertain diagnoses,

meeting new people, changes at work, starting something

new like, say for instance, the start of

a new school year. Fears can abound

and ready or not, we have to

face them. Fear, as our passage shows us

today, is unavoidable and More than this,

I think what our passage shows to us is that it is the task

of the disciple, of the student of Jesus, to confront

and to face our fear. Let's set the

scene for our reading today from Matthew. In the beginning of this chapter,

Matthew 14, Jesus has just received some grave

news. His cousin, John the Baptist, has been beheaded

by King Herod. Now, Jesus tries

to get away to mourn and to pray and to process,

but he's followed by all of these crowds of people who want something

from him, and so he feeds them, all 5,000-plus

of them. In the beginning of our passage, that has just happened, and he finally,

he dismisses the disciples and the crowds, and he finally gets his moment

alone to pray, but life,

as we all know, did not stop coming for

Jesus or for those disciples. A storm whips

up and batters the disciples as they sail across the Sea

of Galilee, and the word used in verse 24 for battered,

as in the wind and the waves battered them, has a lot

of connotations to other places in Scripture to like demonic influence.

This is not an ordinary storm. That is

happening. But here's the interesting thing about this

passage. Jesus didn't just make the disciples get into the boat.

If you're reading that passage in English, that's often the word that's used. He made

them get into the boat. The Greek is more forceful. He compelled

them to get into the boat. He literally forced

them into it to go on ahead.

This was to be a fearful situation.

And Jesus didn't save them from it. Instead,

Jesus compelled them into it.

One commentator I read this week put it this way,

Jesus did not give the disciples a choice.

He put them in that boat the way a teacher puts a

test on your desk.

You did not ask for it. You may not be ready for it,

but it is here, and you are going to

take it. Life,

with its fears and troubles and hardships, does not

stop coming. And as disciples,

right, we are called to embrace and walk with Jesus

through the fullness of life, all of its ups and its downs,

it's all a gift. From God, whether it feels

like it in a moment or not.

And so we too are compelled, like those disciples

in that boat, to face our fear, for fear,

one of the great tests of life, reveals who and

reveals what we trust.

But before I go on and get too terribly heavy-handed,

I wanna back it up just a bit because all of this begs a question

for me. Is it wrong in

general to be afraid? Right, because sometimes this

passage is read that way and people look at Peter and say, oh man,

he just shouldn't have been afraid at all. So is fear wrong?

From a biological, psychological, evolutionary perspective,

no, it's not. Fear is practical, some degree

of fear keeps us safe from that which might harm us.

Fear is useful. So another question then, is fear

in every instance or configuration, is it a

faith issue? I don't necessarily think so

either, at least not in manageable, moderate amounts.

I mean, it's good to have a little fear around an open flame, and even

yes, when we find ourselves on high places. Don't get too

reckless. That said, the spiritual danger

of fear is that it might come to rule us and

rule in our hearts, that it might stop us from taking

that risk of faith, of trusting in God

and trusting in one another. And fear

can be a powerful tool.

A tool that I feel like has made our world worse for the wear.

I mean, modern advertising, by and large, is built

on this principle. Think about it next time you

turn on your TV. Most ads are designed to create a sense of deficiency or

fear that some company or another can solve with

their magical miracle product. At a certain

level, I think our society feels more fearful than ever,

Simply because we are being advertised to constantly,

every time we look at a screen.

I think the world feels so frustrating because there seems to be

just no escaping all the advertising and fear

that it leaves in its wake,

which we have to confront every time we look at a TV,

every time we go to a movie, every time we watch a YouTube

video on our phone. We have to confront the fear of

being enough: safe enough,

wealthy enough, athletic enough, attractive enough,

wise enough, so on and so forth.

This is a kind of artificially curated fear which gets

laid on top of all of our baseline fears that we just have walking around

as human beings in the first place, And this makes the world feel like a

very scary place indeed.

In our Gospel passage from Matthew,

we see Jesus pulling away in prayer to confront his

own fear and his grief. And there's another lesson

and sermon there, but it's in this wake

of this moment that he has that he imparts to his disciples and

to us powerful lesson by compelling

them into that stormy sea.

Life doesn't stop coming, and we,

whether we like it or not, have to move forward

and face that which confronts us.

We see this lesson as Jesus doubled down. He accepts

Peter's challenge and calls him to come walk on

the the sea. And Peter,

well, he does his best, right? He starts off well but is soon

interrupted when he notices the storm and he sinks

down into those waves, and the verb here that means sight also

means spiritual sight. This is more than him just being distracted by what

physically is going on. He is being gripped and

ruled and led and driven by fear instead

of by trust.

And yet the good news of the gospel might be unexpected to

us at this point. It is that Peter,

well, ironically, he still somehow,

someway passes the test of

faith. He passes the test not because he was

free of doubt and distraction. If you are ever free of doubt and distraction,

let me know your secret. But he passes the

test because of his confession,

Lord, save me.

You see, in his moment of fear, when the rubber met the road, he knew

who to trust. And as soon as he called out,

and the text is specific here, as soon as he called out,

immediately Jesus reached out a hand to

save him. Even in the midst of all that doubt,

as he began sinking, Peter knew who to call on.

And yes, Jesus, as he pulls him up, does challenge him,

why did you doubt, you of little faith? Part of the lesson here

is that faith itself is something that can be grown and strengthened

and perfected over time. That's kind of why we do church, right?

That said, the seed of faith is It is enough.

Realizing that we can't save ourselves,

realizing that only Jesus can, perhaps that

is the lesson that the crucible of the storm, that fear itself,

is designed to teach us. We are, like it

or not, we are, we're dependent.

We must rely on and the grace of God

to carry us through every moment, to save us.

It's only when we make that confession, that Lord, save me,

it's only when we give up our own power, it's only when we cede our

own control that faith can really and

truly begin to grow within us.

And what faith does ultimately,

is it gives us strength. Faith empowers us.

Faith, unfortunately, as we all know here,

does not immediately or instantly fix all of

our problems. I would love to stand up here and tell you

that faith is a magic cure-all in an immediate sense,

but what faith does do is

long-term. It gives us the courage to

face our problems. It gives us the strength and the

endurance to endure through whatever storm life is throwing at

us. This is why when Jesus walks up to the disciples in

the midst of that storm, he meets their fear with empowerment and

says, take heart,

it is I, do not be afraid.

Not just the don't fear, but the take heart,

be empowered, be strengthened through it.

Faith might not fix it, whatever it is that's going on

that's scary in your life, but faith can

give you the strength, the courage,

the endurance to face it.

The promises of our faith your relationship with

Jesus, the bonds that we share as saints,

as church, all of those things can

empower you through it.

I'm going to close today with a story of

a lesson I learned from my papa, my mother's grandfather,

when I was just about 9 or 10 years old. A lesson

he taught me about fear and trust and

about making your way through.

One afternoon, I was a child, again, 9 or 10 years old, we were

trolling the waters of the Cape Fear River in Pender County

in North Carolina, which, if you don't know where that's at, it's like the county

before Wilmington, you know, when you're on I-40.

And it was my papa, my mom, and our Jack Russell Terrier who, yes,

did look like Wishbone's kid, Kids, ask your parents to look up

who Wishbone is. As we saw alligators bob

in and out of the waters of that river, my grandfather joked and he said,

well, the dog is bait in case we need to get a quick getaway

here. You wonder why I am the way I am.

Well, as it does, time got away from us

and the sun set, and this was a

problem because we discovered that we had no light on that

boat at all. And this was before

cell phones, imagine. And it got dark, like dark,

dark, like the kind of dark that can only happen when

you're in the middle of a river, in the middle of the woods, in the

middle of nowhere. And I was afraid,

terrified. It didn't feel like we would ever get back.

To where we started, to that boat landing. And after what

felt like an eternity of twists and turns, I noticed

something about my Papa. He wasn't sweating

it. He wasn't afraid.

And our little boat dock, before I knew it, appeared around the bend, and the

lights came on, and we were home. And we came

home from that trip, and my mom and I, for Christmas that very same year,

went out and bought a big spotlight. For my pop's boat.

No chances. As I reflect back now as an adult

on that night, it's like one of those nights that really sticks with you.

As I reflect back now, what I remember was not how afraid I was

in that moment. What I remember was how calm my

grandfather was, how he guided us all and got us home safely.

The thing I realized looking back on it is that he had

been navigating that river his entire life.

He knew all its crooks, he knew all its bends, he knew all its

turns. He knew the way home.

Why would he be afraid?

And the same is true, I think, for all of us.

The lesson I learned was this: when we know the

way, We don't have to be ruled by

fear. When we know the way, we can take heart and

move forward no matter the situation we find ourselves in,

no matter the fear we face, no matter how lost we may

feel, and the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ

that we share is that Jesus himself is

the way. When those storms come

in your lives, and they will,

let them show you what matters.

Let them show you where your faith truly lies, and as

we come to know Jesus' way more and

more, we might find that there is

a path for us through each and every storm.

No matter the fears we face, No matter how lost

we feel, no matter our doubts or distractions, when we can

make that confession, Lord, save us, when we can cry out

to Jesus, his hand is always

and already there, strong to save.

And our faith in him and the promises that he makes to

us can save. No matter

what. Dear church, take heart.