2/2/25 Sermon

My dad joined the Navy in 1968 or so.  Which I find ironic because I taught him how to sail around 1993.  I grew up on lakes and learned how to sail at a summer day camp on lake Chautauqua.

And finally After some effort and some of my best begging, I convinced my dad to rent a sailboat with me one day.  And so we went on our maiden voyage.  Turns out despite being in the Navy, my dad wasn’t such a good sailor.  He had no idea what he was doing.  But I did.  He didn’t believe me.  He totally doubted me, but I knew what we were doing.  The fact that I was the only person on our two-person sailboat that knew what he was doing became blatently apparent after Mr. I-will-steer-the-boat-because-you’re-too-young Worthington capsized us after nearly running over some canoe-ers.  And He just floated there looking clueless as our boat laid on it’s side in the water.

Now, sailboats have what is called a center board; a board that is in the center of the boat that you put down to help with balance so that the boat, if it isn’t being steered by my father, won’t capsize. They also serve another really helpful purpose.  If the boat does happen to be captained by my father and should capsize, You use the center board as a lever to put the boat upright again.  It’s like a teeter-totter.  You push down with all your weight and the boat goes upright.  You may have to work up some momentum, but it works.

Again, my dad didn’t believe me.  I was on the sail side of the boat and he was on the bottom side which was going to quickly become the top side.  I said, “Dad, jump on the centerboard.”  “Why?” he said.  “Because the boat will flip upright.  Hurry up before this thing turtles.”  Turtling is when the boat is in the exact opposite position than when you started.  Namely mast straight down, the bottom of the boat straight up.

“That isn’t going to do anything.” I heard from the other side of the boat.   “Dad, just do it.” And so, my dad the Navy man, finally decided that there was enough of a small possibility that his son may actually know what he was talking about and he jumped on the center board and the boat popped right up.  He was pretty amazed.  I think that may have been the day we also crashed into the dock when we were returning the sailboat.  My dad’s now an absolute pro at getting sailboats upright again.  He’s had plenty of practice.  Incidentally, We’re not allowed to rent sailboats from that place anymore.  It took them a few summers to catch on and they would always very graciously offer us canoes when we tried.  Its just the sailboats are always conveniently booked by the time we darkened their doors.

Tipping a sailboat over can be a shocking thing.  You get caught off guard, you know.  One minute you’re cruising along, riding the wind, feeling totally free and the next moment you’re going for a nice swim.  And as you well know, it’s usually accompanied by the shock of being freezing cold because lakes up north generally aren’t warm.  But, you can’t allow yourself to be distracted by the fact that you’re suddenly in the water.  You have to act quickly, or like I said, the boat turtles.  It flips upside down.  And if that happens, you’re really in a bad spot.

Life can go the same way right? We can be totally caught off guard.  We can unexpectedly find ourselves in scary spots.   I had a friend once who had a deep faith and then it seemed like one day he woke up and it was just gone.  And he was terrified.  Sometimes someone close to us dies unexpectedly catching us totally off guard and throwing our life into a tailspin.  Sometimes the person we love seems to turn into someone different or a stranger or they begin to do horrible and hateful things to us.  Sometimes we wake up and don’t even recognize ourselves in the mirror anymore.  It doesn’t really matter what it is. The truth is that Sometimes in life we can wake up and find ourselves in really shocking situations and sometimes even really scary situations.

So it really shouldn’t be a great surprise to us that out of all the things Jesus says, he says this the most:  Don’t be afraid.  Don’t be afraid.  And I guess if I could ask Jesus one question it would be, you know, “Why not?”  Why not be afraid?  There’s so much for us to be afraid about.

You know, some Philosophers and Psychologists say that its just the natural condition of being human.  That we can’t help but be afraid.  It’s the natural state of all creatures on earth.  Every animal has built into it a certain amount of fear.  But for people, they say that this fear goes deeper to a point of anxiety or what is better called “angst”. Freud calls it the burden of Self-consciousness.  That because we are self-aware, it breeds inside of us this angst or anxiety about merely existing. They use a really big phrase to describe it.  It’s called ontological anxiety which means the Anxiety of being…

A lot of these thinkers say that it ultimately stems from the anxiety about death, about not being, about the end of existence.  And essentially, we can’t do anything about this death anxiety.  We can’t overcome it.  It isn’t like fear.  We can overcome fear, but this ontological anxiety or the anxiety of being us, we can’t do anything about it.  You know, like I’m afraid of heights.  You’ll never catch me too high up on a ladder.  They just make me nervous.  But it isn’t the actual height that scares me. It’s the falling to my death part that scares me.  And where I can overcome my fear of heights, I’ll never be able to fully overcome my anxiety over death.

So here we have the disciples, out in the water after a rough night on the lake and suddenly they see someone walking on the water.  Anyone in their right mind can understand why they’d be startled and scared.  And as this figure gets closer it says something to them.  When the disciples see Jesus walking on the lake and they cry out, in English it looks like Jesus says, “Hey it’s me.”  Like that should put it to rest right?  Like that answers the question of what he’s doing walking on water.

But in Greek something really amazing happens.  In Greek Jesus  says, “Ego Eimi” which literally means “I, I am.” or like, “I am me or I am I”.   It sounds a little strange in the English for someone to say something like that But, here’s the cool part.  When we look at this phrase “Ego Eimi” and we have too much time on our hands and search for where else this appears in the bible, we find in the Greek translation of the Old Testament or Septulegent, that “Ego Eimi”  This weird I, I am or I am I is used where God is talking to Moses.

You know, in Exodus.  Moses sees the burning bush and God starts talking to him.  And Moses is trying to find ways to not do what God wants him to do.  And Moses says, “Ok.  I’ll go to Egypt and I’ll talk to Pharaoh and see what I can do.  But, when people ask me who should I say sent me.  Which God are you?  Who are you”  And God answers him, “Ego Eimi” or I am who I am.

The Gospel of John uses this phrase a ton too.  It’s all over the place in that Gospel.  And the meaning wouldn’t be lost on the first audience of the Gospel.  It would have stuck out and been a pretty bold claim.  Ego Eimi.  I am I. I, I am.  I am God.  So, here are the disciples, tired from a rough night on the lake and here walks up someone ON THE WATER.  No wonder they were scared.  No wonder they thought it was a ghost and cried out. Life is full of scary moments and this is one of them.  And Jesus says without missing a beat, Ego Eimi.  Don’t be afraid. I am God.  Don’t be afraid.  Something that Jesus will say over and over again.  In fact, he tells us this more than anything else.  Don’t. Be. Afraid.

Now, we could just take this story as it’s written and think that it’s simply about the miraculous power of Jesus to do super human things, or we can look just a little deeper.  We can look past the words and ask ourselves what exactly Matthew was trying to tell us about Jesus.  And when we do that then, Matthew is telling us something profound about our faith.

That our anxieties, or our angst or this unsettledness we have about just being human sometimes,  though it’s very real, it doesn’t have to be our existence. With Jesus, our fears and our anxieties and our struggles don’t have to define who we are.   Because even when the wind picks up and the storms of life are around us, and even when it looks like scary things we can’t understand are heading our way, if we listen close enough we can hear God, the God who overcomes death, the God who moved on the face of the waters at the beginning of creation reminding us that God is  still here.  God is still moving on the face of the waters no matter how dark and chaotic and scary they can seem.

When we accept and answer the call of our faith, all things become possible.  And like Peter, We can walk on the water with God.  And yet also like Peter we’re not always going to be perfect at doing it and we’re going to have our moments of doubt.  And what I really think the scripture is trying to say to us today is that sometimes these doubts and the struggles and the scary moments that we have in this life, especially when it comes to our faith are ok to have. That the doubts and struggles and scary moments aren’t necessarily the enemies of faith, but they can make our faith stronger.  Because it’s in those moments we hear God calling.  And even if we begin to sink when we respond to that call, Jesus is there to pull us out.

That first day sailing with my dad, when we got to shore and were ringing out our clothes, something that became a bit of ritual when sailing with my father.  I asked him, “Why’d you doubt me?  Why didn’t you think jumping on the center board would put the boat up.”  And my dad told me he was still surprised at how easy it was.  He didn’t think that his weight on a little board would raise an entire sailboat out of the water.  But it did.  And I think that’s what’s going in this story.

Despite the seemingly impossible situations in this life, despite our struggles with doubt and despairing over any given situation we’re in, despite our anxieties and how fragile and fleeting life can seem, we have a God who says to us Ego Eimi.  I am I, I, I am.  I am here. Don’t be afraid.   Even when we fall into the water and don’t think we’re going to be able to get out again, God’s hand comes reaching for us and reminds us not to be afraid and not to doubt.

We all lose our courage from time to time and Christ reminds us not to be afraid.  We all have our doubts from time to time and our struggles and our scary moments.   And yet still from the waters comes God’s miracle proclaiming Ego Eimi I am here.  Don’t be afraid.

So may you have courage even when the wind is blowing.

May you remember that even when life happens suddenly God is still there.

May you hear the voice of God calling to you, Ego Eimi. I am here.

And may you know that even in our scariest moments Jesus tells us Don’t. Be. Afraid.

Amen.