By way of background on this text, it is helpful to remember that Jesus’ contemporaries did not share the enthusiasm many of us here on Cape Cod have for boating and the sea. The Jewish people had never been a seafaring people, that was for the peoples of the coast, the Phoenicians and the Philistines, the island-nation Greeks and the empire-building Romans. Descendents of sheep herders and farmers who scraped a precarious existence out of an arid land, their remembered experiences with the unruly sea were of dashing through the Red Sea waters on the way out of slavery in Egypt and fording the River Jordan as they entered the Promised Land. They feared and distrusted the sea, which they associated with chaos, anxiety, death and destruction. In light of this background, we can see how Jesus’ mastery of the unruly seas meant to his contemporaries that Jesus shared God’s power.

As we open our reading, Jesus, who has just fed the five thousand, puts his disciples into a boat and sends them off ahead, while he goes off for a time of rest and retreat….

And then it happens – as you gaze aft, your back to the stinging wind and waves, you see something – it is a figure, it is someone walking towards you over the waves – you are terrified, you cry out in fear. “It is a ghost” you yell to each other. None of you recognize that this is the same Jesus you have been following for months, the same Jesus who was with you the day before, the same Jesus who has taught you about the kingdom of God, the same Jesus who cured the sick and fed the hungry.

Even if you are not a sailor, it is not so hard to understand how the disciples must have felt. As members of the church, we have had similar experiences. In fact, in Christian art, pictures of boats are symbolic of the church. If you see a stained glass window with a boat in it, it is likely telling you a story about the church. What Matthew is doing in this account is realistically portraying the situation of the church, both in his time and throughout history – the storm-tossed boat is symbolic of the church’s stormy missionary journey throughout time.

It is not easy being a church – you know that. You know that being a church does not mean that there will not be conflict, that there will be no pain and suffering, that it will always be smooth sailing, that there will not be times when you wonder if you can go on, if you can keep your hands wrapped around the oars, if you will survive the headwinds that you encounter.

How shall we respond when we find ourselves in this situation? “We”, meaning you in the pews, and me, up here in the pulpit. One way would be to respond in the way Peter did. When the going gets tough, it is time to get out! Maybe we need to get out of the boat, maybe we need to embark on our own personal walk with Jesus, as some fundamentalists might put it. Maybe we just need to get out of the boat and walk on the water, but with a touch more faith than Peter had, so that we, unlike him, will not sink when we are alone and terrified of the strong winds of adversity. You know the theology that goes with this line of thinking – I call it the “IFONLY Theology.” If only I had more faith, then I would be cured of this illness; if only I had more faith, I would meet the person of my dreams; if only I had more faith, then I could walk with Jesus on the water…. If only I had a less fill-in-the-blank-here church, I really could do something great…..

How shall we respond when we find ourselves struggling to be the church? Matthew’s gospel leaves no doubt that Peter’s individualistic, lone-ranger approach is wrong. A careful reading of the text reveals that Peter’s error was not in having insufficient faith that he could walk on water – no, Peter’s error was in leaving the boat in the first place, for thinking that Jesus was out there, not in the boat with him and the community. Remember the sequence of events – the disciples are terrified, Jesus speaks to them, offering reassurance, reminding them to trust – “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” – but then Peter demands still more, he wants some proof: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Do you hear the “IFONLY” echo? “If only you supply me with one more proof, Jesus….”

And so of course Peter – the one whom Jesus had previously renamed “the Rock” – sinks like a rock. Only God can walk on the water. And Jesus rebukes Peter for his little faith – his little faith in not accepting his word in the boat. To drive home the point, the passage ends with Jesus and Peter back in the boat, together, with the wind calmed.

Real faith, Matthew is telling us, is not feeling that you have to be a spiritual hero, some sort of Super Christian who can somehow cobble together a faith which might be more durable and stronger than that held by Peter, and so enable you to miraculously escape the stormy seas that the rest of us regular old run-of-the-mill Christians struggle with. And real faith is not jumping ship in the hope that it might be better somewhere else. No, real faith is having the courage to believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that God is with us in the boat, and then staying in the boat and picking up an oar.

Ten years ago I believed that God was calling me here, to be your pastor, to join you in this boat of faith, and, by the grace of God, you discerned the same thing. And so, in response to that call, you went out on a limb and took a chance on a fresh-out-of-seminary, untested, untried novice in the pastorate.

It became quickly apparent to me that what this congregation needed was a long, stable pastorate. The last settled pastorate had not ended well – an issue had arisen involving the pastor, people took sides, the church divided, one side “won”, and folk affiliated with the losing side – over sixty members – left the congregation. Soon after the pastor left as well. Over the three year interim period that followed, the congregation and its interim pastors took great strides in remembering how to be a church together, how to forgive one another, how to disagree about issues and yet stay together as a congregation. But change takes time, and I have found over my ten years here that the storms that rock congregations are not one-shot deals that come once and are never repeated again. No, they are more like the series of low pressure systems that have marched across the New England states this summer, interrupting the sunny stretches with sudden squally downpours that may not be long in duration, but at times are fierce indeed.

Friends, I don’t think West Parish is different from other churches in this respect – I think that healthy churches will be churches where there are disagreements, because, first, people care passionately about what we do and believe at church, and, second, because people trust that they can raise these issues and that they will be given a hearing. And over my ten years here, I have seen time and again how this congregation, in the face of those storms, has increasingly resolved to stay in the boat together.

Let me give you just three “for instances”. After a split vote at a congregational meeting on whether the church and the Family School would be better served by having the Family School become a separate corporation, you – led by the tireless tandem of Arthur Grohe and Cornell Bretz – resolved that the thing to do was not work to force a re-vote, but to pitch in and work to help the Family School become better managed and therefore successful – and you succeeded magnificently. After a proposed renovation of our church school and administrative buildings got bogged down in disagreements with the Memorial Foundation, members of the congregation resolved to move forward with the Foundation in a new way, and as a result have not only restored the working relationship between the two bodies, but have injected remarkable new life into the organization which blesses us through its care of this Meetinghouse. And most recently, after the disappointment experienced by many in the congregation consequent to the departure of our long-time Music Director, Babette Bach, Joyce Joakim and Allen Nelson have stepped forward to ensure the continuity of our music programs.

Some of you who know me well know that one of the things that excites me, that revs me up, that gives me enthusiasm, is building, creating, taking on new projects. And over the past ten years, we have been building – a capital campaign that brought us a parking lot and new pipe organ, a mission partnership with a church in Sri Lanka that has enriched us in many ways, a congregation-wide effort that led us to a new understanding of our call to welcome everyone to our work and worship, strong confirmation programs that have met with the approval of our young folk, a new Men’s Breakfast ministry, a new Women in the Spirit fellowship, a bell choir that has grown and grown in size and ability, a program of Outreach which has increasingly permeated the congregation and even sparked some to take on personal mission trips, and you can add to the list.

And it used to be, when I thought of unfinished business here at West Parish, the first thing I thought of was the renovation or replacement of the badly aging, held together by spit and a prayer, Jenkins/Gilman buildings. A new building that would be a fitting companion for our stately Meetinghouse, that would have room for an office for our Music Director and space for the anthems and bells and bell tables, that would have a user-friendly Christian Education office, that would have an up-to-date kitchen and piping that does not leach minerals, that would have a beautiful space we could use for meals and meetings and alternative worship. A new building not for navel-gazing or self-absorption, but as a platform from which we might increasingly reach out in mission locally and globally.

But what I have discerned more recently is that my call, my call to stay with you here in this ship, lies in a different direction. For our work of learning how to be church together, how to be hard on the issues while soft on each other, how to forgive each other, how to be one church when there is so much diversity which enriches us, that work is not finished. That work is not finished, and in an era where there is so much fragmentation at all levels of society, in all our institutions and across our body politic, it is work of the utmost importance. We need to learn and relearn and relearn again how to be a united people even when – especially when – the storms of adversity strike. We need to learn and relearn and practice until we get it right, until it comes as an automatic reflex, that when an issue arises we don’t gossip about it in the parking lot, we go directly to the parties involved and hash it out with them, and if that does not work, we expand the conversation to bring in others who might mediate for us, might give us another perspective, might remind us all that we are brothers and sisters who are united by far more than that which would divide us. As we talked last week, forgiveness is a key part of that, the glue which holds the church together. But the work of learning to be church together goes beyond that, and a lot of that work has to be directed towards the goal that we don’t need to forgive each other so much, because we first take care not to act in ways that require forgiveness.

And if we can do that here, then maybe we can do it in our families, and at our work sites, and in town meeting, and in the wider body politic.

Staying in the boat, together, is in reality probably as difficult as walking on water – impossible, even, without the presence in and among us of the risen Christ, the one who promises to still every storm, and to be with us always, even to the end of the age. And yet this is what we are called to do. And this is what, I believe, I am called to do with you in the coming years, as a partner with you in this vital, ongoing work of learning how to be one church, together.

Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea. I rejoice that ten years ago we took ship together, and together, in the boat still, still share an oar. Amen. ---------------