Penelope Bridges
The sons of Jacob turn on their annoying little brother Joseph and sell him into slavery. The disciples fail to recognize Jesus, and Peter fails the test of faith. Two stories today that reflect humanity’s failure to fully embrace the dream of God.
Today’s Gospel story comes immediately after the disciples have participated in the miracle of feeding the multitude. They have not only witnessed the power of Jesus, they have been part of it, as the bread and fish they distributed just kept on coming. You might think that by this time they would be very confident that Jesus is the son of God, the one sent to redeem Israel. But spiritual growth is an uneven process. We all go through peaks and troughs of faith along the journey, and the disciples are no exception.
The disciples’ boat is being battered by rough seas. Scripture is full of negative references to the deep: one of the first actions that God took in creation was to put limits on the sea, to demonstrate control of this dangerous and destructive element. The Psalms time and time again name the abyss, the deep waters, the floods, as sources of dread, forces opposed to God’s life-giving power. The deep represents despair, terror, death. We still use metaphors today of being in over our heads, of drowning in hardship, of being out of our depth, when life feels overwhelming.
So this Gospel passage is set in the midst of a fearful experience. After a sleepless night at sea it’s hardly surprising that, in their exhaustion and terror, the disciples fail to recognize Jesus when he approaches them in the dim morning light, walking on the surface of the water. No wonder they cry out in fear. But Jesus calls out to them, “Take heart: it is I; do not be afraid.” It is I: our translation doesn’t tell us that this is a loaded phrase. Because it can also be translated I AM.
This is how God revealed Godself to Moses in the wilderness: I AM. This is how Jesus reveals his divinity to the disciples in the Gospel of John: I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; and so on. Jesus is, in effect, telling his friends, “God is with you.” And it shouldn’t be a surprise to them, after the feeding miracle. But Peter still doubts. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” If it is you … we hear an echo of the story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert, when Satan said, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to turn into bread.”
Peter, Jesus’s right hand man and best friend, becomes the mouthpiece of the adversary in this moment of fear and peril, seeking in his terror to test the power of Jesus to preserve those he loves from danger. It’s just one more example of how fear drives our worst behavior. Unlike the time in the desert, this time Jesus accepts the challenge and invites Peter to jump out of the boat, to risk everything for him. But no sooner has Peter taken a few hesitant steps than he is distracted by the storm: the dangerous deep threatens to overwhelm him and he starts to sink. His faith is too fragile to sustain him without the strong arm of Jesus holding onto him. And as soon as they are both safely in the boat, the storm dies down: the danger recedes, and calm is restored. And now, after all the turmoil and terror is over, after witnessing yet again the miraculous power that Jesus has, even over the deep, the disciples worship him as the Son of God.
I imagine that most of us can relate to the fragility of Peter’s faith. He wants to believe, to have absolute trust; but when the chips are down, when he is in peril, way out of his depth, fear takes over: his faith wavers, his heart fails him; first he demands proof of divinity, and then he looks away from Jesus and all is lost. How ironic, that he set out to test Jesus and ends up failing the test himself.
The great lay theologian Verna Dozier, in her book The Dream of God, writes this: “The dream of God is that all creation will live together in peace and harmony and fulfillment. All parts of creation. And the dream of God is that the good creation that God created — what the refrain says, ‘and God saw that it was good’ — be restored.” Today’s Gospel story, told only by Matthew, is a pointed reminder that the disciples, who for Matthew clearly represent the members of the church, are still far from the fulfillment of God’s dream. Chaos is still resisting order; humanity is still learning how to trust in God; fear is still driving too much of our behavior. And, if Dozier is right about all of creation being a part of the dream, this is a cosmic struggle, as we are witnessing in our own day, with climate change, catastrophic wildfires, and extreme weather around the globe.
Dreams can be dangerous: Martin Luther King Jr was a dreamer, and he was martyred for it. There is always opposition to God’s dream, because it threatens the status quo. Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph, was a dreamer. In the verses that our reading from Genesis skips over, we hear about Joseph’s dream, which portrays his older brothers bowing in obedience to him. Now, it’s one thing to have a dream: it’s another thing to tell people about it. Joseph was already unpopular, because Jacob spoiled him, but when he tactlessly shared the dream with his brothers, they really started to hate him. Scripture tells us that it’s often the younger one, the overlooked one, the unexpected one who’s the bearer of the promise, the agent of change; but that is not good news for the privileged insiders who fear the loss of their power.
So, when the brothers see Joseph approaching across the desert, alone and unprotected, they plot against him. “Here comes this dreamer. Come, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” And so unfolds the familiar story: after Reuben intervenes to save his life, Joseph is sold into slavery and taken down to Egypt, where, as a result of interpreting other people’s dreams, he ultimately becomes Pharaoh’s prime minister. In response to Pharaoh’s dreams Joseph builds up a stockpile of food which, when the famine comes, is enough to feed a whole nation. And Joseph’s long-ago dream comes to fruition, when his brothers come to beg for food. Jacob and his sons move to Egypt, thus setting the scene for the next chapter in the story of the people of God, the Exodus. The dreamer is vindicated; the one who pays attention to dreams and acts on them is rewarded; the dream of God is carried forward.
Look up: the roof of our cathedral, like many churches, is shaped like an upside down boat. That is not accidental. This place, where we gather to worship, is our refuge from the storms of life. We gather here, in our own boat adrift on the deep, to be comforted by the presence of Jesus. The church is and should be a safe place for all of God’s people. The church is a community where we can work to bring about God’s dream, whether that means stepping out of our depth to share good news with our neighbors, trusting in God’s power when we are floundering, or doing our part to heal the earth and bring about cosmic peace. And the church can be a place where we can dream of “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky”, as the mystic Howard Thurman once put it. The moral of the Genesis tale is to be gentle with each other’s dreams, for they might have a place in God’s dream.
The Irish poet William Butler Yeats paints a beautiful word portrait for us as we reflect on the dream of God. The poem is entitled, “He wishes for the cloths of heaven”.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
