SERMON: Get Out of the Boat

As many of you know, I preached my first sermon when I was fifteen years old, and was licensed as a minister in the Baptist church at sixteen. My vocation floundered after we left that church, but many years later, while I was doing my Master’s degree at Holy Names College, it reemerged in a kind of surprising way. I had been studying with the world-famous neo-pagan theologian Starhawk, and had learned much about that tradition. I enjoyed it, and when several friends who resonated with that path asked me to perform life-cycle rituals for them, well, how could I refuse.

 

But it felt odd, because, well, as much as I enjoyed doing the rituals, it was not my path. I was an Episcopalian, and quite an ardent one at the time, I must say. The requests to officiate for people however just kept coming, and it precipitated a minor crisis of identity. What emerged from that crisis was a renewal of my vocation as a Christian minister. I discerned that God was calling me to be a priest, nudged along by my neo-pagan-leaning friends, which is kind of weird in the way that God often is.

 

So I stepped out on faith, and paid a visit to the Episcopal Seminary just a few blocks from here. And I was told, rather coldly, too, that if I didn’t have $35,000 I could pretty much forget it.

 

I was stunned. Floored, really. I sat before God and prayed, “Okay, Lord, I believe you are calling me to be a priest, but here’s this brick wall. What do you want me to do?”

 

That very day I saw an ad in the back of Gnosis magazine, advertising vocations in the Church of Antioch, one of the largest churches in the Old Catholic Succession in the US. Thinking “what the heck?” I answered the ad, and within a week, I was speaking on the telephone with Bishop Tim Barker. He asked me for a transcript of my Master’s degree in Spirituality, and assigned some reading for me. And then he asked me how soon I could drive up to Seattle to be ordained a deacon.

 

Well, I was stunned. Should I do this? I asked myself. I started reading the material on Old Catholicism, and quite frankly, some of it scared the willies out of me, because every tale of an earnest and hard-working minister of the Gospel was followed by another depicting a minister who was a slimy crackpot selling self-generated indulgences door-to-door, or baptizing kittens.

 

Now, I’m more amenable to the baptism of felines these days than I was then, which I hope doesn’t put me in the crackpot camp, but still at the time I was deeply concerned. I pleaded with God about whether or not I should go, and I agonized about it as I have about few things since.

 

But what came to me was that what I was afraid of was mostly the unknown. I believed—as I still believe—that the call was real. All that was needed was the courage to face the mystery, to walk out into the unknown, trusting that all would be well in the end.

 

I remembered this crossroads in my own life when I was pondering the Gospel reading for today. The passage actually paints a pretty frightening scene. Here are the disciples, being blown about in a storm in this tiny little boat, and they look out and see this figure walking towards them on the water. Suddenly, they are not just frightened for their lives, they’re frightened for their souls—who knows what kind of supernatural beastie it was coming towards them! But then Jesus calls out saying, “Don’t be afraid, it’s me!”

 

Everyone is relieved of course, but then look what Peter does. He says this really crazy thing: “Hey, why don’t I climb out of the boat and walk on the waves WITH you”—in the middle of this choppy lake in a storm.

 

Right, he’s nuts. But you have to admire that magnitude of nuttiness. I mean, it’s not baptizing kittens, nuts, but it’s pretty nutty. And this is what makes Peter stand out from the crowd, too. HE GETS OUT OF THE BOAT.

 

It took a lot of courage to do that. And, of course, he didn’t do it perfectly. He did it irratically, he did it with help, he fell and got back up again. But HE DID IT.

 

It’s hard to have that kind of courage. It takes work to have that kind of trust—that God is going to catch us, that everything will be okay. Because really following Jesus, really doing what we were put here to do, really living up to the full potential of what we were made to be—that takes guts, maybe even madness.

 

And in some ways it’s even more scary for us today than it was for Peter. Because back then, Peter could see Jesus with his own eyes. We can’t do that today. We have to take it on faith that he is there. On the other hand, we aren’t bucking about in a rowboat in the middle of a storm. I’ll see your choppy waves, and raise you one unseen deity, Peter, because it’s still hard.

 

I haven’t always had that kind of guts. There are plenty of times when, presented with a major crossroads of faith, I turned around. But I’m grateful that when it really mattered, like my call to the Old Catholic priesthood, I was able to get out of the boat and walk towards Jesus, scary as it was.

 

And I know I’m not the only person in this congregation who has had that kind of courage. One of the most courageous people I know, in fact, is Clare Hedin. I remember when she first showed up here at Grace North Church, the first time I heard her sing. I said to myself, “This woman is the real deal,” because she quite literally knocked my socks off. And she has rendered me equally sockless many times since.

 

I especially admire her faith in her own gifts, her courage in offering those to others in a variety of contexts, and her desire to use everything she has been given for the healing and reconciliation of the world. That takes faith. That takes guts.

 

I feel grateful to have been one of the people in this life to have heard her, and to be ministered to by her. I am honored to play on her team, because she inspires me to present my own gifts with courage, and indeed, sometimes shames me that I have not been a better steward of my gifts.

 

And that’s why I admire Clare—she’s one of the craziest people I know. Because regardless of the odds against her, regardless of the magnitude of pain in the world or in her own life, regardless of the people who wish she would just shut up and be a good sheep, she has the guts to GET OUT OF THE BOAT.

 

I don’t suffer under the illusion that she walks on water, of course. She slips around as much as anyone. But she’s OUT OF THE BOAT, following to the best of her ability, the call of the divine to use her gifts to make this world a better place.

 

I love you, Clare—your surfing ministers to me, and when at times I’m feeling shy and insecure—and I do have my moments—I think of you, and it helps me to leap over the rail onto the waves.

 

Clare is not the only person in this community with that kind of courage, of course. We have no shortage of surfers, here. Diane inspires me, too, with her willingness to throw caution to the wind and enter seminary in her fifties. Ric inspires me to live my faith out loud, despite the ignorance and prejudice in the world, and regardless of how people might misunderstand me. Anne and Elvira inspire me with the innovative business that they’ve started. Phyllis and Lola, in both their faithful service, and their equally faithful setting of boundaries to preserve themselves.

 

Each in your own ways, you have displayed the courage to leave the safety of the boat, and chance the mystery of the waves, walking towards that voice that calls you to be who you are, and to do what you are here to do.

 

I have often said, it is not the job of the priest to serve the world, it is the job of the priest to encourage the people in the pews in their ministries, because it is each of YOU who serve the world. We meet here to encourage and inspire and support one another, so that each of us can bring forth our gifts and share them, no matter how scary the storm, how uncertain our footing, or how distant God might seem to us at any given moment.

 

It takes a lot of chutzpah to jump that rail and get out of the boat. Conventional wisdom, of course says “stay put where it’s safe,” but Jesus says, “Come.” Bring forth that beautiful voice that is yours alone, like Clare. Jesus says, “Come.” Bring the gifts of service that give you life, like Phyllis. Jesus says, “Come.” Be willing to take a chance at the very age that others are becoming set in their ways, like Diane. Jesus says, “Come.” Come be part of a crazy church that will affirm you in your ministry, just as it did me.

 

Only you can say what you are here to do, and only you can do it. And only you can choose to walk on the waves, crazy as that might sound to anyone else. But if God is calling, even if you can’t see him, I encourage you to hear that voice saying, “It’s me. Don’t be afraid. Come.”

 

Let us pray…

 

Jesus, in the midst of a storm,

You met those who loved you,

You comforted them, you saved them,

And you bid them come to you,

Even when it seemed like madness.

Give us the courage for such madness today,

Meet us in the storm, catch us when we fall, so that we might follow you into impossible places, and further confound the world, and through us heal it, renew it, and show it thy love. Amen.