1 Kings 19:9-18 Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15, Matthew 14:22-33
Lectionary Link
The Bible gives us clues about how to read it. And we should follow the invitation to read it as spiritual poetry. We have been intimidated by modern science, modern historical writing and modern eyewitness journalism. Modern scholarly practice have caused many biblical interpreters to fall in the trap of reading the Bible as though it is modern accurate journalistic reporting with the scientific standard of empirically verifiable events.
The Gospel writers took up the symbolic poetic order of the Hebrew Scriptures and used the metaphors as ways to present in narrative form the spiritual and mystical meaning of Jesus Christ. Why? People were having Holy Spirit mystical experiences. They had sublime experiences and they needed to know how these experiences were connected to this special person Jesus.
How do we understand this sublime? And how is it connected with an incarnation of God in the person of Jesus who became inseparable from these post-death and resurrection experiences of the Risen Christ?
How do we understand these sublime experiences and teach their meaning? And how do we teach a program of orientation into the mysteries of the sublime experience of the Holy Spirit?
To be born of water and the Holy Spirit, means that there exists a parallel realm within each initiate through which one interprets the exterior and landscape events of life.
Narratives of the landscapes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth were presented in the Gospels to illustrate the meaning of the Risen Christ found within each Christian.
Where can we find the Risen Christ to accompany us in our lives? According to the Gospels: Everywhere. The Gospels present some material situations where the Risen Christ can be found to accompany us.
What has always been some of the greatest conflicts for human life? They have occurred with events of Nature. Why the conflicts? Human schedules and Nature's schedules are sometimes in conflict. A great storm on the Sea of Galilee would be just plain impressive, unless the schedule of fishermen conflict with the schedule of Nature to put the fishermen in harm's way.
As organisms with the prolific abilities to grow and become parasitic on other life, like cancer and Covid-19 and a large hosts of bacteria and viruses are very impressive. And if their life and growth could be totally isolated from human interaction, we could be awed observers.
But these living organisms in nature interact with human schedules in time in our bodily lives and they frighten and they reek havoc, because they cause sickness, suffering and death.
God who is perfect freedom, presides within a world which shares in this freedom. And because of our love of science to make every an external observable event, we have been tempted to exteriorize the presentation of Jesus in the Gospel. The Jesus of the Gospel is written to illustrate in a graphic way the profound interior rising of the Risen Christ who can co-exist with all of the freedom which we face in our lives. And in faith, we need to realize that we are never exempt from the conditions of freedom.
And because we are not exempt from the conditions of freedom, we use probability theory to anticipate and predict. We want to negotiate our lives in the safest way through the conditions of freedom. Sometimes we are safe because of wise behaviors that we can learn from science and our biblical tradition. But in many other things, we find we are not exempt from an entire array of events, sublime, marvelous, good, ordinary, bad, horrendous and evil. In life's conditions of freedom, we are not exempt from a continuum of events of what might happen to us.
So what is the Gospel for us? If God and Jesus honor freedom and we know that they are not exempt from the array of freedom, how should we live? We can either live by faith or by fear. We can be Murphy Law devotees, fearing more of what can go wrong, than enjoying and savoring the vast amount of goodness.
The ancient God moved by the Spirit on the deep waters of chaos to created through God's Word. For Elijah, God was not in the earthquake, wind and the fire; God was in the peaceful stillness which co-existed with wind and the fire.
The Gospel writers believed the experience of the Risen Christ was graphically presented in Jesus walking on the stormy waters faced by his friends. How does one walk in the middle of the stormy sea? With faith? Yes and according to gravity, one sinks into the waters. And who is with us as we sink? The hand of the Risen Christ.
And when we sink into the ocean of our eventual death because Time and freedom govern our bodily lives, who will be there? The hand of the Risen Christ to lift us up.
Let us practice knowing the still peace of God within us and the ever rescuing hand of the Risen Christ who truly walks in the storms of Nature with us. When some of us see the crashing ocean waves, we think awesome frightening power. But what does the surfer see? Heavy waves, now that's a challenge. Jesus is the model for us of a life surfer. He sees the waves and says, "Heavy waves Dude! now jump on my board!" Amen.
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