Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 10, 2008

Genesis 37:1-4. 12-28

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33

 

Yesterday marked the first official international celebration of the world’s indigenous peoples.  The wording of the United Nations Official Declaration took twenty five years to prepare.  The delay in promulgating this declaration was due to the tactics of four influential nations who resisted the rights accorded to indigenous peoples in the final agreed document.  Those nations were Canada, the United States of America, New Zealand and Australia – the only nations to vote against the United Nations declaration.    The Declaration sets out the individual and collective rights of the almost 400 million indigenous people in the world.  As well as outlawing discrimination against indigenous peoples, the document attempts to protect them from forced assimilation, dispossession of their lands and territories and any attempt to drive them from their lands or to resettle them in other places. The declaration has been widely lauded as a tool for peace and justice, based upon mutual recognition and mutual respect.

 

The finished document describes the close relationships that indigenous peoples often have with the environment, and their deep knowledge they have of the local flora and fauna.  We need only think of the history of the colonization of North America by European settlers to be convinced of that fact.  The first colony north of Florida –in Ste. Croix, Maine, lost one third of its population in the first winter because of their lamentable lack of knowledge about the local terrain.  Those who were brought up in America probably heard stories from their parents or teachers about the collaboration between the Pilgrims and the indigenous peoples of Massachusetts; a collaboration which enabled the former to survive their first harsh winter in what they thought of as the New World. 

Jesus and his disciples were familiar with the dynamics that I have just described.  They themselves were indigenous peoples living under the rule of an occupying colonial power based in Rome.  Jesus’ parables are full of allusions to the local flora and fauna; that is precisely what gives them their immediate and powerful appeal.  His miracles show a fluid and graceful relationship with the natural forces and the geography of Palestine; including the miracle we heard read in today’s gospel.

Imagine the scene; it is springtime in Palestine.  The winter rains had come, the hills were green, and it was holiday time – the time of the Passover.  Jesus, after feeding the five thousand, goes up into the hills to pray.  Meanwhile a storm brews on the lake of Galilee – prone to such sudden storms as many land-locked lakes are.  It is about three o’clock in the morning, and the disciples are out on a boat in that stormy lake.  Suddenly, Jesus appeared to them, walking on the water.  The disciples were terrified, because they thought that they were seeing a ghost.

When Jesus sees their fear, he cries out:  “Courage!  It is I.  Do not be afraid.” And then Peter – being brave, or maybe just foolish – asks Jesus if he can walk towards him on the water.  Everything goes well at first, but then Peter takes his eyes of Jesus and focuses instead on the raging storm and the turbulent water.  At that point he begins to sink.  Immediately – says Matthew – Jesus reaches out to Peter and saves him.  When they got into the boat, the storm calmed and the disciples worship Jesus, filled with awe and wonder at what had happened. 

The intervention of God in our world is always miraculous – whether that intervention is spectacular or so miniscule as to be almost invisible.  Such miracles enable us to perform extraordinary things; often beginning from the smallest of starting points.  We may wonder how the church can hope to survive in the modern world.  It is often riddled with prejudice.  It can seem to care little about the human rights that I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon.  Its record on environmentalism and the threatened destruction of our planet by over-exploitation has been ambiguous, to say the least.  When we feel most oppressed or threatened, when it seems impossible for us to see into the future, Jesus still walks towards us.  As we listen once again to his words: “Take heart, it is I.  Do not be afraid!”  we will learn to recognize him through the hope that he brings to us at those moments when we feel most alone and afraid.

The Revd. Nigel Massey