August 10, 2014
Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion
Just over 20 years ago, during Holy Week, Bill and I took a
trip to Ireland, England, and Wales—it was kind of our last hurrah before
Lauren was born—in fact, I was four months’ pregnant when we went. Our plan was
to fly to England, rent a car in London, drive through Wales to the western
coast, take a ferry across the Irish Sea, and then arrive in Cork in
southeastern Ireland. We would stay in B and Bs, and drive around southern Ireland,
visiting the homeland of some of our ancestors.
But it was the ferry ride that provided the most excitement.
In the middle of the night, a powerful gale came up on the Irish Sea. The wind
howled. Rain slashed sideways and pelted the windows. Even though this ferry
was several stories tall, it was tossed around like a toy at times.
Being on a boat in such a terrible storm affects the people
on that boat differently. Some tried to find a place to lay down, thinking that
they wouldn’t be tossed around so much on the bucking deck. Some people, whom
our Irish friends referred to as “eejits,” actually opened the doors to the
outside deck for a few seconds to get a better look. Others found God—as in
“worshipping the porcelain god,” since the boat was rolling around pretty hard.
It was really quite exciting. I was lucky in that I was four months’ pregnant,
because nothing, and I mean NOTHING, my friends, stands in the way of a woman
in her second trimester and sleep. So, after making sure I knew where the life
jackets were, just to be safe, there I was, stretched out on a set of seats,
snoozing away for most of the night as only a woman with a voracious creature
inside her can.
At times I would be shaken awake, by either solicitous crew members,
or by my husband checking on me, but after looking around to make sure we were
still moving forward, I’d drop back to sleep. I awoke just at dawn to see that
the storm had broken, and that the coast of Ireland was in view.
But one thing I noticed when I wasn’t being lulled to sleep
by the motion of the boat. The crew was calm. The officers were calm. So I
stayed calm. And luckily found out I’m pretty immune to motion sickness. A
well-designed boat performed as it was supposed to, and we arrived safely at
our destination just a little late, with a good story to tell.
Now it would be easy to focus on the story of the boat in the
gospel today and take it at face-value. It would be easy to talk about how some
scholars discuss the symbolism in the story: The boat is the church. The
disciples are church-members. Peter is the leader of the church. The sea is the
world that the church is cast adrift on and buffeted about by. But I think
there’s another thing going on in the lectionary today. When I was asked
several months ago by Rebecca to preach today, she asked me to talk about the
topic of leadership if I could. And I think there are some important insights
about leadership here for us, both in the church and in the world.
In our lectionary readings, we see three very different
depictions of leaders, and of the role faith and power plays in their leadership.
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| Joseph's Well |
In the story from our Old Testament, everyone usually focuses
on Joseph being sold into slavery, and maybe we wonder why in the world that
story is paired with our gospel account. But I think one of the common threads
in our lectionary is about how leadership is exercised. I want to ask you to
look at the dynamic within that family of brothers for a second, especially
when it comes to the character of Reuben. These are Jacob’s sons, and Jacob, we
have been shown over and over again, was a man of conflict, and one who
certainly was willing to resort to deceit to get what he wanted. Plots and
counterplots and wrestling-matches with strangers—these are the stories we have
heard about Jacob the last few weeks. So those are some of the values with
which these boys had been raised. Reuben’s story shows us how past conflicts can
affect our ability to lead, even if we are not aware of it.
Reuben, the eldest of Jacob’s sons, by right should be the
leader of his brothers, yet is nonetheless an easily overlooked character in
this story. He should lead, but he doesn’t have the strength to openly oppose
his brothers’ plans. He allows himself to be overcome by his own resentment at
the lack of love shown his mother and himself by Jacob. He initially agrees in
principle to an act of betrayal and violence, even though in his heart he knows
it is wrong. Of all the brothers, he is
the one who is depicted of having doubts about murdering his little snitch of a
brother.
So Reuben comes up with a plan to prevent Joseph’s actual
death, by playing to the natural squeamishness of doing the deed directly.
Instead he proposes casting their little brother into a pit to be left to die
slowly. In the back of his head, he hatches a plot to go back later and get
Joseph out. But then, in the story, Reuben disappears! And while he’s gone,
another brother, Judah, perhaps having misgivings himself, but also with an eye
to profit, persuades the others to sell Joseph into slavery instead, which sets
up the rest of the Book of Genesis, and lays the groundwork for the story of
the exodus that will mark a huge turning point in the history of Israel.
But Reuben definitely led poorly here. Reuben’s biggest
failure as a leader is linked to one of the things that does him the most
credit: his knowledge that no matter what an arrogant little squint Joseph has
been, murdering him is wrong. Yet in failing to speak his misgivings aloud, he
allows his brothers to move from mouthing their resentments to actually plotting
fratricide in their hearts. Even after they accept Reuben’s alternative to
simply stabbing or strangling the boy, the brothers believe that they have set
Joseph’s death in motion, and then calmly sit down and eat lunch afterward. In law, that is called “conspiracy to commit
murder in cold blood.” And that in itself will get you put into prison.
Reuben’s leadership is marinated in a culture of deceit and
secrecy, as seems natural in a son of Jacob, that master trickster. It is also
based on a refusal to openly challenge wrong-doing. Reuben’s leadership is also
marked by a lack of resolution: he doesn’t follow through, and he disappears
right when he needs to keep alert. Worse, by operating in secrecy, he not only
betrays his own doubts about the acceptability of his plan, but he doesn’t give
his brothers the chance to rethink what they are about to do. Reuben’s lack of
faith in himself and in his brothers makes him a poor leader. He’s not a
horrible person, in the end, but good leaders operate in the open, and have
faith in themselves and in their followers, which allows them to do the right
thing rather than the easy thing or the convenient thing.
Now let’s see how this
connects to the gospel.
Peter and the other disciples represent another example of
leadership in our lectionary today. They are in the boat by themselves having
been sent off into the sea by Jesus, and the boat gets away from them since
high waves beset them, and they have drifted far from shore. After a long night
of being tossed by the waves, they suddenly look up and see Jesus approaching
them by foot on the very waves that have pushed them around all night. Of
course, once again, their first reaction shows that they still don’t know who
Jesus is, even when Jesus reassures them but also uses the divine name: “I am.”
Peter, ever the enthusiast, asks to be able to walk on the
water too. Peter, who is named by Jesus
himself as the rock upon which the Church will be founded, impulsively asks for
miracles, but loses faith in them even as he is in the midst of them. Yet Peter
at least has the imagination to want to get out of the boat and walk with Jesus
on that water. Peter’s problem is that he is of “little-faith.” Peter has just seen his rabbi walk on water,
and yet his mind still is clinging to the knowledge that that kind of thing
just isn’t possible. Like Reuben, Peter lacks follow-through.
Good leaders shake off
the limits of what has always been done before to allow themselves to consider
new possibilities and new situations.
Both Peter and the
other disciples lack the imagination to see that they can walk on the water
too.
They need more faith in order to become better disciples, and
better leaders.
Jesus, the son of an unmarried mother brought up in the
household of a simple craftsman in an out-of-the-way corner of an empire,
nonetheless exercises true, selfless love and leadership. Jesus leads by
calling out and developing unknown depths in his followers. All of his miracles
are not simply done at his command. Jesus’s miracles, just like many of the
miracles in the Old Testament, tend to require participation from those around
him. Jesus, as the Son of God, could act alone, and simply dictate that this or
that will be done. But that’s not how Jesus operates. All along, he makes it
clear that faith is required before miracles occur, but that when faith is in
place, we see miracles all around.
We see this in the feeding of the multitude a few weeks ago,
when he says to the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” We see this
when he tells people over and over again that their faith has made them well.
Great leaders inspire faith—faith that can do anything.
Jesus’s leadership turns notions of power and privilege on
its head. Jesus doesn’t deny Peter his request. I think Jesus loves the fact
that Peter asks. He generously encourages Peter to participate in this miracle
too. This represents an incredible
sharing of power and abandonment of prerogative that would ring out to those
familiar with the Jewish scripture, because it is very clearly stated in the
Psalms, in the Book of Job, and in Isaiah that only God can walk on water.
Jesus shared power with his disciples during his earthly ministry, and after
his resurrection and ascension, we followers of Christ were given the power of
the Holy Spirit, which remains with us today. When we are baptized, we are
empowered to act as Jesus’s body IN THE WORLD, as well as in the boat.
Jesus leads from love and trustworthiness, patient even in
the face of our limited understanding and fragile faith. Great leaders inspire
faith and trust in their followers—faith and trust in the mutual mission of the
group, and faith and trust in ourselves to lead even in the face of obstacles.
Jesus also inspires trust in his followers: trust to step out onto the water,
and trust that Jesus will patiently shore up our faith when we falter.
Like
Reuben, Peter lacks faith in himself. Peter cries out to Jesus, using similar
words to the first two verses of Psalm 69, which states: “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink into
deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the
flood sweeps over me.” Haven’t we
all felt that way at various times? Haven’t we all been in deep water and
feared going under? Peter cries out to Jesus as he begins to lose faith in
himself and sink, and Jesus reaches out with the same hand he used to heal the
blind and the lame, and raises Peter back up above the surface. Even as Peter
sinks down in the waves, undergoing a kind of baptism, he calls out to Jesus,
for with the little faith he has, he knows where his trust should always lie—in
Christ our Savior.
Now, some of us have literally been on a boat being tossed
about by the waves. Sometimes our boat is becalmed on the sea and adrift. But
we ALL have experienced crisis in our lives, and even in our church life. A few
years ago, the Episcopal Church got spanked by much of the rest of the Anglican
Communion for ordaining gay people. Some people left the Episcopal Church and
created breakaway groups over this, as well as over the ordination of women. We
have seen changes and challenges here at Holy Communion. We have seen changes
and challenges in an American Christianity that is at war with itself even
while it is seen as being less and less relevant in people’s lives.
But one thing we have to realize is that, through our
baptismal covenant, we are all called to be not just followers of Jesus but
leaders as well. That is one of the main gifts of the teachings of the
Episcopal Church—the belief that all of us, lay or ordained, are called through
baptism to have the power to lead through our faith.
Jesus places us in the boat, but we should not just be
sitting passively in the boat on Sunday or throughout the week. Jesus also
calls to us to have faith in ourselves—all of us! Not just the vestry or the
search committee or the diocese or the Episcopal Church or Christians in
general-- and step out of the boat onto the waves. The boat is where it is
safe, but without Jesus, it’s going nowhere. We are the best version of the capital-C
Church when we understand that our faith means nothing if it doesn’t empower us
to then DO, and do ALL THINGS in love.
Jesus calls us to step out onto the water, and place our feet
on the path on the waves, the path that leads to true discipleship, true faith,
and true leadership. Through our baptism, all of us are called as leaders to
act, rather than sit passively in the boat and complain about the times it
seems adrift. We are called to believe, but then we are called to DO.
We all have the responsibility to lead, and inspire the best
in each other—even to demand the best from each other. We are called to lead
from love. As leaders, it is up to us to not just have faith in each other but
to inspire each other to have faith in ourselves. That’s true discipleship, and
that’s true leadership. Let’s have
faith, all of us together, and inspire each other to step out onto those waves.
