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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
In the Sunday, June Fourth, 1961, “Peanuts” comic strip, the blanket-carrying Linus has visited his older sister Lucy’s “Psychiatric Help” booth, and the two of them are trying to pinpoint Linus’s fears. One by one Lucy asks if Linus has fear of such things as responsibility, which fear is called hy-pen-gyo-phóbia; fear of cats, what is called ai-lur-o-phóbia; or fear of staircases, what is called cli-ma-co-phobia (I know it sounds like something Charles Schultz might have made up for comic effect, but climacophobia apparently really is the name for the fear of falling down a ladder or staircase). Finally, Lucy asks Linus if he has pantophobia, the fear of everything, and Linus yells out “That’s it!” (confer and compare www.sermons.com).
In some ways you and I may relate to Linus and his pantophobia, fear of everything, more than we relate to Jesus’s disciples, including Peter, in today’s Gospel Reading, with their respective fear of what they thought was a ghost, which fear is called phas-mo-phobia, and Peter’s fear of the wind, which fear is called a-nemo-phobia. In the Gospel Reading, when the disciples, having seen Jesus walking on the sea, were terrified, saying that He was a ghost, and from the fear cried out, immediately Jesus spoke to them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid”. When Peter, while walking on the water, having seen the wind, was afraid and, having begun to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately, having reached out His hand, took hold of him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” In both cases, Jesus immediately responded to their cries with words and actions that moved them “From fear to faith”, as Jesus immediately responds to our cries with words and actions that move us “From fear to faith”.
The Divinely-inspired St. Matthew tells us that, immediately after Jesus fed about fivethousand men, besides women and children, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 14:1321), Jesus then made the disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side. Less clear is why Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side. As we heard when today’s Gospel Reading was read, the English Standard Version says that the boat was “beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them”, but the waves might be said to be personified and “testing” the disciples, maybe even “questioning” them as if by applying torture. We might think of Job (so Buls, ad loc Matthew 14:24, p.40), whom the Lord let Satan tempt, essentially trying Job on the Lord’s behalf (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6).
We may not have the wind against us, and so the waves beating us or trying us, but, as the Lord permits, we do have the devil, the world, and our sinful nature against us and tempting us. The devil, the world, and our sinful nature do not want us to, among other things, hallow God’s Name or let His Kingdom come, and they try to deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice (Small Catechism III:11, 18). The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther says that our sin does not let us recognize that God is present with us; that in the midst of temptation, we will imagine God to be someone other than He is; that our speculations make an altogether hostile phantom out of the God Who is altogether well-disposed toward us (Luther, Annotations, Matthew 14:23-25, AE 67:230). Elsewhere Luther says that distrust leads to fear, but that faith leads to the “heart” (NEB, ESV) or “good cheer” (KJV, ASV, NKJV) or “courage” (NIV, NASB, AAT) that Jesus calls for us to have (Luther, Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, AE 31:124-125). On account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve nothing but death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. But, in our fear and sorrow over our sin, we are enabled by the Holy Spirit to cry out in faith, “Lord, save me”, and Jesus immediately responds to our cry with words and actions that move us “From fear to faith”, and so to good cheer.
In the beginning, God the Father created by speaking the Word that is the Son of God, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1-2). As Job knew, only the Lord could stretch out the heavens and trample on the waves of the sea (Job 9:8; confer Psalm 77:19; Isaiah 43:16). So, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s walking on the sea, His rescuing Peter, and His apparently stilling the storm all show that He is God in human flesh, with His Divine allpowerfulness working through His human body. Jesus arguably even uses the Old Testament Name of the Lord to identify Himself to the disciples! Jesus’s being the Son of God led to His death on the cross (Matthew 26:63-65; John 19:7), but Jesus died there on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. Out of His great love, He died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. Moved “From fear to faith”, the disciples—who, after an earlier miracle showing Jesus’s control over the sea, wondered what sort of man Jesus was (Matthew 8:2327)—those same disciples in today’s Gospel Reading worship Jesus, confessing who they are in relationship to Who Jesus is, saying back to Jesus what He said to them, specifically, that He is the Son of God (confer Beckwith, CLD III:186). As the Divinely-inspired St. Paul wrote in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 10:5-17), “with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved”.
We believe and confess who we are in relationship to Who Jesus is, saying back to God what He has said to us in His Word, seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins in the ways that He promises to give us the forgiveness of sins. And, Jesus’s words and actions move us “From fear to faith”. With Peter’s in today’s Gospel Reading beginning to “sink” or “drown”, we might think especially of Holy Baptism, by which our sinful nature is drowned and from which water we are drawn out with a new redeemed nature (Romans 6:1-4; Small Catechism IV:12, 14; Large Catechism IV:65). Likewise, in Holy Absolution the pastor’s forgiveness is as sure and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself (Small Catechism V:6), and, in the Sacrament of the Altar, the bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and the wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us give us forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation. In all of these ways, Jesus, who shared with Peter the power or authority to walk on the water, has shared with pastors the power or authority to forgive sins (confer Davies and Allison, ad loc Matthew 14:29, p.507).
So moved “From fear to faith”, we are rescued from sin, death, and the devil and are safe in the boat that is the Church. We have nothing to fear, but instead we have the full assurance that Jesus wants us to have because He is present with us. We trust Him, despite what our senses and reason might tell us. By the power of the Holy Spirit, in God the Son, we have peace with God the Father, and so we have the beginning of the joy that we will have in its fullness for all eternity. As the Lord has prescribed limits for the sea, which we heard Him say in today’s Old Testament Reading (Job 38:4-18), so the Lord has prescribed limits to our afflictions or persecutions. He enables us to endure them, and they will not continue forever. What continues forever is our life in resurrected, if necessary, and glorified bodies as we dwell in God’s nearer presence.
The “Peanuts” comic strip that I mentioned at the outset was “recast”, as it were, some four years later: in the TV show “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, Lucy is shown trying to pinpoint not Linus’s but Charlie Brown’s fears. Both Linus and Charlie Brown may have claimed pantophobia, the fear of everything, as we might be inclined to claim, too. We do not know that Lucy’s pinpointing their fears helped them, but we do know, as we sang in today’s Introit (Psalm 34:4-8; antiphon: v.1), that the Lord has delivered us from all of our fears. And, as Jesus said to His disciples in today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord is present with us, we are not afraid, but we take heart (that is, we are of good cheer).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +