Lenten Worship: Hands of the Savior: Hands that Protect

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Do you all remember when cars didn’t have seat belts? Now I don’t mean that they weren’t physically in the car. I don’t know, maybe some of you can remember that. I can’t. I remember they were there but they were a nuisance, right? They were something you had to work around. You had the one that came in with the shoulder strap. You had to move it so you could get in the car because you didn’t want to be bothered by that silly thing. Because back in those days, at least as I remember when I was a kid, who would think of taking this strap and putting it across your lap? What a silly thing to do. That just slowed you down when you’re trying to get in and out of the car.

That is, until the guy swerved out in front of your dad and you had to sort of dodge to miss him, then maybe you thought about it. Or maybe when the guy who didn’t have any break lights slammed on his breaks in front of your mom and she had to come to a screeching halt all of a sudden. Yeah, I remember those times alright. Then you might really think about the seat belts. What I remember about those instances when we had the near accidents, first of all, I remember the fear. I remember everything kind of happening in slow motion as I watched the cars moving around and us looking like we’re going to smash into the car that’s ahead of us but what I remember the most was whoever was driving, either my mother or my father, reaching over and putting their arm on my chest. Now I’m not going to predict how successful that would be if we actually got into an accident. But I will tell you this, it made me feel a lot better. Just that hand kind of resting here on my chest. It gave me a sense of security and it calmed down my fears.

Tonight, Jesus extends his hands to protect us. In those situations when we are afraid, when we’re terrified, Jesus reaches out His hand and He puts it on our chest. The difference is He can actually do something about what we’re scared of. And we see in the story tonight of the disciples in the boat, there are really two fears that they’re wrestling with. They start out with the fear of the unknown and then it transfers to the fear of the known and both of them seem to grip them but I really think it’s the unknown which is worse than the known. It’s the unknown that really is getting at the disciples. If we look at the story, Jesus sends them off in the boat by themselves and it says that He came walking to them during the third watch. Well, the third watch is between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m. Now it says they’ve been buffeted by the winds and the waves because a storm came up. So let’s think about that for a moment. These guys have been battling a storm all night long. They still haven’t made it to the other side yet. So all night long, they are battling this storm. So there are all kinds of things that they could have been feeling at that moment. They had to be exhausted, right? I mean they had to be just physically exhausted of continuously trying to keep the boat afloat and make some headway to the other side. They had to be just soaking wet from all the waves that have been smashing into the side of the boat and they had to be cold. And it’s miserable. It’s the middle of the night and they’re soaking wet. They’re cold and they’re tired. But what is it that Matthew remembers about that night? It doesn’t talk about him being tired. It doesn’t talk about him being fatigued or soaking wet. No, no, no. It says, “When the disciples saw Him walking on the lake, they were terrified.” A strong word, they were terrified. And then they cried out, “It’s a ghost,” and they cried out in fear, he says. The overarching emotion of the disciples in the boat is these guys are scared to death. Of all the things that are happening, and it’s a little bit, I think we can understand it. It’s the unknown and it finally kind of percolates, percolates, percolates until finally, they see this figure walking across the lake. Are they going to make it? Are they going to be able to hold up and ride the storm out? Is the boat going to be able to survive all of the waves and getting tossed about and nicked about and everything happening to them? Even if they make it to the other side, at that point, are they going to be so sick that they’re not going to survive? All these unknowns. And then in the middle of the storm and the crack of lightening and they, off in a distance, see this figure that looks like He’s walking on water towards them. Even the most rational among us would have visions of a Saturday night horror movie at that instant. With the shadows and the lightening and the storm, wiping the water off of their faces and here’s this figure and they are scared to death. They’re terrified. Other places of scripture, it says they’re gripped with fear, the same word is used. And they cry out in fear. And the fear is because they don’t know. Isn’t that always worse? I think it is. I think it’s worse when you don’t know.

You can be scared of things that you know and you can be scared in situations when you know what’s happening but it always seems to me it’s when you don’t know that it really grips you. It’s when the telephone rings and the police say there’s been an accident but we don’t know the details. Your mind just goes and thinks of all kinds of scenarios, what if’s and this could happen and that would happen. It’s when the doctor says, “Well, we need to run tests but we really won’t know anything for two weeks.” Two weeks? Two weeks of thinking the worst case scenario, two weeks of wondering what it’s going to be and all the different possibilities that are happening there. It’s the unknown that just kind of digs down to our soul because there’s so much uncertainty. There are so many questions that go unanswered and the fear and the anxiety just builds inside of us. See, it’s to that fear that Jesus reaches out His hand and He says, “I’m here. I’m here.” And maybe just a little bit more significant than that first touch.

So the disciples are gripped with fear but notice what happens. Now Matthew doesn’t usually write this way. It says, “But Jesus immediately,” Matthew usually doesn’t use the word immediately. Gospel of Mark, if you read through that, you think that Jesus was on a sprint His entire life because it’s always immediately, immediately, immediately. Matthew doesn’t write that way so when he says it, okay. It must have been like instantaneous. “Immediately, Jesus said to them, ‘Take courage. It is I. Don’t be afraid.’” Now we lose just a little bit there when it says, “It is I.” Now that’s proper English and that’s how they should translate it but literally, Jesus says, “I am.” That carries a little bit more weight to it. You think for a minute in the Old Testament, when did you hear I am? If it helps, think Charlton Heston. I am. Some of you got it. Think back to Moses. Moses is minding his own business. He says a bush that’s on fire but yet it doesn’t get burned up. That seems unusual. He goes up to the bush. The bush starts talking to him. That’s really unusual. And now it’s God saying to Moses, “I want to send you back to Egypt to bring my people out.” Moses is what? He’s afraid to go back to Egypt. He’s gripped with fear. “How can I go back there?” And so he comes up with all these reasons why he shouldn’t and one of them he says, “But what if, God, I go back there and they say, ‘Well, who is it that sent you to us? What’s his name?’” And we all remember, right? If nothing else, from Charlton Heston. The bush says “I am who I am. That’s my name.” The disciples would know that. These are Jewish people. They’ve had that story told to them through their whole lives. And now, as Jesus immediately says, “Don’t be afraid. I am,” see the power? “I am God and I am here.” “I am the Almighty One.” “I have the power to settle the waves.” “I am here.” It resonates for me of Psalm 46:10 where God speaks through the psalmist there and He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” I am God. You see, what’s unknown to us is known to God. Nothing to be afraid of. Calm your fears. “I’m going to reach out my hand and let you know I am here.” He calms our fears of the unknown but Jesus reaches on His hands even in the known. And I still think it’s worse with the unknown.

But sometimes the things that you do know can scare you, too. Because sometimes facts get in the way of faith. It’s what happened to Peter. The facts of the situation got in the way of his faith. The facts trumped faith, right? Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. I am. God’s here. You don’t have to worry about it.” So Peter responds to that. He says, “Okay, I’m encouraged. I have renewed confidence now that things are alright.” So he says to Jesus, “Can I come to you on the water?” Jesus says, “Yeah, come on out.” So Peter, alright, he has faith. He steps out of that boat and he’s walking on water and then the facts come in. You see, that’s the problem. He was all faith, yeah, right, going towards Jesus, this is great. And then, all of a sudden, his mind started to work. “This is cool. I’m walking on water.” “I’m walking on water? What do you mean I’m walking on water?” And then, all of a sudden, he sees the waves that are bumping against him and his face is still getting wet. He said, “Wait a minute. People don’t walk on water. People swim through water but people don’t walk on water. People drown in water. They don’t walk on water.” And down he goes. The facts got in the way of the faith. He was terrified about the known.

Sometimes, don’t the facts get in the way for us? Facts trump faith. So the doctor says, “You know, people just don’t survive this kind of cancer. That’s just the facts of the matter.” Facts trump faith. “You know, people don’t walk away from an accident like that. I don’t want to build up any false hope.” Facts trump faith. “You know, I have to tell you that the odds are your department isn’t going to last. It’s just inevitable.” Facts trump faith and so the fear wells up inside of us. And maybe the facts that bother us the most are the facts that we know about ourselves, the facts that maybe no one else knows, the facts about our own sinful behavior and the facts about our own sinful thoughts. Do those facts ever trump faith? Some of the folly of your youth? Maybe the way that you act when you’re not in church? What happens late at night? What happens when you’re on the road? And the facts get in the way of faith. Because your conscience reminds you and the devil accuses you and the devil just keeps battering after you again and again. “You can’t come back from that one. You’ve crossed the line. Sure, you have a loving God but not with what you’ve done.” Everybody has their limits. Everybody can be pushed only so far and, all of a sudden, facts, they start trumping faith. And we say to ourselves, “You know what, heaven’s not for sinners. And I’m a sinner.” That’s when Jesus reaches out His hand and He lifts us up. He says, “Why are you doubting?” It’s not really His question to Peter. For the longest time, maybe it was, I thought it was a rebuke of Peter. “You of little faith. How could you doubt?” I don’t know. Was it a rebuke? Or was it a rhetorical question, “Peter, how could you doubt? I’m standing here on water in the middle of this. I’ve never let you down. I’ve told you that I’ll never let you down. Why did you doubt? Why did you doubt?” And He reaches out His hand and He picks him up and puts him in the boat.

Do you need to hear Jesus say that to you? Do you need to hear Him say to you, “Why do you doubt?” Why do you doubt? He says, “I reached out my hands to you, both of them, and I spread them like this and I let them nail me to a cross because I was going to protect you.” Jesus says, “When I died on the cross, my blood covered all your sins. I don’t care what you did. I paid the full price. Why do you doubt? Why do you doubt?”

That’s Jesus’ hands’ protection telling you that you don’t need to doubt. He’s always there to protect you. He’s always there to pick you up, when we’re scared, when there’s the unknown, when there’s the known, His hands reach out to protect us.

I’ll still say that when Mom or Dad put their arm on my chest, I guess I really don’t care whether it was effective or not. It felt pretty good. It felt pretty good to know there’s somebody watching over me. It felt pretty good to know that their immediate instinct was not themselves but to protect me.

My friends, we have a Savior whose immediate instinct is to stretch out His hands and protect you. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church