O God, help us all to be
a pure vehicle for your love,
and light,
and wisdom.

Good morning. First off, I’d like to say that being here with you this morning is a gift I’m not certain I can put into words, but I’d like to try. Following my ordination back in June, I’d resolved to take some time off from church. Although I had no idea what form that time off would take, I was certain a large portion of it would be spent with my wife Kindra, who has been so incredibly supportive throughout my journey these past 5 years. I have to admit that the momentum of those 5 years weighed rather heavily, and I’ve found this inertia exceeding difficult to overcome. To put it mildly, I was so used to being in motion, of doing or of having something to do at all times, that it had become second nature. The thought that I could now stop, or at least try to stop, was totally alien. The first two weeks were spent answering questions from people on all fronts about my path, my ministry, and my intent. All the things I’d either taken for granted or put on the back burner were now coming to the fore. Friends, family and co-workers who up until now just knew I was going to school, or pursuing “something” now seemed to take a renewed interest. “That’s nice, so now what are you going to do?” “So, what does this all mean?” or “Hey, congratulations, now what?” All valid questions, and I had to admit that I was still in a state of both bewilderment and transition. I could tell them what I’d done, where I had been, and who I was, but now where was I going with all this?

The other thing I noticed was the void. Over the course of the last 3 years, while I may not have been here, I was always somewhere, another parish, another diocese, and occasionally another faith, another worship experience. In my first year I had homiletics, and that meant going out and listening to others preach, and critiquing that experience. So many different voices, so many different styles. In my second year, for Field Education I was doing Hospice Chaplaincy at the VA in Palo Alto, 2 and sometimes 3 days a week, and in my final year, I had Clinical Pastoral Education, essentially an intense 10 week form of Chaplaincy where you write verbatims on visits to hospital patients and those verbatims are later critiqued by both an instructor and your peers in class, fellow chaplains. At the same time I was doing my Field Ed work at Trinity Cathedral, yet another worship experience. So you see, in all that time I was in a community of one sort or another, whether it was school, parish, hospice, hospital, or chaplains. So, when all of that stopped, I found the silence to be deafening. But then I discovered something I’d long since forgotten. That is that the silence always seems to be the place where God waits. You see, I first learned that lesson during a weeklong retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani outside Louisville, Kentucky in January of 2000, and had since been so busy filling the hours, days, and weeks that it had passed from my mind. In here, we talk to God, we praise, we worship, we petition, we gain sustenance, our strength flows from God and from each other, and in the process, our faith, our very lives are renewed. But most of the time, there’s so much going on, so much is transpiring, that there’s seldom time for God to get a word in edgewise. Out there, beyond those doors, is where we come face to face with Christ, God in all forms, at all times and in all places. We just have to watch, and listen. And although I was never far from this place, by stepping away from it, I relearned a fundamental lesson, and in the process realized just how much I missed being a part of this community of faith, and what that fellowship means. I think what I’m trying to say is that I missed y’all, very, very much, and that taking that time away was much more difficult than I expected, but a necessity nonetheless.

Now then, having said that, I believe today’s Gospel reading can be broken down into exactly 5 lines:

1. Jesus reassuring the disciples in their fear: "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."
2. Peter requesting of Jesus: "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."
3. Jesus calling Peter to him with that single word: "Come."
4. And then Peter, weak and human as he is, pleading: "Lord, save me!"
5. Jesus does so, and then asks of him: "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"

It is a classic symptom of the human condition.

In Romans, Paul does this little dance in order to reassure both the Jews and the Gentiles that he understands and appreciates their differences, and yet he makes the case that they are one for the simple reason that:

The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart"

This is the word of faith that we proclaim; because if we confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord and we believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. We believe this in our hearts and so we are justified, and we confess this with our mouths and so we are saved. Because scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. How much easier would this life be if we could all simply remember that one thought? “The same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Everyone. Peter is given the chance in Matthew, after he and the other disciples have been scared senseless by this image of Jesus walking towards them on the water. Any one of us would be terrified if faced with that very same image. But after Jesus has reassured them, Peter wants to test his abilities, and is given the opportunity. But the truth is he has to meet Jesus halfway. Sometimes it’s difficult in the cacophony of everyday life, the endless barrage of bad news, with the war, terrorism, drugs, violence, the economy, and just the general state of the world, to hold fast to our faith. We too get that sinking feeling, and are forced to cry out, Lord save me! But all the reassurance in the world is worth nothing if we do not first believe. As Paul puts it, “how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?” “And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” Well, here we are. “How are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?” Again, here we are. You see, coming through those doors is just the first step. It is the beginning of the path. It is not halfway, not by any means. That comes when you go back out through those doors, when all you have seen and heard and learned in here is put into practice “out there” in the world. Then comes the moment of truth. We don’t have to walk on water; we simply have to walk the walk of our faith. Out there, we live out what we learn in here. This is where we meet Jesus halfway.

This week marked my return to hospice Chaplaincy, as well as my return to church. It is for me another step on the path, in some small way an answer to that, “congratulations, now what?” question. Interestingly enough, there are two definitions of hospice. The first is the more traditional, that is:

1. A shelter or lodging for travelers, pilgrims, foundlings, or the destitute, especially one maintained by a monastic order.

   Sound vaguely familiar? Look around you. The other is the one we’ve come to know over the course of the last few decades:

2. A program that provides palliative care and attends to the emotional, spiritual, social, and financial needs of terminally ill patients at an inpatient facility or at the patient's home.

I have found this to be yet another place where I find the true meaning of faith. I don’t know that I am meeting Christ halfway, although I have to tell you that I have seen His face, Her face in that place, and at times I’m convinced that I am doomed to dog paddle for all eternity. Lord, save me! I have to continually remind myself that I am not to measure my faith against the faith of others. It is a moot point. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegard said that, “Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.” I find that we are all one in that time and that place.

Being human, I have found faith to be both a profound and a profoundly difficult thing. So, how does one quantify that? I don’t know. I don’t know.

I would like to leave you with a thought from the American writer Flannery O’Connor. I believe she learned a lot more than most about faith in her brief 39 years of life. In a letter to her friend Alfred Corn she wrote, “Faith is what you have in the absence of knowledge… and that absence doesn’t bother me because I have got, over the years, a sense of the immense sweep of creation, of the evolutionary process in everything, of how incomprehensible God must necessarily be to be the God of heaven and earth. You can’t fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories.

If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but for very few is it a gift given without any demand for time devoted to its cultivation…Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It’s there, even when he can’t see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there.”

And so, here we are. Amen