“Then he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side… When evening came…the boat…was distant from the land, and beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them…[Jesus] came to them, walking on the sea…they cried out for fear. But immediately he spoke to them saying, ‘Take heart, it is I; have no fear…” (Matthew 14:22-33, RSV)
“Do not fear”, “fear not”, “do not be afraid”. This is the most frequent negative commandment in the Bible. They say (I’ve never actually verified this often-repeated claim) that there are 365 “fear nots” in the Scriptures, one for every day.
We’re not very good at obeying this injunction. We worry, we fret, we have anxiety – these are all descriptions of one thing: fear. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed by these feelings, and we lose our emotional bearings, forgetting all that we know about our faith. Like the disciples, we’re far from our home port, we’re beaten by waves, and the wind is against us.
And so we worry. We want to do something when we’re feeling helpless, so we worry; at least that activity feels like we’re doing something, useless as it is.
Today, someone posed an interesting question: How do you know when you’ve worried “enough”? Is there something perhaps you’d forgotten, something which slipped your mind? Are there things you’re “supposed” to worry about that you never even thought of?
Ridiculous, of course. So why do we do it – why do we worry and fret anxiously when doing so doesn’t really change anything? Our tendency to do so arises from one thing: lack of trust in God. From the very beginning, humankind has demonstrated a profound lack of trust in God’s power and goodness. That suspicion of God goes back to our first parents, who fell for the lie that God was keeping something good from them. Sin created fear, and we’ve inherited that fearful tendency ever since.
When Jesus comes to the disciples walking on the water, the translation says, “It is I, have no fear.” In the original Greek, Jesus actually uses the term “ego eimi” for himself, the term he uses elsewhere to reveal his divinity. It’s the Name most directly related to God’s revelation to Moses from the burning bush: “I AM”. Jesus is saying: “Take courage, I AM is here!“.
Here was the One with whom they had walked, talked, eaten, slept beside. But here also is the One who walks on water, stills storms, heals lepers, opens blind eyes. Why are they afraid? They’re like us, still imagining themselves to be on their own, trying to hold things together by their own power.
What’s the solution? A simple prayer, prayed over and over to help us remember that we’re not on our own: “Jesus, I trust in you”. Our good, powerful, loving God sees our struggles, our distress, our frailties and mistakes and lovingly comes to us when we ask. We need to redirect our attention away from the problem, cry out to him, and wait for him to come to our rescue: “Take courage, I AM is here!”. He’s promised to come when we call. Let us practice taking him at his word.
Lessons From Love School 