Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Text: Matthew 14:22-32

We enter this world from water, and we leave into mystery – in between, we seek security, stability, solid ground, a firm foundation. Our drive for stability is instinctive – you can see this in the startle reflex of babies: if you are holding a baby, and shift position so that the baby feels unstable, she will startle, flail about, until she feels secure again. I suspect that this is part of the reason that earthquakes strike most people as so terrifying – the idea that the very ground on which we rely could shift, open, heave and quake is a profoundly unsettling experience. So many of our words implying security and certainty have to do with stability, such as: our hopes are well-founded, the project is on solid ground, he is a very grounded person.

From time to time, we need to let go of the solid ground, cross a place of uncertainty, in order to get to another place that will be solid again. But relinquishing that solid ground can be frightening – I remember well when I was beginning to learn to swim. I was very afraid – I was happy to put my face in the water, and to practice the arm motions, and I was willing to hold onto the side of the pool and kick, but when it came to putting it all together, without holding onto the side of the pool, I just didn’t want to take my feel off the bottom of the pool and trust the water and my own ability to bear me safely. I remember the moment when I finally trusted the teenage teacher to rescue me if it all were to fail…and of course it didn’t. I swam! It was fun! I became an avid swimmer, eventually being part of a swim team, and later swimming laps. But to get to the joy of swimming, I had to let go of solid ground.

As we come to the edge of solid ground, there are different kinds of crossing places:

Bridges and gateways represent an unwillingness to be stopped by the obstacles in our way. Bridges are a method of building a way past what might ordinarily stop us. And gateways are openings through the walls before us.

Causeways are like bridges, but are usually built-up land. They create solid ground in the midst of water, rather than building a bridge over the water. And fords are places where the water is shallow enough that there is solid ground beneath it.

And, the ultimate crossing places are burial grounds, where we mark as holy ground the passage from life to death.

Of course, we don’t remember the first crossing place – the one that brought us through birth. And it might be useful to realize that if we could have conversed with anyone, before our birth, about what life would be like once we were born, we wouldn’t have believed it. Curled up tightly, living in warm fluid in the dark, how would we have understood someone telling us about stretching, breathing, being hungry or cold? How could we have imagined light, or a kiss, or seeing faces? We never had a framework to consider conversation, colors, or walking. All the ordinary experiences of life would have been totally inconceivable to us before we were born – and yet this is indeed what life is like. Perhaps as we contemplate other unknown futures –a move, a job or school change, travel abroad to a very different place, or even our own death – it could be reassuring to us to realize that before we were born we never could have imagined this life…but here it is. We will go through other major changes, where we can’t imagine what comes next, but our inability to imagine the future does not mean that a future doesn’t exist.

Sometimes people make bad choices because of their inability to imagine change – nothing against graduate school, but sometimes people go because they can’t imagine life outside of school. Other times people don’t leave a job that no longer works, because they can’t imagine their life being different. I suppose the ultimate failure of imagination is suicide – a person can’t imagine that they can survive the circumstances they are facing, and so they choose to die. Young people can be especially vulnerable, because they haven’t lived in many different circumstances, and they haven’t yet established a track record of getting through hard times.

In some ways, our ability to imagine an alternate future is a kind of a bridge – it makes it possible for us to cross the uncertainties between our present circumstances and the future. Our inability to imagine a different future can also keep us from pursuing change – we can’t imagine that we could succeed at making different choices than we have made in the past. It’s not so much that we can’t imagine circumstances being different as that we can’t imagine ourselves being different. So we don’t try to complete a marathon, or learn a new skill, or change a bad habit, because we can’t imagine ourselves differently than we are.

Hope and trust are other kinds of crossing places – perhaps more like a doorway. They enable us to go forward without being able to envision what lies ahead. We rely on our confidence in our abilities to adapt, or our trust in other people, or systems. We choose trust instead of fear. This is what enabled Peter to step out of the boat and walk toward Jesus on the water. It wasn’t so much his ability to imagine his own success as his willingness to trust Jesus that led him to step over the edge. And as long as he focused on the trust and on Jesus, he was able to walk on water. But when he was distracted by the waves, and succumbed to fear, he found himself sinking again. Sometimes we can choose to trust rather than fear, but it may take some focus.

This can be a challenge for us in relationships, especially when we are reacting to past hurts. It can be very hard to choose trust instead of fear, when we are afraid that we will be hurt again. But one of the things we can realize is that the only option is not just to trust the other person. Another choice is to trust our own ability to cope with what comes.

A causeway is a place where people establish firm ground that wasn’t there before. From an engineering perspective, it can be building up a sand bar that can support a road across a bay. From a personal perspective it can mean establishing ways to an uncertain situation to feel more trustworthy. For example, we can ask someone to go with us to a situation that we find frightening – we are creating some security where none existed. Backup systems are also a kind of causeway – they provide stability in a situation that would otherwise be unstable – like when I was working in the steel mill and we’d tie off from a safety belt when working on a high place. I wasn’t just imagining that I wouldn’t fall, or trusting my sense of balance – I was establishing some safety in a situation that was otherwise unsafe.

Fords are places where we can walk safely through the water – we find safe, solid ground even under the water. Sometimes we let ourselves get too overwhelmed by uncertainty, and fail to see that even in uncertain times, there is still much that we can rely on.

At first, burial ground don’t seem to be crossing places in the same way that bridges are, but let’s take a closer look. Obviously, at the most basic level, burial grounds are where we take people when they die, so they cross from life to death. But at a more metaphoric level, burial grounds are where we relinquish dreams that have died, or stages of our lives from which we have to move on. Burial grounds are where we let go of life as it has been, or the things we had long hoped-for, and move on into a new future, or with different hopes and dreams. Burial grounds may be where we leave something or someone that has long been a part of us, and walk away. Maybe we come to realize that we really can’t change a situation, or a person, and so we realize that we have to leave that hope of change behind – or we leave the situation behind. Burial grounds are where we accept life as it really is, and move on.

Where to we get the courage, the trust, the ability to imagine? Very often, it is God who is at the heart of these crossing places. Perhaps it is God who has led us to the place where we are called to let go of the certainty we’ve had, or the comfortable way we’ve lived, or the wrong thinking we had followed, and so it is God who is calling us to engage uncertainty as we move into the future. Some people think of God as a port in a storm, but it has seemed to me often that it was God who has called people into rough waters, into the challenges, into new experiences – God does not seem to be the comfy corner where we stay and avoid engaging the unknown. It is often by praying and dreaming that God leads people to imagine a new future that calls people forward to create that future. It can be God whom we are trusting when we have the courage to move through a doorway into an unimaginable place…as it was for Peter when he steeped out of the water.

Perhaps it’s God who is calling us to speak truth in a challenging situation, and even if speaking that truth ends up badly, it doesn’t mean that God wasn’t behind the call. Perhaps it is God whose imagination is giving us a new vision of possibilities that creates a bridge to the future.

Sometimes it is in the congregation of people following God that we find the support to make a causeway …or sometimes it is simply the relationship with God that provides the security that leads us to be okay with trying something new. We find ourselves in God as a kind of solid ground beneath the surface uncertainty. And sometimes it is God who is calling us to leave something behind, to let go of something that it’s time to bury – an outgrown sense of our selves, or a situation we’d hoped to change, or a habit that is holding us back.

I don’t know how prayer works, truly I don’t, but I do know that God is able to work miracles when we open our hearts and minds to God’s creative energy – and although I talk a lot about contemplative prayer, it is the openness of our minds and hearts that is the key to prayer. Silent prayer doesn’t guarantee openness and spoken prayer doesn’t betray closedness. Are we willing to let God reshape and renew us? In Lent, sometimes people engage in new spiritual practices – some spend more time in prayer, or doing spiritual reading, or extending themselves compassionately – and the new practice becomes a way to become grounded so that even in uncertain circumstances, we have a foundation that enables us to feel confident. That was the case in the early church – as the disciples grew more confident in their experiences of God, they found they could take on more uncertainty, because they were grounded in God. It’s the same impulse that led the psalmist to write in the 18th psalm: For who is God except the Lord? And who is a rock besides our God?— the God who girded me with strength, and made my way safe. He made my feet like the feet of a deer, and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand has supported me; your help has made me great. You gave me a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip.

As our sense of God grows we may find ourselves less fearful – it is not that we think God will keep bad things from happening, but that in God we have a sense of wellness. Like the old hymn It is Well with My Soul – the hymn doesn’t claim that bad times won’t come…only that they won’t defeat us. It is well, it is well with my soul. And in God, we may not find our own inability to imagine the future to be a barrier, because we trust God. And many people find that as they ground themselves more fully in God – their own imagination takes root in God’s. The God for whom death is not the last word is able to create new life when our own hope seems to die, so that in God we find ourselves able to dream beyond our previous limitations.

And so our old ideas may need to die, our old certainties get left behind, as God calls us forward into a future we may not have imagined before. Our whole life is a series of letting go, so that our hand may be open to grasp the next thing. Just as I couldn’t have embraced swimming had I not let go of the certainty of walking on the pool bottom, so too does life call us again and again to let go of certainties that we no longer need so that we may grasp the possibilities that lie before us. Even as we age, Margaret Silf reminds us “I have seen people whose lives have been very fruitful, and crowned with achievement, having to let go of health, mental clarity and much material comfort as they have made their final journal towards death. Yet some of those people have grown enormously in spiritual stature as they have embraced the losses, to receive, with empty hands, the treasure of a much deeper sense of the true ground of their being.”

And the same is true for institutions – perhaps individual congregations, or denominations, need to be prepared to let go of how they have been in order to discover who God is leading them to become. And so sometimes it is the Spirit of God that is leading more people to imagine a future in which the church can be different. This year, as our denomination is again voting on changing our constitution to open ordination to people regardless of sexual orientation, the vote isn’t going as it has gone in 1996 and 2002. In order for this change to come (a change our own congregation embraced years ago in defiance of national policy), 87 regional presbyteries must vote in favor of the amendment. So far this year, 23 presbyteries voted yes that had previously voted no. This is God-breathed change – people are being able to imagine the church being faithful differently than they had understood before.

Change is hard – it’s hard to make changes in ourselves, but God is able to change minds and hearts as well. Let us pray. “God, please open us to the changes you imagine. Let us trust you to be the ground of our being, so that our being can indeed be grounded in you. Amen.”