Mongst Chaos

For the modern period, walking on water is seen as a magic trick. I do not recall an irreverent comment about Jesus which recurs more commonly than His walking on water. It is incidental to us, a curiosity — more Houdini than Heaven. But for devout Hebrew men of the first century, this moment is all-encompassing: cosmic on the Divine scale and primordial on the earthly level.

In the scope of a human life, this scene from St. Matthew's Gospel is anything but incidental. It is transformative rendering all other concerns trivial by comparison. Where Peter stands goes beyond life and death. He stands before the infinite and the finite, between the eternal and the mundane. And for all watching, a drama is set in place, a Divine moment of greatest consequence. But do we see it? Can we see it?

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The domestication of the elements is a recent milestone. For millions of years, even quiet, gentle winter held the world captive, killing back all vegetable life and sentencing the animal world to an icy dungeon. Many would die during long, cruel nights awaiting the dawn with its life-giving warmth. Have you experienced the complete absence of light? You cannot see the hand in front of you. You cannot take a safe step in any direction. And woe unto you if you should wander too far at night even during a light snow shower. For many bodies have been uncovered later in the spring just a hundred yards from their front door.

Recurring in the Hebrew Scripture famines appear for lack of rain .... which was an underlying cause of idolatry as people hedged their bets praying to any god who might help. Small wonder primitive peoples have worshipped (and continue to worship) what we would call "nature deities." Certainly, on this island some do.

In the West, following the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, our relationship with the elements changed fundamentally: delivery of coal for heat, techniques for storing and preserving food, enclosed automobiles, housing developments, factory employment, agricultural machines, pressurized water .... the list goes on and on. Everything has changed. And to a very large extent, the wild world has been subjugated to the human will.

Pushing back the urgency of the elements, walling them off, a psychological vacuum was formed. And in this place a new, human invention has emerged: nature. In 1789, Wordsworth would write, "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her" (Lyrical Ballads). And by the twentieth century, books and, later, movies depicted "nature in harmony." We think of the Wind in the Willows or the Beatrix Potter books with talking animals and polite society amongst the creatures of the forest. Soon, Disney studios would found a culture-changing industry built upon this new subject beginning with Snow White (1937) depicting benign animals dancing with dwarfs and princesses. Soon, Bambi (1942) would ratchet up the sanctity of nature showing the kindly, well-ordered forest threatened by the depredations of man.

Thus began the deadly process of a false magic (early movie projectors were called "magic lanterns") supplanting the Divine and our life with God. Based on Disney's powerful sway over emotions, imagination, and will, an anthropologist would propose it to be a major world religion, guiding people in life decisions and becoming a primary formative influence over their children. High points in family life featured pilgrimages to its several shrines, called "Magic Kingdoms." As I say, the construct of nature in harmony, which has been offered to us by this religion, appeared on the human clock only a few ticks ago, nearly during our own lifetimes (Sr. Mary Martha was born the year Bambi debuted).

But for all of this, there is no nature, not in the sense of gentle harmony. There are no stars, planets, and moons set in harmonious courses. What we see at night above us is simply "what remains" after millions of years of cosmic collisions. Down below on earth, the "harmony" depicted in sentimental movies in reality is no less a vast violence: the food chain. Yes, we dress up little dogs in little tutus and we attempt to hold our cats as little babies, but this is part of a human grotesque in a world where children are starving for lack of attention and care.

Moreover, both the Book of Genesis and our laws of physics agree that we live on an edifice of chaos. On the moral plane, demons run rampant defining our culture. On the physical plane our homes disintegrate; our cars rust; our planet home manifestly is unraveling.

For the ancient world, this menacing chaos, this raw power of elements that cannot be tamed was personified by the sea. When Genesis depicts God hovering over the void, the ancients pictured black, primal boiling oceans of unimaginable power. And the signature act of our God, Who alone might approach this destructive chaos, is to wrest His splendid orderliness from the increate monster.

It is God alone Who might master the Red Sea conducting His people through it yet rendering a greatest army on earth powerless in mere seconds. He bounds off the holy places near to Him in this rule over chaos. A point made by the Red Sea is that no one might draw near to His holy wilderness without God's safe conduct. (Is not this the narrative point of the Red Sea?) No one may approach His Holy Mountain without His invitation and acceptance. And no one, finally, might live in the midst of the Creation's awesome power without His Fatherly protection and care. He alone is the Almighty God, and all else are His countless subjects.

For the ancient West, nothing captured these truths more certainly than the sea. What we now call Western Civilization was held captive by it. The word Mediterranean means "the center of the earth." Who dares venture beyond this basin? Few mariners would sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar, called the ne plus ultra — the beyond which there is nothing.

We in the twenty-first century continue to bow before these forbidding mysteries. Yes, we might shoot rockets off into distant space, but our ocean deeps draw a line that we cannot cross. Modern man knows far more about the surface of Mars than he does about the bottoms of his seas. And these seas, whose darkness and power are impenetrable, rightly call us to humility. We stand before the Divine.

For fishermen in particular the raging sea was both life-giving and mortally terrifying. And in our Holy Scriptures, we see the theme repeatedly,from the Creation of the world to Jesus' command of the winds and the waves. In this, a mystery central to ourselves, to our basic orientation, to our essence is revealed. For lying within these deadly and limitless forces, lying with in this — in all and through all and around all — shimmers a sacramental beauty which humans might never hope to imitate: myriad impossible colors, endless varieties of intoxicating fragrances, the play of light upon each living thing, the displays of canyons and mountains of color at sunset, the sun pouring its gold on the sea at dawn ..... And one thing more: it is all alive.

We call this the sublime — at the same time incommensurably fair yet also inexhorably destructive. The critical theorist Francis Ferguson wrote, "Wolves are sublime. Dogs are not." And here we begin to unlock the Scriptures as we enter into the sublime.

What is this Creation into which we have been set which is at the same time so splendid and yet so murderous? Whoever follows God, who desires relationship with God, also desires to follow Him into this sublime, where He is .... as Moses did high above the plains of Sinai or as the Disciples did on the Mount of Transfiguration. We wish to be where He is: overwhelming yet reassuring .... with a sense of His mastery and His serenity. We wish to walk with assurance upon the raging sea. For this leads us into the heart of the Divine.

"Come," the Lord God says to Peter. "Come. And enter this Divine mystery, for it has been prepared for you and for all." I say, "the Lord God." In the Holy Apostles Convent translation of the Evangel (which we use every day), the Disciples call out to the Lord and He answers identifying Himself as "I AM. Be not afraid. I AM."

"Come!" He says. Peter stands at the sweetest moment of his life — to step out of the twisted, mundane world, to step out into that place of balance and assurance where God is. The long-desired moment has come to leave behind our petty fears, our neuroses, our childish terrors. For right before us is the the moment of union with God .... and, therefore, of complete trust. We must trust, for trust and love are the only Divine powers God has granted to us. And Peter does trust .... until he does not, falling back into the confines of his inadequacies. And failing to trust God, He ineluctably has chosen the only alternative to God, which is chaos. All that is not of God is madness and chaos.

Will God save Him from this chaos he has embraced?

Yes, God is with us. He will assist us. And that is fine as we call out "Save me! Save me!" But all of that is to one side of His intentions for us. Father God does not wish to raise daughters and sons who never grow up. Saving us over and over and over again is not a picture of human spiritual advancement. He asks, "Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division" (Lu 12:51) separating us from the false world to which we cling. "I came to send fire on the earth" (Lu 12:49), He declares, burning off the dross of our material worlds in order to render the empyreal gold of His radiant Kingdom of which we are made.

Is it not so that we are all Peters gazing out upon Divine life yet failing to claim it, yet somehow failing to trust God? Failing to trust God. He has scattered Divine appointments throughout our lifetimes.

Recently, we had volunteers visiting us, young men. One of them was shocked when I told that the Divine appointment God presents is not something nice to tuck into your back pocket. It is now. You have encountered God now. I recall now that he asked with a note disbelief, "Doesn't God negotiate with us?"

So many reject Him in favor of weakness, whether momentary or longterm. We recall St. Augustine's prayer, "O Lord, be Master of my life ..... but not tonight." The moment of our life's sweetness always opens before us in a now, and yet ours is the God who is nearly always rejected.

You know the pattern of human life. Ignoring God's call to vocation, we cling to our careers, which fail to unlock our gifts. Instead of awaiting our one true love, we "settle" on "the best we can do" losing all possibility of real love. Instead of giving the world a wide bertha and claiming Kingdom-of-Heaven life, we immerse ourselves in the blare of televisions, the glare of computer screens, and disfiguring carnal impulses that never end.

We were commanded by God to be gods (Ps 82:6). Why do so many always choose far less, refusing His requirement of trust .... and, by that fact, refusing life?

We have the saints before us, modeling trust and love and faithfulness. We see their lives filled with light. And each one of us is born into a world of life, beautiful life, fanning out in every direction, inimitable, irreplaceably life. Like Peter we might step out on to the sea. We might step out walking with mastery and ease into Divine life. We might arise each morning giving thanks for His blessing. We might continue our conversation with angels and saints. Each morning I greet my guardian angel: "Bright Friend, Blessed Friend," whose very element is the Divine, a God Who has pledged to be with us always.

He is our Heavenly Father. He numbers the hairs on our heads like a doting mother. But we turn away. Like Peter, we turn away trusting in the laughable illusion of our pathetic un-power. And instead of walking on water, we drown in chaos .... in the end trusting, not in God, but in a transitory world which we know will always betray us. Are we not, so many, many of us, drowning men?

Do you say, "Not so!" Do you reject the case that I have made? Then let us face a riddle together. How is it that the most joyous day of our lives, the most longed-for moment, when we depart this veil of tears and treachery, joining our God Who alone is trustworthy .... How is it that this singular moment of beatitude should be marked universally by wailing and mourning and, even, cursing? Is not this the tower irony of nearly all human life?

Do we not live among people terrified at the day of their deaths? Certainly, it is a multi-billion-dollar Hollywood industry, this terror. Do not people near the end of their lives lavish billions of dollars in supplements and anti-aging potions upon themselves while children only beginning life starve all around them? .... clawing and scratching and clinging in order to resist God. Where is this if not drowning in a sea and crying out for our own skins?

"Save me! Save me! It's not that I will give you my love of my trust. No. But save me!"

"Lord," Peter said, "command me to come to You." And He does command. And Peter does take those first steps into abundant life .... and then greater and greater life. This is the Lord's command for all of us:

We listen for His voice. We yearn for His life-giving command. For He has such things in wait for us that will burn down our unworthy worlds, will burst our hearts, and lifting us to new dimensions of love and life that we can now only barely imagine.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.