In the Grip of Grace--August 15, 2023

In the Grip of Grace--August 15, 2023

"But when Peter noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, 'Lord, save me!' Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, 'You of little faith, why did you doubt?'" [Matthew 14:30-31]

If you should ever have to jump out of a plane, you are welcome to hold onto the parachute straps with your hands... but that's not what will get you safely onto solid ground.  Ultimately, it's not your grip on the parachute that matters, but the parachute straps' grip on you.

As you hurtle through the sky toward the earth, you might be petrified with fear and unable hold tightly to that backpack's shoulder straps.  Or maybe you will be so awestruck at the beauty and wonder of seeing the world from up in the sky like that that you don't even think about where to put your hands.  Or maybe you would be such a worrier (I think this would be me) that you would keep second-guessing where you were supposed to put your hands and end up moving your grip every few seconds, and end up not holding anything very tightly for very long.  Any of these might be possible, and yet the parachute can and does still function, because its ability to gently slow your fall to the ground does not depend on your grip--not on holding the right spot, and not on how tightly you hold.  The parachute holds you, and you are saved.

So if you ask me, just before we leap out of the open cabin door on the airplane, "Do you have faith that you'll survive this jump?" the most honest answer I can give is, "I trust the parachute to hold me, even if I don't have great faith in my own ability to hold onto the parachute straps."  And that is enough, because it's not a matter of how hard I believe in the parachute that makes it work.  Once it's strapped onto me, it will hold, even if I doubt it, and even if I am fidgeting the whole way down.

But--to the extent that I can trust the parachute to hold me, I can relax and let myself be held in the harness and actually enjoy the ride, take in the view, and pay attention to the wonder I am living through while I glide, rather than missing it all because I'm in a panic.  I can trust the parachute to do what it is supposed to do, and let it free me--or I can let fear make me miss out, only to discover that none of my frantic fussing made me any safer.

Well, you can see exactly where I'm headed with this little thought experiment, I'm sure.  This is precisely where Peter finds himself in the rest of this episode from the story many of us heard this past Sunday.  And this is precisely what it really means to be people of faith.  We need to get that straightened out in our minds, because sometimes Respectable Religious Folks make faith sound like an achievement--like it's a skill pertaining to how tightly we hold onto God, or how correctly we grasp theological truths.  We turn it into our accomplishment, and we end up saying that we're "saved by our faith," by which we mean that it's our grip on God that gets us to a safe landing.  Sometimes you'll hear church folks take that even farther and say that when you pray for healing of a sickness and it doesn't come, that it must be a sign that you don't have enough faith.  And sometimes, despite the insistence of Reformers like Martin Luther that there's nothing we can do to earn God's love or achieve God's grace, we turn "faith" into a matter of having the correct answers to a religion exam after death, and if we memorize the right words, we'll get into heaven because of our "faith." But all of that misses the point, truthfully, and confuses the question of who is holding whom in this parachute ride of life.

In the end, faith is about trusting that God's grip on us will not fail or falter, not about how confident we are in our ability to hold onto God.  That's what Peter learns here, too.  When he steps out onto the waves from the relative security of the boat, it's because he trusts Jesus, not because he believes in his own innate ability to defy the rules of physics and walk on water.  And when he starts to sink, it's because he's started letting fear make him panic rather than keeping focused on Jesus, who is worthy of his trust.  And when, at the last, Jesus asks Peter, "Why did you doubt?" he's not suggesting that there is a certain quantity of faith that makes you levitate, as if it were happy thoughts and pixie dust that enables the children to fly with Peter Pan.  It's a question of "Why couldn't you trust that I would keep you safe?  What kept you from believing that I would still hold onto you?"  And yet, even that question comes, not as a scolding or a punishment, but as Jesus has already taken Peter by the hand and pulled him back onto terra firma.

We Respectable Religious people can spend so much time policing whether other people are gripping the straps in the same way we are that we end up forgetting that it was never the grip of our fingers that kept the parachute in place.  Faith is really about trusting that God holds us, regardless of how tightly or even accurately we hold onto God.  Peter learns that in the water and Jesus grabs a hold of him.  Maybe we can start this day with that truth already holding us, too.

The thing is, once we realize that it's not about how hard we hold onto the straps, our hands are finally free to do something useful--something that conveys love for the people around us.  When I'm done worrying about whether my postmortem theology score will be high enough to get me into Honors Level Heaven, I can use my days and my energy to help a friend, be kind to a stranger, and comfort the heartbroken.  Love is possible when I'm finally secure in the truth that I'm held in the harness of God's grace, and at last I can quit fidgeting or comparing myself to the next person and their parachute pack.

Today, then, let's let ourselves be held in the grip of grace, so that our hands will be free to love the people around us.  And maybe our worried minds can relax enough to look around and appreciate the wonder of the view around us on the trip, confident that there will be solid ground to hold us at the time of our safe arrival.

Lord Jesus, hold us and give us the confidence of trusting that you will not let us go, so that we can use our time, energy, and passion for the sake of others around us.