St. Andrew’s Pictou, August 7^th 2005

 

Spiritual Stretching Exercises

 

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

Matthew 14:22-33

 

You may think that you are out of shape and need some exercises, but a good trainer will quickly tell you that you also need to do some stretching exercises. The good in  doing exercises for your muscles, is balanced when you stretch them as well. Exercising the muscles contracts them, while stretching them draws them out. We need the balance of exercising and stretching for mobility and flexibility.

 

We naturally stretch after we have been sitting or lying in bed. We get up and stretch and we feel better when we extend our muscles.

 

We can also stretch our minds and our understanding:

-we can talk to people with other points of view, and from other places and cultures and it stretches our minds as to how people live and think in other ways.

 

We learn that what is normal and usual for us, may be exceptional or not even exist in other places or for other people. What maybe normal for them may be exceptional for us.

 

Many people in this planet don’t have hot and cold running water, electricity or air conditioning. There is no healthcare, or hospital, or social welfare. If you get sick, you just die. If the crops fail, you die. There is absolutely nobody to bail you out when a calamity hits. You just die.

 

So in our part of the country with all of the modern conveniences we have with water, electricity, healthcare, and a social safety net, we refrain from being stretched the way other people in other places are stretched.

 

But we still have sickness, job loss, betrayal, death and calamity in our lives and these experiences still stretch us beyond where we ever thought that we could go.

 

These experiences take our mind, soul, and emotions and stretch them into places we never thought that we could ever go:

-we get sick and all of our plans are put on hold,

-we loose a job and our mind scrambles trying to adjust to new realities and how to pay the bills,

-a friend betrays our confidence and we surge with anger at their callous disregard for our privacy and trust,

-we loose someone we love and the whole universe turns upside down and we don’t even know who we are anymore.

 

What is common in all of these experiences is that when they happen, all of our suppositions, our habits, our expectations, our plans and everything we think and take for granted is destroyed, obliterated, and gone!

 

We feel devastated when we are stretched beyond what is ordinary for us.

 

Many of us are familiar with the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. The favoured son of his father Jacob, Joseph was the delight of the old man and his brothers were jealous of that favour and the big dreams that Joseph seemed to have. They secretly sell their brother into slavery and dip his famous coat into the blood of a slaughtered goat, show it to their father, who now thinks he is surely dead. They wanted to kill him, but one of the brothers, Reuben talked them out of killing Joseph because he was their brother. They called him “the dreamer.” They sold Joseph to a caravan of Ishmaelites, who in turn sold him to Potiphar, captain of the guard of the Pharaoh of Egypt.

 

Talk about a stretching exercise! Joseph was one of many brothers, the favoured one of his father, betrayed by his own brothers and sold into slavery to strange people in a new and strange land. Think of a child trying to adapt to that kind of change: from favoured child status, to slave labour!

 

As far as his life was concerned, Joseph would have seen his lot as buried, sold and banished!

 

He must have been exhausted, depleted, and at his wit’s end.

 

We find Jesus in our Matthew reading in about the same place:

-his friend John the Baptist had been murdered,

-he had met with thousands of people talking to and healing many,

-tried to retreat to a quiet place to regain his strength,

-and his friends setting out in a boat were about to be swamped with stormy weather and probably drown.

 

He must have been exhausted, depleted, and at his wit’s end.

 

The text tells us that Jesus had told them to go on ahead, trying to get them to function on their own, as they eventually would have to do.

 

“…after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.”

 

“What is necessary for our Lord, is also necessary for us. He needs to find a rhythm of engagement and detachment in his life. He has to conserve energy at one time so that he can richly share it at another. Sometimes we find it extremely difficult to see the necessity for this kind of rhythm in our lives.” O’Driscoll p.84-85.

 

How were the disciples doing as the night wore on?

 

The text says that, “…By this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, (and) the wind was against them.”

 

Weren’t the disciples being stretched beyond limit by stress and calamity like you and I get by trouble, stress, or struggle? That is that kind of situation when Jesus walks towards us, just as he walked on the water towards his friends in their need.

 

It is when we are stressed beyond our limits that Jesus walks towards us to bring comfort and calm. They were scared, but he told them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

 

The text says that when he and Peter got into the boat, “the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”

 

The Word of God for us today is that when we are stretched beyond the limit, Jesus will come to us and in our fear, will bring us his peace and calm.

 

There is also this interesting little caveat to the story: When Peter sees Jesus walking on the water, he asks Jesus to command him to come to him on the water and Jesus says, “Come.”

 

Peter also walks on the water towards Jesus, “But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord save me.’”

 

Jesus responds. He “reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’”

 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t walk on water, unless it is well frozen.

 

We are all subject to our fears, anxieties, and pain; our blindness about what we don’t know, and our spiritual deafness about what we can’t hear.

 

We need that outstretched hand of Jesus when we are over stretched.

 

The nugget of God’s wisdom here is that it is only when we are stretched beyond where we think that we can go, can we find out what is really possible.

 

Following Jesus can really stretch us.

 

The little boy Joseph must have been devastated in being sold as a slave, but was later to be a man of insightful power who saved Egypt with his dream interpretations. He also saved the very brothers who tried to eliminate him from starving during the famine.

 

I was staying in this large convent in Niagara Falls and there was this huge mahogany table in the entrance foyer.

 

There was once a fire in the convent and it took five of the sisters to carry the table outside to safety. It took 12 healthy men to take it back in after the fire!

 

In 1975 I was the organist and choir director at Fairlawn United Church in Toronto. One Sunday the choir was singing full tilt, the organ was sounding full tilt. I quickly reached up to turn the page and the whole anthem book went flying to my left.

 

With some unknown ability, I finished playing the accompaniment to the end of the piece. I did not have it memorized, but stretched beyond the limit, I did something that I had no idea I could do.

 

The church and many of us are exactly like Peter when he was walking towards Jesus. As soon as he focused on the wind, he got scared and began to sink. He only stopped sinking when he took Jesus’ hand.

 

We have Jesus’ analysis for this situation: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

 

For us as individuals, and our churches, to rise above the waves, we have only to take the hand of Jesus to lift us up in faith and belief.

 

Doubts will always sink us; faith is the tangible reality that brings us to life and safety!

 

As men and women, as a church, let us resolve that only with the hand of Jesus will we walk into the future, riding on the waves, holding the hand that can and still does in faith, calm all the storms, stress, and tumult that life may offer.

 

AMEN                       Rev. Alan Stewart