I am a Bette Midler fan, and I do like the song I criticize in this sermon. I just don’t buy it. I have to credit discussions I’ve had with the Rev. John Bagby for noticing the theological implications of certain songs and other popular media. Maybe we weren’t hanging out at the theologian’s bar at the time, but I imagine we did manage to quaff a few anyway!
Back in the nineties, Bette Midler recorded a song by Julie Gold called “From a Distance.” It’s now a classic. At first glance, the lyrics look hopeful and optimistic, and many people consider it a Christian song.
“From a distance, there is harmony, and it echoes through the land.
It’s the voice of hope, it’s the voice of peace, it’s the voice of every man.
From a distance we all have enough, and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease, no hungry mouths to feed.”
Doesn’t that sound nice? Doesn’t it sound like what Paul wants for the Christian church in today’s epistle lesson?
He says, “I beg you to live lives worthy of your calling, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Everybody getting along, everybody cooperating, everybody using his or her gifts to benefit each other. That’s what life can look like from a distance. The Divine Ms. M sings on, “From a distance we are instruments marching in a common band. Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace. They’re the songs of every man.”
But then she gets to the part of the song that shows maybe it’s not so Christian after all: “God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us from a distance.”
A lot of people believe that about God. God created us, and the universe, but then left us alone, and even now God sits back, just watching.
Down at the theologians’ bar, where theologians gather after work to quaff a few and debate their favorite topics, those who take this point of view will say God is transcendent. They mean by that God is immense and powerful, too immense and powerful to concern the Divine Self with petty human concerns.
God might watch us from a distance, but God’s too busy and important to intervene in our lives. For them, God is numinous, mysterious, and unknowable.
On the other side of the bar, though, other theologians argue “No, no, no. God is immanent, not transcendent. God’s right here with us, involved in everything we do. God directs us around like a giant chess set to accomplish God’s plan for the universe.”
And then usually a fight breaks out, and it gets ugly – you know how rowdy theologians can get!
But who’s right? Is God transcendent, sitting back, watching from a distance?
Or is God immanent, getting up close and personally involved in everything we do?
Well, let’s look at today’s Gospel lesson. This story comes right after Jesus fed five thousand people starting with five little loaves of bread and two fish.
If we remember the story, we can recall that Jesus came up with the idea to feed the crowd because it was so late in the day. It must have been near dark when He started. And we don’t know how long it took to pass out food to five thousand folks, and then clean up afterwards, but we can assume it took quite a while.
By now, it’s very late – probably dark, and Jesus is exhausted.
So He sends His followers on ahead in a boat, He dismisses the crowd to go home, and He goes up on a mountain by Himself to pray.
After He gets up there, He sees His friends in their boat on the sea. Now we don’t know how He does this. It’s the middle of the night, and He’s on top of a mountain. Obviously there’s something supernatural going on here.
The transcendent God advocates would say, “Of course.” Jesus is God, and that’s what God does. Like the Bette Midler song, God watches from a distance.
But the view from a distance, according to Bette Midler, is all rosy and wonderful. People get along, nobody fights, nobody suffers, nobody’s in need.
And that’s not what Jesus sees. Jesus sees His friends in trouble. They’re on the sea in the middle of the night because He sent them there, and now a big storm blows up right in their faces. So Jesus comes walking out there on the water in the fourth watch of the night, which starts at 3 o’clock in the morning.
But apparently Jesus does not intend a rescue operation, at least not directly. This is another instance in the Gospel of Mark when we get a glimpse of Jesus’ divinity.
First, Jesus walks on the water – not near the water, not in the water, but ON the water.
This fits the description of God in the Book of Job, “He alone stretches out the heavens and treads the waves of the sea.”
Second, He intends to pass them by. When God calls Elijah out of the cave to witness the presence of God, he is invited to watch God pass by.
That’s what Job says, too. After saying God alone treads on the waves, Job says, “[God] does great things beyond understanding, and marvelous things without number. Look, he passes by me ....”
And third, Jesus identifies Himself to them with the same words God gave to Moses from the burning bush to identify God. When Moses asked God how he could convince the Israelites he was really speaking for the true God, God said to tell them “Thus you shall say to them, ‘I am’ has sent me to you.”
Those words, “I am” appear in the Greek in a special way, and it’s that same special way that’s translated in our gospel lesson today as “It is I.”
So obviously Jesus intends by this appearance on the water to let his frightened followers know God is with them. And that should be enough. Often when we’re feeling insecure or confused or scared about something, it helps us to remember God is present. God knows where we are.
But it doesn’t work with the disciples. Instead of reassurance, Jesus’ appearance scares them to death.
They don’t recognize God’s presence; they think they’re seeing a ghost, and it terrifies them. I think that’s part of our problem, too. Sometimes, even when we’re reminded of God’s nearness to us, we don’t get any comfort from that. We think of God as some sort of ghostly thing – too far removed from us, too different from us, too incomprehensible to do us much good.
If that’s how we feel about God, then we’re actually more comfortable having God watch only from a distance. We’d rather sneak around under God’s radar, not drawing too much attention to ourselves. We may say prayers, but we say them with the intention that they go somewhere away from us, like sending a telegram.
Of course, if that’s how we feel about God, then God won’t be much good to us when we’re suddenly caught in the storm clinging to our little boat and looking for help.
Maybe that’s how the disciples felt. But Jesus didn’t just pass by. When He perceived the disciples still needed Him, He changed His plans, and got in the boat with them.
And although they didn’t understand anything at all about what happened, suddenly the storm stopped, and everything got calm again.
When all is said and done, it turns out that, like most disputes between theologians, both sides are somewhat right and somewhat wrong.
The one, true God we worship is transcendent. God is bigger than we can comprehend; in and through creation, but beyond creation. God is numinous, mysterious, all powerful.
And we are insignificant and small. The psalmist says we are as fleeting as a breath. It is almost inconceivable that the all powerful and immense God could have anything at all to do with us. Of course God sees us from a distance – the distance that shows our potential to be peaceful and generous, forbearing one another with patience and love.
We cannot control such a God, we cannot put God in our own box and manipulate God for our own uses. That’s all fine, but if we stop there, we are not really believing as a Christian should.
The Christian knows that, when the storms come, and we get terrified, the one true immense and almighty God we worship also climbs right in the boat with us.
God gets as near as our heartbeat, as intimate as our own breath. God sees us up close, where the ugliness and repugnance of our pride, our greed, our fear, our sins, are all too apparent.
And yet, God loves us anyway.
That’s what the Incarnation is all about. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
In other words, God was watching us, and God saw the peril humanity faced, saw the terror humanity experienced, saw the confusion humanity harbored about God, and decided to climb in the boat with us.
God became human, to experience our pain, our fears, our loneliness, our sorrow, and show us how much God loves us.
And all the way through death, and burial, and rising to life again, Jesus promises always to be in the boat with us.
“For I am with you always, even to the end of the ages.”
From a distance, God is watching us.
From within our very selves, God is watching us.
And so God sees us struggle, God sees we need help, and rather than stay far from us, God comes to us and says to us over and over, if need be:
“Take heart, have no fear; for still I am.”