The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 12B, July 26, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of Wonder, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

We have, for our edification this morning, two fantastic stories, so famous that you certainly don’t have to be a Christian to know them – stories of abundance out of scarcity in the loaves and fishes and of walking on water in some rough weather. The stories get larger and more profound with each iteration in the four Gospels. By the time that the Gospel of John was written, the hunger of the crowds and the threatening storm have become less problems to be solved by Jesus and more lessons to be taught by Jesus, who knew all along, according to John, what he was going to do to try to impress on his followers the meaning of the presence, the power, and the promise of God. The Gospel of John has the biggest fish story of all!

Perhaps you’ve seen the play or the film Big Fish, the story of a difficult father and son relationship. The father, Edward, is dying and his adult son William, a journalist, comes home hoping for reconciliation with the man who has told the tallest, most unbelievable tales about his life, and who will not stop, even on his deathbed, even in response to the pleas from his son. The characters of Edward’s fantastic stories come to Edward’s funeral in the end. It is only after Edward’s death that William begins to understand the truth. The play is fiction of course. But anyone who knows anything about truth knows that truth can best be heard and understood through fiction. It’s like Emily Dickinson wrote in her poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant…The Truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.”

I have a midsummer daydream to tell you. My own father was a great story-teller. Part of the entertainment for me as a small child, when he told his fantastic stories, was watching my mother or his sister roll their eyes when he would get to the best parts – a sure signal that he was telling whoppers. As I got older, I learned to roll my own eyes whenever he would start to tell one of his tall tales. One of his oft repeated stories was a grammar lesson. The story went something like this. When he was a freshman in college, there was a “tradition” of water fights between dorms as part of freshman orientation. He was assigned to a large building, divided into sections, each with its own dormitory name. Each section was secured by a firewall with a fire door. My father was the grandson of a fireman, and he had very romantic ideas about firefighting and some limited practical knowledge of things like fire hoses. In the midst of a water fight between dorms, my dad had the bright idea of getting the fire hose, holding the nozzle while his hall mates lined up behind him to hold the hose and waited for his command to turn on the water when the fire door was opened. Imagine their excitement about their anticipated win! Just when they were ready, and my dad was about to give the command, there was a knock on the door from the other side. My dad yelled, “Whadaya want?” The voice on the other side said, “Open the door. It’s the dean.”

Now the Dean of Students in those days was a fairly young man named Richard Winter. He was very tall and very thin, and the students referred to him as “The Lean Dean.” My dad didn’t believe for a second that it was really the dean, so he called out, “Is it the Lean Dean?” The response was, “Yes, it’s me. Open the door.” My dad signaled for the water to be turned on. They opened the door and blasted the guys on the other side with water. The first person to get knocked down by the water from the fire hose was Dean Winter.

They were then marched into the Dean’s office, where a soaking wet and furious Richard Winter asked my dad, who was standing with his friends, what on earth had prompted him to call for the water to be turned on when he’d told them who he was. My dad hung his head and answered, “Predicate nominative, sir. I thought if you were really the dean, you would have said, ‘It is I.’” Miraculously, the dean said, “Get out of here,” and my dad and his friends didn’t get disciplined in any way.

Thirty-six years later, in the heavy fog of grief in the aftermath of my dad’s sudden death, at the reception following the funeral, [1] my mother walked over to where I was standing to introduce me to a man by her side. She said, “Pam, I want you to meet Dick Winter. He was the dean of students when your father was in college.” I looked up at the face of this tall, thin man, with a slow smile and wide eyes, and said, “The Lean Dean?” He smiled back at me and said, “It is I.”

That’s the story I remember when I hear the Gospel of John’s account of rough seas in the night, the disciples rowing and rowing, despairing and dreading, and they see Jesus walking on the sea and coming near to the boat, and they were terrified. Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” What Jesus offers is assurance and hope. What he literally says in Greek, is ego eimi – I AM. Those are the same words of the revelation of the Holy One to Moses in the burning bush. (And in Hebrew those words mean past, present and future.) And mey phobeisthe “do not be afraid” is what the Holy One says whenever the Holy One appears in the Hebrew Bible. “Do not be afraid” is one of the essential ingredients of a theophany, which is a fancy word for divine manifestation. You probably know that Jesus is reported to have said “do not be afraid” more times than anything else in all of the Gospels. In this particular version of the story, Jesus isn’t stopping the storm or stilling the waves threatening to swamp the boat. In the midst of rough weather, Jesus is saying I AM. Do not be afraid. And the awestruck disciples want to take Jesus into the boat and yet suddenly they’ve arrived at their destination – or rather, the next stop on their spiritual journey (wherever they are on it). Perhaps the miracle is that the awestruck disciples realize that they have arrived safely through fear and scarcity, through uncertainty and real danger. Perhaps what C.S. Lewis once wrote is true: “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

If you’ve ever attended a Passover Seder, you might remember that in that liturgy of the table, it’s explicitly clear that the ancient history is alive and true in the present moment and in the promise of future. Hope for the future is possible because your people have found freedom in the past. Your people have found healing and nourishment and Divine protection in the past, they find it in the present and will find it again. It’s not so different with our liturgy of the table in our Eucharist – past, present, and still to come. (The Passover Seder is the source of our Eucharist – our thanksgiving.) Our Eucharist is a frequent reminder that you can face scarcity and storms in the future because you have been healed and fed and protected by God in the past. It’s a frequent reminder that even death is no obstacle when it comes to the powerful and eternal Love of God. It’s a frequent reminder of hope for the people of God.

The Gospel of John is telling a Passover story here in our Gospel lesson for today. The details of his account are rich with Passover details. Crowds with hungry hearts are longing to be fed. Jesus, like Moses, can see that from his mountain view and he knows what to do. Manna, bread in the wilderness miraculously sufficient, is eaten by people reclining (reclining, not sitting) – reclining to eat like royalty, in leisurely freedom from whatever has bound and oppressed them. They recline in a place where there is plenty of grass – they recline in green pastures – like well loved sheep of the good shepherd. Jesus, like Moses, again goes up the mountain to pray, and what he sees from his God’s-eye view is his disciples are struggling and terrified. Anxiety and fear come from the feeling that resources to respond to or deal with whatever is coming are inadequate. [2] Jesus comes to them again (and again) to assure them of I AM – the past, present and future of the presence, the power, and the promise of God.

You know that story my dad told as a grammar lesson, was of course, about much more than grammar. Among other things, it was about playfulness and danger, about problem-solving, about his being both very smart and incredibly stupid, about his being competitive, clever and lucky. It was about ingenuity being met with generosity, and after he died, it became about a chance encounter that brought humor and relief into hearts filled with so much sorrow and fear for the future. The Lean Dean, Dick Winter, had learned the words of the Divine presence and power and promise and he showed up that day and he delivered them when the time was just right.

That is what any of us is doing here today – showing up to remember and to repeat the words of the Divine presence and power and promise so that others can hear and see and know the assurance and hope that when we all come together, there is always more than enough. There always has been, there is now, and there will be again.

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