Matthew 14:22-33

My sermon today is about risk and its challenges. It seems to me that life is a series of choices, with every choice involving some element of risk. When I think back over my life, the choices I have made and the risks I have taken, I feel very fortunate. Usually, when I am about to make a major decision, whether in my personal life or here at Marble, I will go to friends. Of course, I would rather go to friends who will agree with everything that I say, as we all would. But I have enough friends who will agree with me as a person, yet will ask questions and even criticize.

Over the years, most of the people I have gone to have urged me, “Arthur, take the chance. Take the risk. Go for it.”  If I had not done that in so many different areas, I would have missed out on most of life. I would have missed some good times, some successes, some great experiences—wonderful memories. Not everything worked well, and some were only so-so. Some brought difficulty and struggle. But still, I gained from all of them.

Some of the choices that I made when I took that chance ended up in a dismal disaster, yet proved to be the most valuable. When I reconstruct everything that resulted I do not feel good about the experience; yet I know that it was good, because so often out of humiliation comes humility. We all need a big dose of humility from time to time. Life is a series of choices, and every choice involves some degree of risk.

I went to a favorite book of mine by Dr. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist, The Road Less Traveled, to see what he said about risk and taking a chance. This is part of what he wrote:

All life itself represents risk, and the more lovingly we live our lives, the more risks we take. Of the thousands, maybe even millions, of risks we can take in a lifetime the greatest risk is the risk of growing up. Growing up is the act of stepping from childhood into adulthood. Actually, it is more a fearful leap then a step, and it is a leap that many people never take in their lifetimes.

There are some here who are in adult bodies, yet we know they are still children. Most of us have accepted the responsibility of adulthood, but there are parts of us that never grew up. One of the biggest risks we take in our lives is the risk of leaving childhood and attaining maturity. It is a risk we take over and over in the course of our lives. What a missed opportunity when we do not take it!

Eknath Easwaran, a spiritual teacher in the Hindu tradition, in his writings credits the greatest part of his spiritual learning to his maternal grandmother, with whom he spent a lot of time as a child. He was born and raised in southern India. He talks about walking in the countryside with his grandmother and noticing the discarded snake skins ribboning the pathway. One day he asked his grandmother why snakes discard their skins.

“Eknath,” she responded, “a snake that does not leave its skin behind cannot grow. It will suffocate in its own skin.”  What a powerful metaphor for life. Unless we leave certain amounts of the past behind, unless we accept the challenge of risk and shed the skin of a previous set of experiences, we will suffocate in our own skin.

Many of the experiences in my life that have taught me have come from my lifelong love affair with boats. I love to be on the sea in a boat, and I love summertime because of boating. When I was a young man I was finally able to buy my own boat. At the time I had a cottage on an island on the coast of Maine, and I would tie up my boat on a mooring about a city-block-long distance from the shore, depending on the tide.

One very windy day when I had been out, I tied up to the mooring and got into my raft to make my way back to shore. As you may know, a raft, even a big substantial one like the one I was using, sits on top of the water and is subject to the wind and the currents. On a windy day, one must row very hard and fast in order to make any kind of headway.

So I tied up the boat up, got into the raft, put the oars in place, and began to row with all of my might. And I was making no headway. I rowed harder and harder and harder, and still no headway. I was becoming a little uncomfortable because I had an audience—swimmers and sunbathers—on the beach, as I was huffing and puffing to get back to shore. Then I heard a 10-year-old boy yelling at me from the beach. “Mr. Caliandro, Mr. Caliandro!”

“What, David?” I called.

“Untie the raft!” he yelled back. I felt like an idiot. That young man is now in his thirties, and every time I see him I just hope he doesn’t remember that incident.

How many of us are doing everything we know to go ahead, to grow, and yet we have not untied ourselves from the past? Growth involves risk, and in order to grow we have to free ourselves from those things that bind us.

The enemies of growth and the enemies of risk are usually the same. The biggest enemy is fear: fear of commitment, fear of failure, fear of rejection. You name the risk and you can name the fear. Sometimes we even fear our very power. We know we have enormous innate ability and power, yet we do not take the risk of using it.

There’s a fascinating story in the New Testament which is essentially a dialogue between Jesus and Peter. As Christians, what would we do without Peter? He really is us in so many ways. The story begins when Jesus was at the end of a long day of preaching. He was tired and told His disciples to get into the boat and go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee—which, as you may know, is really a very large lake. He went by Himself to a mountain to pray alone, and He prayed there for a long time.

When He was finished, He noticed that the disciples were having trouble managing the boat because of a very stiff wind. Apparently, He decided to go help them, because the story tells us that He began walking across the water toward the boat. Seeing this figure walking along the top of the water, the disciples thought it must be a ghost, and they were terrified. Jesus came closer and called out, “Do not be afraid. It is I.”

And then Peter, ever eager, emotional, volatile Peter, said, “If it really is You, Lord, tell me to come to You.” So Jesus called to him to come to Him, and Peter did a courageous thing. He got out of the boat and started walking toward Jesus. And he was succeeding, walking on the top of the water. Then he became aware of the wind, and the waves underneath his feet, and he began to sink. “Lord, save me!” he cried. Jesus reached out His hand and held Peter up. “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Peter had a sense that he was empowered to do something he would not have thought he could do, and he took the risk and started to do it. He took a risk, and it was working. Then his fears, his awareness of his limitations, overtook him and he began to doubt. When we, like Peter, take a risk and after a while succumb to doubt and begin to fall, just as Jesus reached out and held Peter up, God will come to our aid. When we cry, “Lord, save me!” the saving power of God comes into action.

Sometimes our use of our powers and abilities is challenged and threatened from outside, and even so we must believe in them, and believe they will sustain and carry us through. There is a powerful phrase that has made an enormous difference in my life. Whenever I have repeated it to myself it has ignited my strength, and it has brought God very close. It is a phrase invented by a man named Basil King.

Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.

Be bold, have courage, stand tall, step out, take that chance, take the risk—mighty forces will come to your aid. Through the benevolence of the universe, God will work to bring people, situations, resources to your aid. Time and time again, you will find yourself acting beyond your ability and doing things you felt that you could not do. So be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.

Many of you know the name Rachel Remen. She is a doctor, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco, and one of the pioneers in the field of body-mind relationships. Over the years, it has become more like mind-body-spirit. Her whole ministry as a doctor now is helping patients and professionals to learn how to bring the body, the mind, and the spirit together for healing.

In one of her books she tells the story of a doctor named Frank, a physician in the Midwest who ran a clinic in a large inner-city hospital. He had started having doubts about his medical career, beginning to feel it wasn’t fulfilling, and was considering doing something else. At about the same time a friend suggested, “Frank, before you decide to get out of medicine, why don’t you go to one of Rachel Remen’s workshops?”

Dr. Remen gives seminars and workshops all over the country. Frank attended one called The Power of Intuition. Afterwards, he went back to his job at the clinic, and there he had an experience which changed his life. Every Tuesday, he had an appointment with Mrs. Gonzales, an elderly woman in the last stages of breast cancer. Nothing more could be done for her medically. Frank would meet with her week after week, adjusting her medication, trying to give what support he could. The Tuesday after he had attended a seminar on the power of intuition, suddenly the idea came to him: “Pray with Mrs. Gonzales.”

“Pray?” he thought. “I am not a praying man.” He had not said a prayer since he was a child. Yet, the intuition came back very strongly, and would not go away: “Pray with Mrs. Gonzales.”

So he began mentally listing the questions he as a doctor should ask: Will it affect the therapy? Will it cause embarrassment? Will it do harm? He could think of no reason to ignore the strong suggestion to pray. So he asked her, “Mrs. Gonzales, would you like me to pray with you?”

Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Yes, doctor; yes, doctor,” she said. As a Roman Catholic she was used to praying on her knees, so he helped her to kneel and knelt by her side. She started to pray, first in Spanish, then in English. He was inspired to remember a prayer he had said as a little boy, and he prayed it out loud. When he finished, she reached over and touched his cheek. “Doctor, bless you, God bless you, God bless you.”

That was a life-altering moment for Frank. The experience transformed his career, and it transformed him. He had taken a risk because his intuition told him so, despite his fear and uncertainty. He had acted boldly, doing something he had not thought he could do. And he did it! Mighty forces came to his aid.

We are all aware that not long ago a deranged man went into a school in an Amish community, lined up ten little girls, bound them, and shot them. It shocked the country. It shocked much of the world. Most of us think of the Amish as people who travel by horse and buggy, who do not have electricity or telephones. Theirs is a two-century separation from the lives we live. They are pledged to a simple and faithful life. This horrific event brought the Amish to our attention in very new ways, and we were inspired by what we saw.

In that little schoolhouse, a thirteen-year-old girl, hoping the other children would be spared, said, “Kill me first.” A twelve-year-old said, “Kill me second,” hoping she would be the last. Sadly, five little girls died and five were injured.

How did the community respond? We will never know what anguished conversations went on in private. But we do know what this sort of violent loss brings—deep hurt, anger, confusion. All kinds of feelings come out. But when this community came forth to make a public statement, they said, “We forgive the man who did this.” They reached out to include his family in their gatherings of mourning and prayer.

Some reporters for the news outlets reacted as if forgiveness were a brand new idea. Lately, it seems that in the American culture forgiveness is at the bottom of the list. When some dastardly deed occurs, the first thought is death penalty. Get even. Get revenge. Even many Christians in our culture are caught up in this.

Forgiving may feel like a risk, but it is a risk that brings great rewards. The very centerpiece of the Christian faith is forgiveness. Whenever we look at the Cross, we remember that Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I encourage you, when you feel pulled toward revenge and retaliation, to take a chance on forgiveness. I can promise you that if you do, you will be blessed, and you will be healing a part of the world around you. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.

Lord God, when we are fearful, when we want to run and hide, please help us to trust enough to take the risk of doing the right thing, the loving thing, the bold thing. Amen.