One of the more useful tools we can cultivate is the ability to look at entrenched problems from a new perspective. In this winsome message, David Owen reminds us of the importance of flexibility and creativity as we engage what appear to be intractable challenges. I hope you find it as helpful as I did.
-Philip Gulley
For more information on David Owen and, When You Don't Know the Length of the Race, visit the Owen Legacy Project by clicking below.
Matthew 14:22-33
When looking through a microscope, we can have it in focus and be seeing an object quite clearly and yet find that when we turn the knob just a bit, what had been clear begins to blur while some new dimension swims into focus. Each time we turn the knob, a fresh perspective emerges, even though the object being scrutinized remains unchanged.
This morning, we will look at the story of Jesus and the disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee, but I will be shifting the focus in order to see and emphasize details we might otherwise overlook. At the same time, because I have turned the knob, those features of the story which are typically seen will necessarily blur and recede. They are still there and will be there any time you choose to examine them again, but for today they will dissolve into the background.
To shift your focus, let’s start with some brain aerobics. I not only want your neurons activated; I want them leaning in a particular direction. Here are three real-life situations—three problems that actually happened and are true. They will sound unrelated but have one important facet in common. When you suddenly see the common element, you will also know what the persons involved are to do. Solve one and you will soon solve them all. Ready?
A sheep rancher who had already been careful to keep his sheep in small flocks saw that his pasture was deteriorating from overgrazing. So, he broke his flocks up into even smaller groups, dispersing them widely across the range. This did not help. In fact, over time the problem grew worse.
A Third-World farmer, dependent on irrigation in a semi-arid region, found that despite frequent watering of his crops, the land was becoming hard and crusty, with growing patches of white, barren ground on the surface of his fields. Even nearby trees were stunted. He increased irrigation, but, if anything, the problem grew worse.
The parents of a high school senior were growing more and more distraught at their son’s failure to complete his entrance applications for college. They had been reminding him for months about the deadline and increased the intensity of their pleas as that date approached, emphasizing that they were concerned only for him. They even said that they would do most of the work for him, if he would just complete his essay on why he wanted to go to college. His only response was to spend more time in his room and to play his stereo loudly at all hours.
That’s three. Have you guessed the common thread? Here’s how these situations were resolved in real life.
The sheep rancher hired a consultant and, while that isn’t always the answer, this time it was. The consultant noticed that the grass was thriving on a nearby ranch. Inquiries revealed that this rancher had not broken his sheep up into small groups. Instead of sending them in twos and threes to all corners of the ranch, he kept his sheep in one large flock and periodically rotated them to different areas of the range. The many sheep simultaneously feeding and pawing the ground aerated the soil, and the sheep also fertilized it. Thus, the large flock improved growing conditions before moving on. The consultant recommended that the rancher with depleted grasslands consolidate his flocks in this way and within a year the problem was eliminated.
The problem with the dry, crusty, irrigated cropland was not that there was too little water, but too much. A U.N. agricultural expert pointed out to the farmer that when soil becomes waterlogged at deep levels, salt is driven to the surface. Reducing the amount of water being applied and planting trees restored proper balance to the farmland.
Two weeks before the deadline, the parents of the resistant highschool student went away for the weekend. Before leaving, they slipped a letter under their son’s bedroom door, saying that they realized they had been nagging him. “We think you’d be better off going to college,” they said, “but you are free not to, and we won’t mention this again. Whether or not you apply is your own decision.” On his own, the young man beat the deadline by three days and is now happily studying at the university of his choice.
What these stories have in common, then, is that what people thought was the solution was really their problem. Doing more of what we were doing would only have made matters worse.
OK, I’m confident that your neurons are leaning in the appropriate direction. Now let’s return to the Sea of Galilee, Jesus, and the disciples.
Jesus and the disciples had gone to the far side of Galilee—to what was a lonely, undeveloped, and desolate place—at the request of Jesus. Mark says he went because the crowds weren’t giving them any time alone. But when they arrived on the far side of the lake, crowds, who had already run ahead along the shore, were waiting for them. This means that, in terms of elapsed time, traveling by boat or on foot were approximately equal. Jesus chose to respond to the crowds, teaching them. When the afternoon grew late, the disciples became anxious and wanted Jesus to send the crowds away. My impression is that they were being impatiently adolescent here, saying with body language and grimaces, “Come on, Jesus, send them home. Let’s go! It’s getting late.” Instead, Jesus made them share their loaves and fish and did what some today might call “the feeding thing.” Now in Mark’s Gospel, it says that the disciples could not understand the meaning of Jesus feeding the five thousand. “Their minds,” Mark says, “could not grasp it.” I take that to mean that even though they had participated in a great miracle, they remained unchanged by it. Their psyches were unmolested by the miracle, so to speak. So, I am assuming (I don’t know this for certain) that the disciples were still impatiently tapping their feet when the miracle was over, still saying, “Come on, Jesus; let’s go. It’s getting late.” That, I think, is when Jesus said, “I’ll be with the crowd just a little longer. Why don’t you take the boat back to Bethsaida?” (Could this be a Messiah’s way of saying, “Why don’t you twelve buzz off?”) Without arranging for Jesus to get home, they launched the boat and left him. Later, when Jesus had dismissed the crowd, he went up on a hill, said to himself, “Alone, at last,” and began to cogitate.
It was hard to reflect and pray, I am guessing, because of all the commotion out on the lake. The disciples’ tempers were already frayed and now they found that the wind was dead against them. If you have ever tried to take a nap while your children were squabbling in the family room, you know how much praying Jesus got done listening to all the thrashing and shouting that was going on out on the lake. The wind, we are told, was dead against the disciples. They were making no progress at all. Nevertheless, they kept rowing, rowing, rowing, shouting and thrashing with no positive results all night long. Why, in just a third of the time, they could have walked all the way home around the shoreline of the lake.
Sometime in the early morning—perhaps 4:30 or 5:00 a.m.—Jesus had had enough. He had no need to listen to them anymore and decided that he himself would go home, taking a shortcut across the lake. In one of the New Testament’s more interesting verses, Mark tells us that Jesus intended “to pass them by.” It had been a long day and night and Jesus needed no more aggravation. But the disciples saw him walking past them in the dark and screamed, “It’s a ghost.”
Since truth is contextual, let me remind you of the setting. The disciples are in a boat rowing and thrashing, huffing and puffing. Despite their best efforts, for eight hours they have made no progress at all. Still, they remain stubbornly committed to exactly what isn’t working. Now off to starboard they see someone who is making progress, and he doesn’t even have a boat. Rather than assessing the total situation and saying, “Look at the progress that fellow is making by walking—maybe this isn’t such a great night for boats!,” they instead become hysterical and scream, “It’s a ghost!”
To scream “It’s a ghost!” is to suggest that whoever is out there is playing by a different set of rules entirely. Somehow, he or she is not human, or otherworldly, or magically empowered or spooky.
It’s like an American manufacturer of semiconductors looking at Japan’s increasingly large market share and screaming, “It’s a ghost!,” rather than asking, “What can I learn from those folks who, in the face of a stiff wind, seem to be passing my boat?”
Or, it’s like a high school student who is failing algebra looking across the room at someone who is getting an A and deciding the reason for that is that the A student is a nerd or a geek, which is just a youthful way of saying, “It’s a ghost!”
You and I will never have to change—we can blithely continue doing exactly what isn’t working—if we can just convince ourselves that those who are passing by our boat have an unfair advantage and are really supernatural ghosts. But Jesus closed that escape hatch for the disciples, shouting back, “It’s not a ghost. It’s just me. It’s I myself.”
At this point, Peter—blessed Peter—momentarily rests at his oars. His eyes seem to glaze over, for they have gone into soft focus. He’s there, but it’s as though he’s not there. Deep inside, something is happening.
Peter is about to think a brand-new thought. He says, “If it’s really you, Teacher, ask me to come to you on the water.”
Do you see what an incredibly new thought that is—what a leap that is? Peter looks at what Jesus is already doing and gets a glimpse of what he himself might be doing. That is a wonderful moment in the Christian life—when a person looks at Jesus and no longer sees only Jesus, but also begins to see his or her own possibilities. Because he has a new vision of what could be and who he himself might be, Peter finds sufficient courage to get out of his boat. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t last long out on the water. How many steps did you take the first time you lurched toward the outstretched arms of your mommy or daddy? What’s important here is that Peter finally saw the futility of what he and the others were doing; what’s important is that Peter considered a brand-new possibility; what’s important is that Peter actually got out of his boat.
Once we get in a boat, most of us want to stay in our boat. It feels snug, safe and comfortable inside our own particular boat. And, besides, boats are hard to come by. What are you using for your boat?
If your boat is working—if it’s getting you from wherever you are to wherever you want to be going—I have nothing against your boat. I simply remind you that the seas of life being what they are, what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work every day. I remind you, too, that while we call Jesus THE WAY, he was in fact MANY ways. He showed us, for example, that there’s more than one way to feed a crowd and there’s more than one way to cross a lake. Sometimes what people think is their solution is really their problem. The disciples weren’t making any progress because a strong wind was dead against them and they were in a boat.
There’s not much I want you to do with all this—except, perhaps, to tuck it away. Some long night, the wind may be dead against you. You may row and row and row without any progress. If that happens, it may be because the conditions are not right for the method you have chosen. That may be because you are fiercely committed to exactly what isn’t working. The more determined you become, the farther behind you will get.
It is then—this is a post-sermonic suggestion! —that I encourage you to remember what Peter did after an unsuccessful night of rowing. I invite you to pause at your oars, to scan the horizon for other God-given ways of traveling, and I encourage you to ask, “Given the way the wind is blowing, is it possible that this isn’t such a great night for boats?” Sometimes what we are clinging to for our solution is really the problem. At such times, Jesus, who has more than one way of traveling, invites us to get out of our boat.
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