"No distinction between Jew and Greek" | a sermon

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Romans 10:5-15 and Matthew 14:22-33

This is the second Sunday in a row that the lectionary has had us read a very familiar story from the gospel narrative. Last week it was the feeding of the 5000, this week the story of Jesus walking on the water, with Peter—dear Peter—doing his level best to keep calm and meet his teacher on the water. This is all part of the slow build that it takes the disciples to really grapple with who Jesus truly is; they begin by following a compelling teacher, and they watch as he offers healing and restoration to all sorts of people, and it slowly begins to dawn on them just who they might be dealing with. Who can take a five loaves and a couple of fish, and see thousands of people fed? Could it be…

It is right after that feeding story that Matthew moves us to what we read today. “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds,” Matthew tells us, and then we learn that Jesus then went up the mountain alone to pray; something he’s shown doing again and again in the gospels. Ah, but as the evening falls a storm begins to brew on the Sea of Galilee, and the disciples are forced to struggle through the night to keep the boat from sinking. It is early in the morning—after hours of slogging against the storm—that they look up and see someone coming across the water toward them. “It is a ghost!” they cry out in terror, and who can blame them?

And right away that figure calls out to them, saying “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Now our English translations can’t do full justice to what is there in the original Greek. We translate it as “it is I,” but in fact the Greek says ego eimi, which is literally “I am”. “Have courage, I am; stop being afraid” is closer to the original, which actually drives us back to the Hebrew of the book of Exodus, in which Moses asks God for his name. Do you recall that scene at the burning bush, when Moses is called to be a leader for the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt? “What is your name?” Moses asks, and the answer comes back “I am” or “I am what I will be” or even “I will be there”; the Hebrew is somewhat elusive here, but the absolute simplest rendering and the one most familiar to Jews of Jesus’ time was “I am”. And now as Jesus comes to them across the water and they tremble in fear, he utters the same name: I am. This is, in fact, a moment of revelation, and one which will deepen their understanding of just who it is that they have been following.

So with a profound kind of hope, Peter calls out, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Come Peter. Come out across the water to meet me. Peter tries—he seems to step out with some real confidence—but fear gets the best of him, and he needs to be rescued by Jesus; by ego eimi, the great I am. Oh Peter, your faith is still little, your doubts too large. And with that the storm is calmed, the disciples worship him—that’s a strong and potent word—and this confession pours from their mouths: “Truly you are the Son of God.” That’s more than they’ve said prior to this point in the Gospels. Son of God. Huios Theo.

Yet we know that they’ll stumble and that they’ll get things all wrong, imagining that Jesus will mount a rebellion against the occupying Roman imperial forces. They imagine that to be the only path for a Messiah, and so they’ll soon be asking for positions of honour and privilege in the kingdom. And for all of that bravado, they’ll flee in fear on the night of his arrest, and Peter will utter his three-fold denial of ever knowing him.  As the musician and writer Nick Cave comments, “Even His disciples, who we would hope would absorb some of Christ's brilliance, seem to be in a perpetual fog of misunderstanding, following Christ from scene to scene with little or no comprehension of what is going on.” And isn’t that a stunning summary of things? The disciples still have a long way to go, and that’s all part of what the gospels have to tell us about how human striving has strayed from what God in Christ most desires for us.

Which brings us to the Epistle to the Romans, in which Paul is working to get his readers to set aside their old assumptions and old dividing lines, just as he himself had to do when he was struck down by grace on the road to Emmaus some twenty years earlier. Paul writes,

The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ (Romans 10:11-13)

You’ll probably be reminded of a verse from Galatians, where Paul sets out an even more thoroughgoing version of this message:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

Yet here, as he writes to the church in Rome, his focus is sharper: “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.” This reflects a core concern in the epistle to the Romans, namely that there is but one Lord, who is “generous to all who call upon him.” The old dividing walls between Jew and Gentile have been taken down in and through Jesus Christ. The Gentiles—and that is all of us—are like the wild olive shoots that have been grafted on to the olive tree that is Israel. Those old divisions, Paul wants to insist, are gone. And—and this is a very important “and”—in light of what Paul has to say in this epistle, there is no simply no room for anti-Semitism and all the prejudices that have been harboured against the Jewish people for two thousand years now. No room. None.

In his commentary on Romans, Paul Achtemeier writes,

The same God is Lord of all races. The same God lavishes the riches of his mercy on all peoples alike. The same God proves his trustworthiness by delivering from their bondage to sin and rebellion all who call upon him in the trust that he is trustworthy and he will maintain them in his love.

The same God is Lord of all races, and the sooner we get that firmly into our imaginations, the better. Oh, this parish church might have some unique expressions and practices, and we might do things in a way quite unlike the average Anglican parish. Fine. That’s a path that is meaningful and rich for those of us who gather here Sunday by Sunday, and that’s glorious. But as the theologian Robert Farrar Capon once said to me about matters of liturgical practice,

I am as free to do without these things as you are to do with them. We’re all free. We must remember what it is. It doesn’t do anything. Christ does it all. It’s not magic. It’s not conjuring. It’s not getting anywhere. It is an awareness of the fact that you have been brought to the destination.

That is the central thing that dawned fully on Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost. Christ has done it all, and all Peter has to do is accept that truth. Of course, it so invigorates him that he needs to share that good news with everyone he meets. Peter begins by preaching to all of those Jewish folks who have come to Jerusalem from all kinds of places around the Mediterranean, and soon enough will be sharing with anyone and everyone who’ll sit still long enough to listen, whether Jew or Gentile. He knew, in the light of Pentecost, that he could step out—metaphorically—from any boat onto any sea, and he’d find the risen, ascended Christ right there with him, keeping him from fear, holding him tight in the midst of even the toughest times.

And that, you see, is grace.