Third Sunday in Lent
March 23, 2025

Can't Avoid Chaos

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Matthew 4:18–33

Mark Labberton is a pastor in California. A young man visited his church, so Mark struck up a conversation with him. Mark learned he was a grad student at the University of California. Mark asked him, “What brings you to this church?” The young man said, “I’ve been to a number of churches, and they talk a lot about Jesus and about the world. I’ve appreciated that. But what I want to know is, if I hang around your church, will I meet people who are like Jesus?” (Mark Labberton, Called: The Crisis and Promise of Following Jesus Today, p. 26). You want to meet people who are like Jesus? 

It’s a humbling question. It seems like we ought to be able to say, Well sure, we are all followers of Jesus here. If you hang around here, you will meet people like Jesus. 

But there’s another part of me that says, I love Jesus, but I’m not much like him. I’m too ordinary in my faith. I’m a “we believe, help my unbelief” kind of guy. 

The disciples are at sea. The wind and the waves are beating against them. In the midst of this storm, Jesus walks to them on the water. The disciples react as they should: they are terrified. People can’t walk on water. No one can do that and survive. 

But Peter says, “I want to come out there with you. I would rather walk out there with you than stay safe in this boat.” The other disciples, I assume, join in a group eye-roll, knowing that Peter has just stuck his foot in his mouth. 

Who does Peter think he is? Common man. Sit down. 

But Jesus doesn’t join the laughter. Jesus says, “Come on. You can do it. Get out of the boat.” And Peter steps out of the boat, and he walks toward Jesus. Well, for a moment Peter walks on water, and for a moment it might have been hard to tell which one was Peter and which one was Jesus. 

OK, what is this about? This seems like a silly story. 

This is not a story about having the power to defy the laws of nature. If it were about that, it would have no relevance to your life. No one is going to say, “Now if you really have faith, you can walk across the Chicago River.” That’s ridiculous. Christian faith is not about circus tricks, and to reduce this story to aquabatics belittles its real message. 

How else do we read this? 

If you read scripture with a careful eye, then you recognize that water is often a symbol, a metaphor of other things. And often water is a metaphor for chaos. The storms of life, the messiness of the world. No life avoids chaos. 

Remember the creation story? It says when the Spirit hovered over the waters — a formless void … chaos. Life was not possible. God speaks to push back the chaos just enough to make life possible. 

Psalm 46 speaks to the reverse of creation, the return of chaos as the mountains shake in the heart of the sea. It’s chaos. 

The book of Revelation says on God’s promised day “the sea will be no more.” John is not writing as a travel agent to declare that there is no ocean in heaven. He is saying that when God’s promised day comes the chaos that rules our lives will be destroyed. 

If I understand it, this is a teaching that says that following Jesus will not remove chaos from our lives, and indeed may increase it in ways, but Jesus can show us who to be in a chaotic world. How to walk amidst the chaos. 

That feels relevant to me these days.

This is a story about discipleship. When Jesus tells Peter “Come” it echoes the first word that Jesus spoke to Peter: “Come and follow me.” It’s what Jesus always says. Why not now? Jesus will not eliminate the chaos in your life. No one avoids chaos. But in this moment Peter gives us an image of what discipleship looks like. Even in the chaos, as long as he keeps his eye on Jesus, he walks like Jesus walks. 

When Peter walks on the water, he looks like Jesus. He follows close enough that it’s hard to tell one from the other. 

Jesus shows us who to be in the midst of the chaos. I learned a bit about the chaos of life and a bit about myself at an early age. 

Dave Davis was the cool kid in fourth grade. He was handsome, although we would not have used that word. He was funny. At recess people would gather around Dave, throwing their heads back and laughing. Others asking, “What did he say? What did he say?” He was athletic. He was cool. Everybody wanted to be Dave Davis. 

Robert was also in my class. Robert was awkward. He was a little overweight and not very comfortable with himself. He had glasses that kept sliding down his nose. He was good at math, but he couldn’t catch a ball to save his life. In kickball you could throw him out at first, even from the outfield one would assume, but he never kicked the ball to the outfield.

And then there was me. I was never cool. Not by a long shot. I wasn’t particularly awkward. I was excessively bland. One of the crowd. One who would boast no reason at all to be remembered. 

It was my turn to pick someone for our kickball team at recess. Dave Davis was picking for the other team. He picked Frank Chambless and then looked at me and said, “So, Are, what are you going to do?” There were three kids left: Robert and two girls. In fourth grade in 1968 no guy wants a girl to be chosen ahead of him for kickball. Dave Davis was smiling, just waiting to pounce on Robert for being picked after a girl or on me for picking Robert. I looked right at Robert and said, “I choose Carla.” 

I knew Dave would ridicule one of us, so I chose Carla and threw Robert under the bus. I would like to tell you that I chose Carla out of some sense of empowering women, but that wouldn’t be true. I would like to tell you that I didn’t know that I hurt Robert, but I am sure I knew exactly what was happening. I just didn’t care. Or better said, I cared about my discomfort, my insecurity, my fears, more than I cared about Robert. 

Now I was a kid and had a lot of learning to do, but the chaos of life starts early, and it never ends, and it only grows more complicated. 

Those chaotic moments, when we have to choose to love our neighbor or not — it’s there in the midst of the wind and the waves that we have to decide, are our choices going to be shaped by our fears and our insecurities or are our choices going to be shaped by Jesus. We have to ask ourselves, Can we walk like Jesus? 

That’s why I was a bit unsettled when I came across that young man’s question… if I hang around your church, will I meet people like Jesus? 

Maybe, but you are more likely to meet people like, well, like me. I threw Robert under the bus. 

Peter makes a seemingly unreasonable request when he asks, “Tell me to come to you. I want to walk like you.”

I think, “Come on, man, I know Jesus, and you are no Jesus. You can’t walk on water.”

So why do you suppose Jesus said, “Come”? Jesus could have said, “Are you kidding me. You can’t do this.”

But no, Jesus says, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask. Come on. I’ve got you.”

Walking on water — you can’t walk that way and survive in this world. It’s impossible. 

But I’ve noticed Jesus is really good at calling us to do what which we cannot do. 

Go the second mile. 

Forgive seventy times seven.

Turn the other cheek.

Love your neighbor.

Love your enemy.

Rather than looking for the worst in one another, look for the image of God in one another.

That makes about as much sense as walking on water. 

We may think it’s not in us to live like this, to walk in this chaotic world the way he does, but we have to at least admit Jesus keeps calling us. For he continues to call us to do that which we don’t believe we can do … to walk on water. 

It makes you wonder if he has more hope for us than we have for ourselves. 

When I was a kid I told my dad I wanted a bird. He thought I meant a pet store bird, but I said, “No, I want that bird in the backyard.” My dad said, “That’s easy. If you sprinkle salt on the bird’s tail, the bird can’t fly. I could just scoop it up and give him to your mom.” I believed him. There is a flaw in this system. The bird seldom poses for salting. My second-grade summer I killed most of the grass in the backyard chasing birds with a saltshaker. 

So I made a trap. I got a box. I propped it up with a stick. Underneath the box I put peanut butter and Twinkies and Kool-Aid. I didn’t know the world had invented bird seed. I tied a string around the stick and hid behind the garage. I waited. Several birds flew down and hopped around, and finally a blue jay hopped under the box. I pulled the string, the stick came out, the box came down. I had a bird. The box was on top of a window screen I removed from my sister’s window. I flipped the whole thing over, and I had the box, the bird in the box, the screen on top of the box, and I had a whole box of “When it rains it pours.” I got salt on that bird’s tail. I got it on his wings, his head, his back. I just chased him around the box. By the time I finished that bird was knee deep in salt. 

I opened the screen, just that much. My daddy lied to me. 

When you are seven years old and your daddy says salt his tail and he can’t fly, you think it’s true. Even if it wasn’t true before, it’s true now, just because he said it. But here’s the thing: God made the bird to fly. That’s his purpose. There’s no salt, no daddy, no power in the world that can change the fact that the bird was created to fly. 

You and me — we were created to walk like Jesus walks in this world. That is what you are for. Now, we are going to sink every now and then. But Jesus is not going to give up on us. He keeps calling. He’s going to keep calling, and that may be the most extravagant demonstration of grace I know. He will keep calling. 

“If I hang around your church, will I meet people who are like Jesus?” Actually, yes, you will. They are also complicated and broken, and that’s all some will see. But their failings do not define them, just like your failings do not define you. We are not defined by the worst in us but by the best in God. The clearest way I have ever seen Jesus is in people at church. And from time to time you will see them forgive seventy times seven; you will see them turn the other cheek; you will see them hold fast to hope when the world seems swallowed in chaos. From time to time they will be so much like Jesus it will seem like they are walking on water.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church