Homily, August 9, 2026, Rev. Holly Cardone

The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

August 9, 2026

Jesus gave the 12 disciples a simple direction after feeding the 5000. You guys go ahead; I’ll catch up with you later. How many times have we said that to someone. I’ll be along in a few. I need a short break.

Jesus needed a break. He’s been busy. Teaching in parables is a rigorous way to teach. It’s exhausting to explain what you mean if your students don’t get the message. And we know from experience that the disciples ask Jesus to explain to them what he meant by the parable of the weeds or the Sower, or being asked why he teaches in parables in the first place. Jesus was dedicated to imparting the gospel to his followers. He couldn’t spread the message of the Kingdom of God, God’s radical and abundant inclusive love, all by himself. He didn’t have time. He needed to teach his closest followers so they could go out and preach, teach and heal people themselves.

He needed a rest. Besides the teaching, preaching and healing, he had heard the news of his cousin, the John the Baptist’s, John’s death, and had shown the disciples that 5000 people could be fed with some bread, some fish, some gratitude and generosity.

He took that break and asked his friends to go on ahead without him. He would catch up with them on the other side. He needed some quiet. He needed some solitude and some time to pray by himself. Time to be in the presence of God.

His friends got in the boat. That’s what we do, we get in the metaphorical boat, don’t we. The boat of life, love, work, family, community. At first everything is great because we’ve learned some super cool stuff, we found a job we love or tolerate pretty well. We found a spouse or partner we love or tolerate pretty well. We had some kids that we love or tolerate pretty well. Or got some amazing fur babies that stole our hearts. And life was going along all right.

Until. The wind kicks up, the sea boils over, and the waves toss the boat like one of those small rubber balls you’d get at the grocery store as a kid. Because life is never perfect.

I had a 19 years-old child standing at the stove after he graduated from high school. His anger was dense, consuming. Tears flooded his eyes as he said, “I never asked to come here. I don’t want to be here. I can’t stand being here anymore.”

He didn’t mean in my kitchen making scrambled eggs. He meant here, on this planet, in this body, living this life. I picked up the shattered pieces of my broken heart and stuffed them in the back pocket of my jeans, out of ideas.

God gathered the waters of the deep and gathered them into one place, separating the land from the sea, creating boundaries the ocean cannot cross.

God stopped the rain, the flood began to subside, and a dove was sent out, and finding land, flew back to the ark with an olive branch in its beak. A rainbow broke over the land and sea, a symbol of God’s covenant to Noah to care tirelessly for all the people of the earth.

God parts the water for the escaping Israelites, led by Moses, pursued by the Egyptians, and saved by God, when Moses then holds his staff over the Red Sea. Once the Israelites walk on dry ground to the other side, Moses drops his staff and the Egyptian army is flooded by the waters closing in over them.

The boat is being tossed around on the sea made turbulent by the wind. Jesus sees his friends in the boat out in the distance and begins to walk to them on the water. Because God commands the water and the seas. At first his friends think they are seeing a ghost, because in the first century, most people believed in ghosts, nocturnal spirits and disembodied apparitions. They cried out in fear but this time, it wasn’t a dead uncle, it was Jesus.

And as he does so many times, Jesus calls out to them, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” So, Peter asks Jesus to call him to him again. Just as Jesus called him from his life as a lowly, humble fisherman to be the foundation of a church that didn’t exist yet. Jesus does so, and Peter, like all of us at one time or another, steps out onto that water, and begins to walk.

It is only when the idea that walking on the water is impossible that we begin to sink. Our fear breaks the bond of trust we have built with God. We falter and doubt that we will be taken care of.  We try to save ourselves, our loved ones, the world, and all the time, God is whispering in our ear, “Do not be afraid.”

Our fear is often louder than our faith or trust in God. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, that again God has brought us through the worst storm we thought possible, we can step out with the deepest trust and forget that Jesus reached down and caught us the last time we began to sink.

The thought came to me in a moment of quiet, offer this grown man that I gave birth to an opportunity to do something different. An idea I had never had before, allow him to pick a place on the globe and enroll in a volunteer program of his choice. He did. He chose the farthest place he could go. He taught Buddhist monks English for 6 months in Laos. He came back a changed man. God reached out, caught us both, and settled us down back in the boat.

Trust is built one block at a time. One leap of faith at a time. One stepping out on the water at a time. One being caught by God as we sink, at a time. I don’t think God admonishes us for our doubt, I think God loves us so much that in our doubt his hand is always at the ready, when we falter, to catch us again and again

Amen.