A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. After the crowds, this, of course, follows the sequence of the multiplication of the lozen fishes. So after the crowds had eaten their fill, Jesus insisted that his disciples get into a boat and precede him, go ahead of him to the other side of the lake. They're going west. He's over on the east side.
When Jesus had sent them away, he went up himself on the mountain by himself to pray, remaining there alone until evening drew on. Now meanwhile, the boat, already several 100 yards out from shore, was being tossed about by the waves, raised by strong headwind that come down from the north. At about 03:00 in the morning, they were having a rough time of it out there. At about 03:00 in the morning, Jesus came walking toward them on the water, on the lake. When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, they were terrified.
It's a ghost, they cried. And in their fear, they began to shout out. But Jesus hastened to reassure them, get hold of yourselves. That's the English of this. I like that.
Get hold of yourselves, he said. It is I. Do not be afraid. Then Peter spoke up. You'd have guessed it.
Peter spoke up and said, Lord, if it's really you, tell me to come to you across the water. Come, Jesus said. So Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water. Remember, was a waterman, and he knew that was not a commonplace phenomenon to be walking on water. So Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water, moving towards Jesus.
But when he saw how strong the wind was, he became frightened, and then he began to sink. Then he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus at once stretched out his hand and caught hold of him. How little faith you have, Jesus said. Why did you falter?
Once they had climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Those who were in the boat showed Jesus reverence, declaring, undoubtedly, you are the son of God. After making the crossing, they reached the shore at Gennesaret, and when the men of that place, of that town, recognized Jesus, they spread the word all through that region. People brought to Jesus all the afflicted with the plea that he let them do no more than touch the tassel of his cloak. As many as touched it were fully restored to health, And this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. I was going to speak about this matter of personal prayer, but there's something just struck me as I read this, so I feel I shall follow my natural bent. You know, Dobby Torvovus. Notice how often, when our blessed Lord perform miracles of healing, there is always some kind of a physical concomitant with it. He cures the man of deafness by taking spittle and mixing it with some earth, making mud and putting it in the man's ear.
Mud you can't cure here deafness with mud. Why did Jesus do that? I don't know. I'm not going to answer that question. I'm only saying he did it.
He did it. How many times we're we're told he touched the person, or we're told the person touch touched him, got a hold of him in some way or other? Almost invariably, I think invariably. Now here today we have a very curious an illustration of this phenomenon. I call it a phenomenon.
It's an appearance. It's a it's a fact. It isn't of the substance. That's for sure. If there's a miracle being performed, it isn't because of someone getting hold of a tassel of of rope or cord of cloth.
That doesn't cure anybody. If if there's cure if there's curative power in Jesus Christ, it isn't because of the clothes he wore, that's for sure. And yet we're told today that all those who touched the tassel were cured. Now, don't be illogical and draw a conclusion that those who didn't touch it weren't cured. Oh, no, you can't draw that conclusion.
But the implication's there. The suggestion is there. It's possible that those only were cured who touched the tassel of his cloak. Why? What in the world value as touching a man's tassel of his cloak?
You think of the case of the woman who had some kind of an illness for years and spent all her money with doctors, And she said, If only I can touch the hem of his garment, I will be cured. Why did she say that? Is there any curative power in a hunk of cloth, a piece of material that somebody made a skirt out of? Skirts don't cure incurable illnesses, or disease, or sickness. As far as I know, they don't.
And that's the way it is even in the Old Testament with those moves. Think of the, think of the eunuch from the king of the Euphrates. He come from Babylon, he comes over, and he throws himself, he comes with all kinds of royal gifts because the king loved him and valued him. He was a very precious servant. So the king sends him over to Jerusalem, and, all else had failed to cure his leprosy or whatever he had.
So he comes over there. He meets the prophet, and what does the prophet tell him? Go down and bathe in the in that river. And the man said, for Pete's sake, we have a better river than that right at home. Why should I put myself into your old grubby, muddy creek?
And then a then a slave says, look, if the prophet had asked you to do something great and heroic, you would have done it, wouldn't you? The guy says, yes, of course I would. Well, said then, just for the heck of it, go down and go into that muddy old gate. And he did and was cured. Why?
Why? Why these physical signs? I have it on pretty good authority, on very good authority, by people who have been at LORD a long, long time and have been closely associated with the people who come in and are put into the baths, where most of the miracles or wonderful events take place. And they have they told me that there is no miracle in Lourdes that doesn't leave a scar. Why?
Why this business? Why this involvement with physical things which cannot of themselves have any bearing upon the phenomenon that we call a miracle? Why? Why? Well, as I said, I don't know.
I can't give you an apoptotic answer. I can suggest an answer. And the first answer is because we're human, and because that's the way God wants it. And who am I to argue with him? That's like coming along and saying, look, why should I ask God for anything?
He knows what I need. His omniscient. You admit his omniscient. You and you say he's all powerful. He's omnipotent.
Then why should I have to tell God what that I need my daily bread? Can you make sense out of that? Yes, I can. God says. His son told me to do it, and that's good enough for me.
I can't defend that on a philosophical basis. I know that. I've sweated through all of this junk. But I know that when those dumb apostles, those ignorant apostles, those illiterate men who wanted to pray, who wanted to pray and didn't know how. When they came to Jesus and they said, Lord, teach us to pray.
And he gave them what we call the Lord's prayer. And part of that prayer is that I pray for my daily bread, as if God didn't know about it. Why do I do it? Because that's the way the son of God told me to do it, and that's good enough. So when you come back to this matter of the physical See, there are plenty of people Today, this We've had this The the one word that describes it is Gnosticism.
Don't run away from the word. It goes all the way back to the primitive church. Saint John's been called a a Gnostic. And and you find some of Gnosticism in his writings, I don't deny that. But that doesn't make him a Gnostic.
That's that's very bad logic. That's the undistributed middle. Now, I dyke down the ages you have had in the Church of Jesus Christ always, this the deluxe, the elite, the chosen few, who have a special hotline to God, who are not the common rabble, who are not immersed in the physical. This was the great thing of Luther and Calvin. And they had a point, remember.
Don't you ever think they didn't? Because you can lose God in the physical. You bet you can. You can think by lighting a candle over there that the candle is going to do something for you. The candle won't be.
It's what you put behind that candle, and that matters. That matters tremendously. Jesus Christ never treated human beings as angels, in spite of some human beings who wanted to elevate themselves to be angelic. It doesn't work. We are human beings.
We are rooted in the soil. Genesis tells us that where we came from. And men and women, we remain. We have to live as men and women, and we are in a physical world. And we can't live as if we thought we were nothing but disembodied souls, or as Aquinas would say, separated spirits spirits or or forms.
Forms. We are human beings, and the human needs the physical because we are physical. But we cannot escape the spiritual, that's the point. You've gotta hold both together, and that's what our Lord does. He keeps us together.
He keeps us human. And so there in certain quarters, you have this downgrading of matter. I have heard very recently, someone said, it doesn't make any difference whether Christ physically rose from the dead. What matters is our spiritual resurrection. Garbage, I say.
Garbage. Because if Christ isn't physically rose if he didn't physically come out of that tomb, he didn't come out of the tomb as Jesus Christ, and I want no parts of it. Let them put it on the garbage heap. You'll hear the same thing about the Eucharist. I heard this very recent these are Catholics speaking.
It doesn't make any difference whether Christ is physically present. It's what I spiritually feel. That's ranked Lutheranism and Calvinism. It's not Catholic doctrine at all. Trent said Christ is physically present in the Eucharist, body and blood, soul and divinity.
How? I don't know, and Christ didn't tell me. I don't know how he's there. We make guesses, but they're only guesses. So let's not be more spiritual than Jesus Christ, but let us be as spiritual as Jesus Christ.
Because spirit, the flesh is indeed dead. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of holy spirit. Amen.