August 9,.2026

I've recently been obsessed with a 30-year-old man named Luke McFadden, who was raised up out of Pasadena, Maryland, over near Glen Burnie. He's a native of the western shore of the Chesapeake. And he is, at 30 years old, one of a dying breed. He is a waterman and a crabber. When he was growing up in Pasadena, he noted that there were only about six men still in the community who were actively crabbing on the water. And so there was very little prospect that he could ever make a life doing that kind of work, even as he had a great passion and love for it. But Luke's threaded that needle and he's found a way to sustain success in that industry.

It's interesting because he's not only a waterman and a crabber, but like many in his generation—that kind of transitional zone between being a younger millennial and an elder zoomer—he is very much online. And he lives his life as a social media personality. It's fascinating because you almost would assume those two things to be diametrically opposed to one another: living your life constantly outdoors, on the water, this kind of hardscrabble life of a waterman, and being perpetually what they call terminally online, constantly present to social media and the digital influence sphere. But he brings those things together in this kind of beautiful synergy that shows the importance of the work he's doing, but also communicates that to a new generation and connects them to the things of sort of substance and physical reality in the world around us.

And I was thinking a lot about him this week too for this admonition that Jesus offers in this story of walking on the water. In all three occurrences of this story, in Matthew and Mark and John, there's some form of this admonition: "Do not be afraid." This encouragement to not fear. And I think Luke embodies this in many ways because there's a lot to fear in what he does. Being a waterman in and of itself is quite a dangerous occupation. But not only that, he's surrounded by forces that constantly and perpetually threaten his livelihood: the diminishing return of crabs on the bay, impacts of climate change, the health and quality of the water in the Chesapeake. All of these things he's very aware of and is actually very honest about in communicating the complexity of what it is that he does. And yet he steps out with a form of faithfulness in continuing to pursue this work that he is so passionate about, that he, in a very real way, has this sort of sense of call to.

And I was chewing on that this week because I think it's so very interesting to encounter the disciples in their fearfulness in this moment. Many of them are lifelong watermen themselves, fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. And to be fair, the Sea of Galilee is smaller than many of our lakes and waterways here in the United States, and so it's not a dramatically large body of water. But even if you're in a relatively contained, confined context like they would have been, it's not an easy life. It's a life filled with lots of uncertainty and the tragedy of danger, of the possibility of no return on your work and investment and labor. It's a very fickle and kind of moment-by-moment existence. And yet, even as we have this group of men who mostly have been shaped and formed by that experience, here in this moment on the water, they are filled with some sense of terror, some sense of uncertainty.

I want to explore that a little bit today because the gospel passage we encounter in St. Matthew's gospel is unique in their response to Jesus showing up. It's not unique in their expression of fearfulness. But in Mark's gospel, fascinatingly, what we hear at the very end is that Jesus gets in the boat, the sea is calmed, and it says they were utterly astounded. But not only does it say they were utterly astounded, it says in verse 52 of chapter 6: "For they did not understand about the loaves"—remember this is right on the heels of the feeding of the 5,000—"but their hearts were hardened."

That's so very odd, that in today's gospel passage they are compelled to this great proclamation that is unique to Saint Matthew: "Truly you are the Son of God." But in Mark, they seem to have the exact opposite reaction. Their hearts are not inflamed, but instead hardened. And so I want to think about this experience in Matthew. This experience of encountering the unknown, the uncertain, the fraughtfulness and challenge of difficulties and storms that rage around us in our lives, but the possibility of finding, knowing, and proclaiming the truth of Jesus in the midst of all of that. What does it mean to fear not? Especially in this context. How does not fearing lead us to this place of proclamation?

Well, as I chewed on that and pondered it, I began to wonder about what it was that brought forth this proclamation. Because, and I didn't go back and look at the Greek specifically, but just in the English rendering, it occurred to me that it's not precisely clear that they proclaim this truth of Jesus simply based on the storm dying down. It could have been any number or combination of numbers of events and movements that had occurred in these preceding verses.

So just before in chapter 14, like we heard last week, we had the great miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. That alone could be a reason to proclaim Christ's divinity. But then today, in the moment of this encounter upon the Sea of Galilee, we kind of have three different moments here. We have the sea rising up and developing this kind of choppiness and this weather pattern coming in, creating some instability with them in the boat in the middle of the night. So we have this moment of kind of storminess and challenge that the disciples are facing. And then we have Jesus showing up in the midst of that, showing up in this miraculous way, walking on the water towards them. And then we have this experience of Peter calling out to Jesus, asking to come to him. And Jesus says, "Come." And Peter himself miraculously walks on the water. But then in this moment of doubt begins to sink, and Jesus saves him.

So we have the reality of storminess. And I think for many of us, we can reflect on times in our lives of challenge and difficulty when we have cried out, we have sought the deliverance of God in the midst of that storminess. And then we have the experience of presence: the storm has not abated, but Christ is among us in the moment of that difficulty and we feel that presence. And then sometimes, like Peter, we may be compelled to enter the raging waves, compelled to draw nearer to Christ in the midst of the difficulty, to step out of the comfort of the boat—whatever little comfort it provided—to draw near to the source of true stability. But then many of us may find those moments, even after taking that leap of faith, that step of faith, having a moment of panic, a moment of questioning, uncertainty, in finding Jesus' hand there, catching us in the moment of that doubt. And then, in the course of life, sometimes—maybe less frequently than we would like—we do have those moments of cessation, those moments of calm, those moments when things have kind of ceased in their turmoil and tumult, and we have a sense of peace, a sense of stability.

And I wonder what of those experiences compelled the disciples to proclaim this great truth of who Jesus is. Maybe it's a mixture of all of them. But also I invite us to think about what it is that calls forth our proclamation of Christ in our own time, in our own contexts. Because sometimes, when we're in the thick of the storm, we don't think to cry out. We don't think to ask for Christ's presence. We don't consider the call to bring God into the midst of the storm. We keep our heads down. We try to fix things ourselves. We try to navigate the course as best we can.

But then in the midst of the storm, sometimes we find Jesus showing up for us. We find ourselves in the presence of our Creator. And things haven't gotten better. There's not a light at the end of the tunnel. But we have nevertheless that sense that God is among us and alongside of us in the thick of it. And sometimes we are called to be in the thick of it even more completely with the fraughtness, the uncertainty, the challenge that that might bring.

And then, blessedly, at times and at places, we feel that saving hand when—not if, but when—we have those moments of doubt. The moments all of us face when the uncertainties become so overwhelming that we find our strength waning, our grip loosening, our sinking into the depths of despair, of darkness, in the rough waves of life. And then, blessedly, there are those times of peacefulness when we can look back after the storm has ebbed and we can sense the presence of God among us in the calm and in the peace.

And I wonder what it is that we confess when we confess that Christ is truly the Son of God? When, in the language of St. Paul, the word is near to us, on our lips and in our hearts, how is it that we find the strength to profess Christ in the fullness of his being? Are we the folks who are kind of keeping our heads down, trying to navigate through the storms of life and find that proclamation welling up when we feel Christ present among us? Even as the storm still rages, we feel that sense of nearness.

Are we the ones who find that profession in the moments of taking that leap of faith and stepping into the storm to serve or to help or to be nearer even as it's a fearful approach with an uncertain outcome? Or are we the ones who feel that presence most fully when we have had that moment of salvation—being pulled up from the darkness, being saved from the impending doom that surrounds us? Or are we the ones who find that true profession in the moments of the calm and the peace when we are on the other side of the storm and sense the goodness and the stability that can come in that moment of restoration and return?

And I don't think the answer is one of those exclusively. It's often all of those things kind of operative at the same time. It's all of those complexities and uncertainties in life. It's all of those moments where we find that presence, whether it's in a time of turmoil or in a time of peace. Whether we are the ones actively seeking, thinking, or the observer watching a loved one or someone close to us who is struggling and in a difficult place. It is sometimes a little bit of all of this in a complex, mixed-up world that we live in.

And I go back again to the example of Luke and what he does, and how he does it. Because we live in a world today of kind of black and white thinking, where we want to bifurcate and categorize things. And his lived experience disrupts so many of our paradigms. It shows that one can be connected in with the global world, with digital technology, with all of the abundant positives that that can bring forth, while also having a grounding, a lived experience in the physical world of his community and place. It can aid and support the work he does to care for his community and the environment around it.

And for us, we can so often bifurcate our lived faith experience into these buckets: these times of calm and sustaining peace where we feel that presence and that ease of proclamation that God is here and among us because things are good, things are easy. And then we can sometimes dismiss or shy away from the difficulty of making that proclamation in the times of trial, in the storms, and in the raging seas when everything is so much more fraught and uncertain.

And yet, what we hear today, what we experience in this call, is an opportunity to bear witness to Christ's presence, Christ's power, Christ's true divinity in the midst of all of that, across all of those varieties of life experience. And we are invited again in a culture, in a world, and in a time that dictates this need to sort of divide and to categorize and to bifurcate. This invitation to not be afraid in our own time. This invitation to step out in faith. To affirm the work that Christ is doing amongst us. To acknowledge the perils and the difficulties that are around us. But to take that step of faith. To take that trust. To lean in more fully and not be afraid.

And to come ultimately to that same place of acknowledgement that truly you, Christ, are the Son of God. And that you will see us through. You will be alongside of us. And you will save us from the mire of death, of destruction, and ultimately give us that sustaining peace of ceaseless joy in the kingdom to come. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

August 2, 2026

I've talked about this before, but I find those little serendipities of life fascinating. Those times where often we look back retrospectively and we can see how the puzzle pieces just sort of fit exactly in the ways they needed to, to be what they needed to be in the moments we needed them.

And I was thinking about that this week because I've had a couple of days to myself. Julie's been traveling briefly with a friend of hers, supporting a book tour that her friend is on. And Anna went and stayed with my parents for a couple of nights at their new home outside of Frederick. And so, for some time, I took an opportunity to do something I've been wanting to do for some time, which is to go back and re-watch Fiddler on the Roof, which when you have a five-year-old, taking three hours to watch a movie is a pretty impractical reality.

And so I wanted to take advantage of this time to do so. It's a movie that I think the last time I watched it all the way through was on VHS, and that tells you how long ago it was that I viewed it. And I remember not being able to comprehend or process the entire story and understand the complexity of what was being said and the narrative arc of the story. But in the complexity of the world we're presently facing, and the realities of some of those very same geographic spaces having destruction, violence, persecution wrought upon the communities in which those folks exist, I wanted to go back again with fresh eyes, with the knowledge and awareness I have these many years later, to sort of see what I thought and how I reflected on it differently.

And remarkably, that story, that narrative in Fiddler on the Roof has some dramatic parallels to what we encounter in our readings today. For those of you who have maybe never watched the film or seen the play, it centers on a family in pre-revolutionary Ukraine, what is today Ukraine, and they're a Jewish family suffering the difficulties and persecutions of impoverished rural life in a system and a society that disadvantages them. And not only disadvantages them, but is actively beginning to persecute them through the pogroms of those years. And yet it's about survival in the midst of so many difficulties. And in some ways it's about joy and love and happiness in the midst of those difficulties and persecutions.

Why do I find parallels with what we encounter in today's readings? Well, I want to start at kind of a surface level. We have the great narrative of loaves and fishes here in Matthew chapter 14. It's a narrative we hear in all four of our Gospels. Now, in the Gospel of St. John, we have the added detail that the one bringing these fish and loaves is a young boy. But otherwise, we have a consistent narrative here that there is an abundance even in the meagerness of these two offerings. That God shows up in this miraculous way to provide the sustenance and needs of this great crowd who have assembled in this desolate, deserted place.

There's another element of that that we miss picking up where we do here in chapter 14. Because immediately prior to this experience, Jesus and his disciples have received word of John's death, John the Baptist's death. And that's actually in verse 13 where it says, now when Jesus heard this, that is what he's responding to, is the tragedy of this killing. But even in the midst of this tragedy, even in the midst of this despair, even in a place of desolation and desertedness, God shows up. God shows up with the means for sustenance, with the means for survival.

And I suspect for many of you who have been here for some number of years, that this is a story not unfamiliar in the life of St. Anne's. How many times we've been in precarious circumstances, financially or otherwise, and yet what meager offerings we have seem to multiply and see us through. That God shows up in this kind of miraculous way to provide a path forward.

And that is partially the story in Fiddler on the Roof. A community that struggles, a community that has so very little. And yet with that meager amount, they seem to make it day by day, month by month, year by year.

But there's another layer, too. One of the things that I think goes unappreciated in the readings we have today is the point of God's love in the midst of that sustaining power. It's not just that God uses these meager means to transform and find a way forward each time that that happens. But it's that God loves us enough to show up for us in those ways.

We hear this in the gospel passage. Jesus, in the announcement of John's death, removes himself for this time of prayerfulness, for this time of recentering his own ministry and life. We see this again and again in Jesus' ministry. He removes himself for a time of prayerfulness, for a time of rest and restoration. And yet, as so often happens, people get wind of where he is and they seek him out. Because they have needs. Because there is work unfinished. And it could be so very easy for Jesus to get frustrated and say, I need you to just wait a minute. Come back next week. Come back tomorrow. But what does it say in verse 14? He saw a great crowd and he had compassion for them. That he shows up. He shows up with mercy and love even in this time of difficulty, in this time of sorrow.

Our brothers and sisters in the Missouri Synod form of Lutheranism, I think, possibly get something right in their lectionary cycle this week. Like many of us, they're reading these same readings. First reading from Isaiah, this passage from St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, this section of St. Matthew's gospel. But they choose, instead of Psalm 145, which pretty much all the rest of us use—us, our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, our United Methodist brothers and sisters—they choose Psalm 136, whose refrain throughout the entirety of the psalm is "for his mercy endures forever." The psalm begins and ends with give thanks. Give thanks to the Lord or give thanks to God. For his mercy endures forever. Underline everything we hear today is this assurance that God's mercy abounds. Even when things are difficult, even when things are uncertain, even when brokenness seems to be the word of the day, the reality of the moment, there is this transforming, life-altering love, compassion, mercy that continues to break through and show up.

And that brings me to another element of our readings. And that is our responsiveness to that love and that mercy. Because so very often, I think it is easy for us to hear the narrative of God's mercy, of God's grace, of God showing up for us in these times of need, and to forget that we have a role in responding to that grace. That it is not simply that we are fed and nourished, but that we are activated to respond and reply with love and compassion in our own ways. That we show up too, even as God shows up for us.

And that is part of what St. Paul is talking about in his Romans passage from chapter 9. And I want to acknowledge that we are in a kind of tricky place this Sunday. If you have paid close attention, we have spent the last three weeks reading through almost the entirety of chapter 8 of Romans. Today we have the first five verses of chapter 9. And then next week we skip ahead to chapter 10. It's not the easiest chapter of St. Paul's epistle. It's actually kind of messy. It's fraught. And our lectionary editors have kind of glazed over that to jump ahead. And so I want to spend the moment just thinking about what it is that we're missing, but how it shapes and forms how it is that we might respond to the needs and the places of compassion and mercy that we're called into in the world as our response to God's mercy for us.

Chapter 9 overall, and I think this is one of the reasons why it's so sticky and messy, is an exploration of what it means for the people of Israel to be covenanted to God and what that means in light of Christ coming among us, Christ offering this new way of being, this new relationship. What it means for the Israelites to have the covenant, to have the promise, to have the name of chosen, and for then this new community, this new way, this all-encompassing path through Christ to unfold the whole world. And sometimes, throughout the history of Christianity, this has been read in problematic ways that diminish or obfuscate the important place of the people of the covenant, of the Israelites, and the greater work that God is doing in the world. It's used—to use a fancy term—in these kind of supersessionist ways that Christians are the new Israelites, that we replace the old covenant with the new.

But from the very beginning, Paul frames things differently. If we pay attention to verse 3, he says, "For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh." This is not language of love in an explicit way, but it is language of love in this implicit sense. Paul is saying, I wish that I could take on the burden of this way so that my people could feel fully the mercy and compassion of God that has come through Christ. May I take on the struggles so that there is a better way forward for all.

Tevye, the patriarch of the family for whom Fiddler on the Roof is focused, again and again has the same kind of dynamic in his life. His way of being, his culture, his society, his whole perspective on life is constantly challenged, reframed, reoriented. And in the midst of that challenge, most of the time, he's able to respond with compassion and love. That he prioritizes mercy over and against rigidity.

And when we think about how we are to respond to the great gifts that we are given in God, we need to keep that in mind. Because in times of scarcity, in times of meekness, in times where things seem very thin and frayed, I think it's the all-too-human reaction to circle the wagons, to be more conserving—I was going to say conservative, but that's such a loaded term in these days—but to be more attuned to holding tightly to what we have than to have a spirit of generosity. Of taking the meager loaves and fishes that we have been provided and trust that God is going to multiply them and use them for his greater good and for the transformation of all. Were that we, like St. Paul, had this willingness to take on the burden of our brothers and sisters, to help them see a better day and a better way forward.

And I want to acknowledge that we're not always going to hit the mark on this score. For all of Tevye's compassion and mercy, in the ways that he begrudgingly accepts two different marriages of daughters of his that don't go exactly the way he wants them to, he still struggles with his last daughter and her desire to marry outside of the Jewish community entirely. And even at the end of the story, that tension is left unresolved. He cannot fully bring himself to accept and embrace that reality.

And we all have those challenges and difficulties. We all have those broken limitations in our lives, in our life as a community of faith. Those places where we just don't hit the mark. We don't exude the compassion and mercy that God offers us in the fullness of His love.

But nevertheless, our call in each and every moment is to discern and strive towards the fullest and most complete version of that love and mercy that we can live into. And to constantly seek after a fuller and more complete sense of love and mercy in the world around us.

And so today, friends, as we reflect on these readings, as we hear the miracle of the loaves and fishes, as we are once more reminded of the assurances that God offers us in showing up, even when we have very little, even when things seem very tenuous, we have the ability to glory in that mercy and to be renewed in our commitment to living into it most fully, emulating it most completely, and following after God in our own spaces of compassion and mercy giving. And may we as a people continue to strive for that ideal in this time and in all the times to come.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.