So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.

It is a gift of the scholars, who choose the lectionary lessons that we share with Christians around the world, that every three years in August, we are brought to these weeks of Galilee boating stories in scripture. A gift because it comes just as I am most enjoying the boating that we do on Barnegat Bay and I get to preach on boating . . . and you get stuck listening.

And today’s boat story is paired with the story of Joseph the dreamer. Again a gift, for this is also the season when I do most of my dreaming, the time each year when I intentionally stop and try to discern what it is that God is doing with me and us, what it is that God wants of me and of us, in the fall and the coming year and over the years that will follow, years that are just as unpredictable as all the years past have been.

And so I listen to the stories of the storm that the disciples find themselves in, a story of their fears and doubts, a storm that came upon them when they were doing exactly what Jesus told them to do.

It was not their decision to go in the boat, Matthew tells us that Jesus made them go, perhaps they were getting too comfortable with the accolades and celebration that must have emerged after that massive Church picnic that we read about last week on the beach, perhaps the disciples thought that they would settle down there and let the crowds come to them.

But Jesus had other plans for them, other dreams and he knew they needed to keep moving on, so he put them in the boat and went off by himself to pray, to re-ignite the dream and vision within him.

Whatever the reasoning, there they were, in the line of duty to God when the storm erupted.

And if you have never been on the water in a storm, let me – or better yet let Debi - tell you it can be frightening.

Last summer we were caught in a storm while returning to port one afternoon, winds whipped, thunder rumbled, waves crashed and we did everything right and we knew we were doing everything right as we crawled along, nose into the wind, picking our way slowly across the bay, living in a world that was no larger then 15 feet in any direction..

So this is what the disciples were feeling that day. They were terrified as that storm came sweeping down on them, I at least had a GPS and a radio if I needed it, but their entire world – at that moment – was in chaos. There were uncontrollable powers threatening them and they even saw the presence of God but screamed in fear, thinking him to be a ghost.

We’ve had days like that, haven’t we?

Days when the whole universe seems to be lined up against us and our fears and despair increases until even the best things in life, even the presence of God, seems threatening.

And even when we are in our glory, we know, as Joseph learned, that betrayal and abandonment could be right around the corner. And these are not imaginary fears, they are real.

There is good reason to worry about the threat of terrorism, the struggle for fiscal stability, the future for our children and grandchildren, the phone call that follows our annual physical and sometimes all of these things create storms that feel just overwhelming.

And what Jesus said to those disciples is what we need to hear and believe and say to one another over and over and over again: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

But there is more here than just the story of the storm.

Because all I want out of a storm is a safe journey home, I want to get back to the port that I sailed from and tie the lines and have everything be right in my universe again, everything be just as it was.

And I’m not alone in that am I?

We all want stability and normalcy in the storms of failure, of desertion, of sorrow.

But that isn’t really what God gives us, is it?

The disciples didn’t go back to the crowds that day, they went on to a place they had never been before, to people who were not as familiar to them.

And Joseph, having shared his dream and vision, would discover that dreamers are not always beloved, for the dreams and visions that God gives us bring change and disruption to our lives.

Joseph’s brothers feared his dreams the same way the disciples feared the storm, they couldn’t control it and so it scared them.

Yet God didn’t put us in this world to stay the same, he put us in here to change and to grow and become increasingly the people that he created us to be.

And that means we need to listen to those who speak of change, to listen and consider and pray and when we find the changes that God is bringing to us, to act upon them.

You see, faith isn’t just about enduring storms or learning to put up with smart-alec dreamers, faith is about realizing that life is always meant to be more than what we have right now, faith is about leaving the safety and security that we cling to so that we can experience the life that God has created us for.

So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.

One of the first rules of boating is “don’t leave the boat” yet life is only found when we do.

Life comes when we recognize the presence of Christ in our lives and we put aside our fears.

It is popular for preachers to point out the weakness in Peter’s faith, the ways in which he floundered and Jesus had to rescue him. But I have always been more impressed with the fact that Peter actually did walk on the water that day.

He was a boater, he knew what to do in a storm, he knew to stay in the safely of the boat, and yet he knew that it was Jesus and so he put aside his fears.

So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.

That’s what we are called and created to do.

And, let me be fair, we have done that, haven’t we?

We have had those great moments of faith when we have stepped out of the safety of the boat with confidence, knowing that our God is stronger than the storms, miracle moments when we have known, as Joseph did, that we are God’s beloved and that he has great things in store for us.

These are the moments that come to us when we overcome our fear with our faith and we have all had those in our personal lives, the things we have done that we would never have thought ourselves capable of.

And look at the past year in our Church life: the YG famine lock-in, the completion and utilization of the Upper Room, the Work Day at Warwick, the continued support of Jason Reinhardt, the lives touched by Church School teachers, YG leaders, the VBS circus, the abundance of funds that were presented for our faithful use, a year or so ago you might have labeled them all as pipe-dreams and you could have built a realistic, practical case for not doing any of them until we got our fiscal house in order, staying in the boat until the storm had paced, but they all turned out to be God’s dreams, didn’t they?

We walked on water as we stepped out of the boat, refusing to be limited by the storms, and we kept our eyes on Christ.

And as we begin to look ahead to next year, let me play Joseph: there will be storms when we do what God tells us to do, some of them will be external, as they were for the disciples, some of them will be internal as they were for the family of Joseph, but there will be storms.

And God will be there with us.

And if you and I can keep that front and center, if we can believe that God will work with our worst situations and bring blessings from them, then we can step out of the safety of the boat and we can experience the life and fulfill the dreams that God has for us. And if we falter, and if our vision slips and our faith fades and we find ourselves sinking, then we will discover that when our faith is weakest and our doubts are strongest, the hand of God reaches us to catch us and save us until the next time that he invites us outside of the boat.

So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.