St. Lamberti Church Oldenburg
2. February 2014 (4th Sunday after Epiphany)

Reading of the Gospel (also sermon text): Matthew 14:22-33

And immediately Jesus urged his disciples to get into the boat and go before him until he had let the people go. And when he had let the people go, he went up on a mountain by himself to pray. And in the evening he was there alone. And the boat was already far from land, and came in distress through the waves, for the wind was against it.

But in the fourth watch of the night Jesus came to them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified and cried out, 'It is a ghost! And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, 'Be of good cheer, it is I; do not be afraid. But Peter answered him and said, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And he said, 'Come here!

And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind, he was afraid and began to sink, crying out, 'Lord, help me! But Jesus immediately stretched out his hand and took him, saying to him, 'O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And they entered the boat and the wind died down. And those who were in the boat fell down before him and said: You are truly the Son of God!

Sermon

"And am I supposed to believe that? It's not possible that this Peter is walking on water."

That's how I remember reacting as a child, dear Lamberti congregation, when I heard the parable that has just been read out. I often heard such stories of Jesus' miracles, as I was at a Catholic primary school with four years of lessons in two religious subjects: Biblical history and catechism.

And from the age of 8, I was also in constant use as an altar boy. Every year there was the story of the fearful disciples on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus appearing as a ghost in the fourth watch of the night.

The evangelists - like Matthew in today's sermon text - had to choose figurative language and examples from the everyday world of people 2000 years ago in order to make them understand Christ's message. Stories of miracles emerged, especially gift miracles, healing miracles and rescue miracles.

A gift miracle is, for example, the turning of water into wine at the wedding of Cana, and one can also be found in the Gospel of Matthew immediately before today's sermon text: the miraculous multiplication for the feeding of the 5,000, when Jesus "virtually conjures up" so much food from just five loaves of bread and two fish that everyone is filled and at the end there is still food left over in twelve baskets. As a child, I couldn't believe this either, because the distribution of cakes in a household of six was more a problem of scarcity than miraculous multiplication.
The spectacular healing miracles were always impressive when Jesus healed the blind, paralysed or deaf and dumb. Or even raising the dead. But not easy to understand, especially for children, when a close relative has just died unexpectedly and the wish for their return to life is linked to the hope of Jesus' omnipotence, but remains unheard.

The rescue of the sinking Peter recounted today belongs to the category of rescue miracles, for me one of the most incomprehensible miracles at the time. This may also have been due to the fact that I couldn't swim properly until I was 13 years old. I was happy to struggle to keep my head above water for short distances.

How could someone like Peter get up from this bottomless pit and walk on water? Unimaginable and unbelievable.
It was only later that I realised what you, dear congregation, have long been aware of: I was not yet ready for the didactic claim of such descriptions of miracles. The underlying parable text was intended to connect what was said with something that was meant. Evangelists such as Matthew were concerned with visualising an abstract concept - such as the concept of trust here - in the form of a pictorial representation.
For a child of primary school age, it is probably too much of a challenge to distinguish between the level of what is said - here Peter's running over water and his fear of sinking - and the level of what is meant - here trust in Jesus. In contrast to the parable, the parable also mentions what is meant in concrete terms, but like other children, I was far too preoccupied with the superficial image of storm, waves, night and ghosts.

Later, of course, I increasingly realised rationally that the many miracles I had heard were not possible. On the one hand, this was a confirmation of my own intellectual maturity. After all, rationality increases when you learn physical laws, mathematical theories and also computer-aided modelling and simulations in science lessons at grammar school and later at university. You realise that gravitational force, laws of nature and proven theories are not compatible with running over water, loaves of bread and fish falling from the sky and turning water into wine.

This realisation was clearly reinforced by critical observation of the official church and triggered a crisis of authority in me as a young adult - with doubts about the previously seemingly infallible church actors and their staged religiosity.

The doubts later disappeared to the extent that I understood what was meant by the gospel and did not stop at what was said by whom and how: Trust in God, which leads me to the 2nd level of consideration of today's sermon text.

The story told by Matthew suggests that Jesus deliberately staged this nocturnal scene in order to set the disciples on a course of trust and faith. It offers a metaphor for our faith. Trusting in God allows us to shape our lives. We can go out and do things that we don't initially trust ourselves to do. God speaks to us as Jesus did to Peter: "Come here. You can do this and you can do it." As long as we trust, we cannot sink. And if we do, then no deeper than in God's hands.

But God does not overtax our faith, he understands our doubts. Like Jesus, when Peter loses his courage and is afraid of storms, waves and the deep seabed. And then begins to sink because he no longer trusts Jesus. Peter cries out in despair: "Lord help me." And Jesus? He is not resentful or even offended and refuses to help. No, he immediately stretches out his hand, grabs Peter and speaks to him in a good-natured and understanding way: "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
We are all familiar with these situations and phases of life in which we have little faith.

When we have fears and doubts in the face of major private and academic appointments or serious, even incurable illness. Then our trust in God is strained. It is a stress test for our faith when we call for help, especially when the call is not answered. And when we ask "why questions" and not only doubt, but despair. Then we are ultimately asking existential questions about eternal life and justice - whatever that may be - in finite earthly life that can never be answered completely and only individually.

Those who still believe or find new faith then receive a great gift. This gift cannot be ordered or even forced. And those who receive it should be grateful, but also allow other people room for their, possibly different, faith or even for not believing.

The faith in the sermon text refers to trust in Jesus. We take it for granted that he helps the doubting Peter, it is simply the right thing to do. And such helpfulness hopefully also characterises Christians who want to follow Jesus' message.

But what do each and every one of us, dear congregation, associate with helping and trust in interpersonal relationships? Or does trust in God not go hand in hand with trust between people? I think so, because each of us can relate aspects such as gaining trust, basic trust and losing trust to our relationship with God, but above all to many relationships in our private, family, friendly, professional and public lives.

God himself calls us to this interpersonal trust, he does not want to be the centre of star-shaped, bilateral expectations directed only towards him, according to the motto: "The Lord will judge it when we alone pass or have passed through the human vale of tears." No, that is not God's idea, nor is it ours when we sing together: "Trust in new ways and walk in time." And then later: "God wants you to be a blessing for his earth." So not only in the hereafter, in life after death, but already in this world as Christians who trust themselves and hopefully also trust others. And who infect others with their confidence in a better world, in charity and peace.

The value of every religion and every world view must not only prove itself in the hereafter, but its philanthropy must already be demonstrated on earth.

I would like to move on to the third level of reflection in my sermon, in which I take the academic appointment of a scientist, in my case a computer scientist, and combine it with some thoughts on the relationship between science and faith.

Computing Science, in which I have been scientifically at home for 40 years now, deals with the systematic, automated processing of information with the help of computers. Computing Science - to put it very simply - constructs machines and software programmes that independently transfer and store data and process it automatically using software. The results of Computing Science in the form of IT products and services are increasingly, and sometimes frighteningly, permeating our everyday professional and private lives.

We trust information and communication technologies more and more - just take everyday scenarios such as navigation systems in cars, searching for information on the World Wide Web or controlling complex systems, e.g. in energy supply, healthcare or transport. This often involves virtual worlds, models of sections of our reality in the computer and their use for human or even machine-based, i.e. automated, decisions.
Who do we trust in an aeroplane? The expertise and experience of a human pilot? Or the software that collates data from countless sensors and actuators and independently suggests manoeuvres or even carries them out without human intervention? Probably both, but in what understanding of roles?

These and other fascinating achievements of Computing Science raise questions of trust. What are the limits of trustworthy software? Are models transformed into programmes to which we entrust decisions complete? Can they be complete at all? Is our imagination of the possible sufficient despite all analytical care, or does it fail when it comes to complex models of large-scale technical systems?
How sure can we be that situations will not occur that seemed unimaginable but in retrospect turn out to be the almost inevitable consequence of events that have occurred, thus debunking the claim to completeness that we had previously made? And then trigger crises of confidence, which in turn can promote an unjustifiable social and, above all, economically dangerous hostility towards technology. Only mutual respect for different points of view and a scientifically honest discourse can help here.

Computing Science and neighbouring disciplines are also venturing into borderline areas that for a long time were thought to be reserved exclusively for humans with their cognition and their barely explainable abilities and emotions. Research fields such as artificial intelligence and neuroinformatics are just two examples that are attempting to penetrate these borderline areas.

Some of their pioneers sometimes succumb to the danger of promising, or at least holding out the prospect of, ever new, barely limited ways of recognising and explaining our world through the language they choose and the research results they strive for.

Do we trust these models and their modellers? What are the limits of modelling the technical, the virtual and the emotional? Are sensitive Christian but ultimately diffuse concepts such as faith, hope and love describable and explainable in this ecclesiastical environment?
This wandering between the implied worlds of Computing Science and its border areas is an exciting challenge for me. Combining academic appointments with the pursuit of progress in knowledge and the most complete and consistent description possible on the one hand, and personal humility with respect for the limits of one's own ability to recognise and explain on the other.
"Scio nescio - I know that I know nothing", this modesty of the intellectually not exactly disadvantaged Socrates should always curb "omniscience claims and all-explanatory fantasies" of science and its protagonists. For me, this is derived from respect for the "fascination of nature", which I ultimately understand as God's creation despite the theory of evolution and ever new findings.
Naturally with respect for people who can't or don't want to see it that way. I have nothing missionary about that.

Scientists, like Faust in Goethe's tragedy, are searching for what holds the world together at its core. But Faust also recognises his limits. He studied philosophy, law, medicine and - sorry, if I'm quoting this in a church - unfortunately also theology, as I'm sure we can all still hear in Gründgen's voice.

As a poor fool as clever as he was before, the titles Magister and Doktor are of no use to him and he complains: "And see that we can know nothing! It almost burns my heart." Faust says that he is "cleverer than all the laffes, doctors, masters, scribes and" - get this - "priests". But in the end, he resignedly left the narrow confines of science and surrendered to magic.

In Faust and Goethe, however, magic does not lead to religion or the church, but rather to wine, song and, of course, Gretchen. And, as we know, Faust evades Gretchen's question "Now tell me, how do you feel about religion?".

Around 200 years after Goethe's Faust, the magazine "Der Spiegel" asks "Between magic and religion - what do people believe in?" in its pre-Christmas cover story on 21 December. The surprised reader first learns that 54 per cent of West Germans and 23 per cent of East Germans believe in something like God, deities or the divine. More specific to our sermon text today is the survey quoted, which states that 52 per cent of those surveyed are convinced that miracles exist. And in relation to themselves, 24 per cent also believe in the miracle of their own rebirth.

A central thesis from the findings of religious researchers, church historians and psychologists quoted in Der Spiegel is that people are naturally susceptible to magic and the supernatural. On New Year's Eve, we give each other lucky pigs and chimney sweeps, and for important events we knock on wood three times or cross our fingers. And some even have their cars blessed in the hope that this will reduce the risk of accidents. The success of our superstitions cannot be scientifically proven, but they give many people support and hope.
People like to believe in things that help them to cope better with the uncertainties of life.

With regard to the consequences for religiosity as a capacity for faith, studies cited by Der Spiegel state that even atheists have a fear of higher powers. But the churches have none of this, their worship rituals are too cold and too abstract.
Apparently, magic and superstition - pointedly and somewhat resignedly stated - are the increasing faith for non-believers, while at the same time denominational ties and church attendance continue to decline. Church rituals and faith seem too complicated and not vivid enough or emotional enough for most people.
What to do? Bring more magic, emotion and even scaremongering into the church? I feel uneasy at the idea of falling back into language and images of miracles, mortal sin, punishment, the last judgement and plunging headlong into purgatory and hell with eyes wide open and fear of death. Such images burdened me as a child and distanced me from the church, although never completely from God. It was only after a long interruption that I found my way to the Ansgari parish in Eversten and I am grateful for that.

Let us please take care together that faith is not associated with fear and irrationality, but with joy, hope and trust in God.

But let us also make sure that, despite rationality, technical progress and ever new findings, the church and science leave enough room for images, for the emotional, for the miraculous and for the inexplicable, which nevertheless encourage us and allow us to trust on a higher level.
Let us therefore retain our childlike naivety and a little faith in miracles - like when we look at the nativity scene at Christmas, because we trust the message of Jesus' birth. Let us retain our sensitivity for wonderful, magical moments - as in Handel's "Hallelujah", in which the Holy Spirit seems to float through the nave. And for all our trust in scientific progress, let us retain our humility before the ultimately inexplicable and God's caring hand.

Finally, back to the beginning: As a child, I answered the question "And am I supposed to believe that?" in the negative when Peter walked on the water. Today I know more, and yet I now say: "Yes, I believe, or rather, I understand this picture because I understand the message behind it".
Like many of them, I am grateful for the great gift of being able to trust God and believe in him with joy and confidence. Even if doubts sometimes catch up with us and make us discouraged.

I would therefore like to conclude with an intercession for us, dear Lamberti congregation: "Lord, you know our faintheartedness and our despondency in the storms of our lives. Suffering and pain, grade and sorrow make us doubt you again and again. We ask you: Give us confidence when we are afraid and give us security when it gets dark around us.

Amen.