The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scriptures: Matthew 14:22-33
I was saved on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Yes, saved in just the way you might be suspecting. Saved in the Paul way, like we heard today: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” But we’ll get to that.
Most of you know that I was pretty mad at Jesus for most of my young adult life. Having been raised in the Pentecostal flavor of Christian fundamentalism, I only knew of one way to experience Jesus. And it was punishing, terrifying, and condemning of the queerness I was slowly learning was part of me. I was taught that Christianity was all or nothing.
So I chose nothing, and I chose it angrily, righteously. Except I didn’t, because the Holy Spirit is a sneaky and patient little rascal. She knew that deep, intentional faith was also part of me, so she nudged me into mindfulness meditation, which felt like a safe kind of spirituality…and so then from there she led me to a Unitarian Universalist community, where Jesus was just another great spiritual teacher among others like the Buddha and Confucius, and that felt doable and even life-giving…and so then she pushed a little bit harder, helping me to discern a call to ministry—in Unitarian Universalism, not Christian ministry—and she said and boy do I have the perfect seminary for you. It’s Christian—no, no, no, stick with me, but it’s very progressive. There are lots of non-Christians there. And don’t you think you’d be a more effective spiritual leader in this country if you had a strong knowledge of Christianity? The Spirit was making some good points, even though I didn’t know at the time who she was. At the time, she just felt like a kind, intuitive, discerning voice sometimes coming from within me, sometimes coming from friendly voices around me.
So I ended up at Pacific School of Religion, a Christian seminary in Berkeley, California, where I was in the process of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister. Where there were more LGBTQ+ students than there were straight students. Where I found out I could be queer and Christian—not that I was considering it, but it was possible.
The classes and weekly chapel and my classmates helped me to dismantle so many of the narrow and fearful ideas about Christianity I had learned growing up. It was spiritual bootcamp in a way, and after that first year, I was full and I was exhausted. I was ready to go up on a mountaintop, as Jesus did in today’s gospel, to pray and rest.
Except I didn’t go to a mountaintop. I found myself at Red Shirt Table, South Dakota, a tiny town at the edge of the Badlands on the Pine Ridge Reservation where the Oglala Sioux, part of the Lakota people, live. A friend of mine from seminary and I had heard about a prayer meeting that was happening there, a gathering led by the monks from the Taizé community in France. They called it “a pilgrimage of trust,” and it was a space for young people—I was considered young then—to come together in Taizé’s spirit of reconciliation, to pray and to fellowship and to sing.
I’d been to some Taizé-style services in seminary and had enjoyed them. They had seemed safely spiritual but not too religious. Another one of the Holy Spirit’s tricks.
Quick primer: Taizé is an ecumenical Christian community in France that was established after the First World War to bring together all different kinds of Christians around a rule of life and, eventually, a particular way of worship that revolved around the singing of simple chants that could be easily learned and repeated to create a prayerful, meditative space. The songs we sing before the gospel and our prayers of the people are of the Taizé style.
Taizé had become such a popular pilgrimage site, especially for young Christians, that the brothers there decided to start bringing Taizé to different places around the world, to bring the pilgrimage to the people.
The Pine Ridge gathering was a primitive pilgrimage. The 600 of us who attended slept in tents on the plains. There were no showers or electricity. We brushed our teeth at an outdoor communal sink, and our bathrooms were port-a-potties. Apparently that was my idea of a restful getaway at that time.
Except that it wasn’t. I soon realized that I was more like the disciples that Jesus had sent ahead of him on the boat. The first day was hot, but the next two were cold and rainy. There was no shelter from the wind. I didn’t sleep much. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It turns out that all the people there were pretty enthusiastic Christians. Yes, my first year of seminary had helped me to accept the idea that Christianity didn’t have to be what I was taught it was, but I certainly wasn’t ready to be around waves of earnest young Jesus lovers battering my boat.
But the friend I’d come with was loving it, so I endured.
The first day, I emerged from my tent that chilly and wet morning long before the coffee came out and we didn’t eat until after Morning Prayer, so let’s just say I was a little grumpy. That afternoon, though, we visited a gorgeous Roman Catholic church in the town of Pine Ridge, and I was intrigued because it embodied something I’d been learning about in seminary: enculturation. Lakota and Roman Catholic tradition folded together in surprising, beautiful ways. Traditional Lakota patterns shining in the stained glass windows, feathers in the colors of the Four Directions around the altar; a Lakota Jesus greeting me in the Narthex.
The Holy Spirit stood beside me, no longer sly but silent, as my heart cracked open just a bit. Maybe Christianity could be bigger than I’d imagined.
The next morning was even chillier and wetter. But I knew what to expect and didn’t emerge from the warmth of my sleeping bag until I could smell the coffee. That morning I chose the small group that met in the teeny, tiny Episcopal church on whose land the pilgrimage was happening. I chose that discussion because it was one of the only ones meeting indoors.
Father Mike, this big, burly Episcopal priest from Lompoc, California, with a big, burly black beard was leading the discussion. And guess which gospel he chose to talk about? He focused on Peter. “‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ And Jesus said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus.” Father Mike admired Peter’s courage, his trust that Jesus would hold him up, his stepping into his call. Until he starts overthinking it, until his thoughts move him away from the confidence Jesus gave him and towards how, wait! whoa! this can’t be possible, and Peter starts to sink into the waves.
Something about that story and how that priest told it cracked me open even more. I wanted that courage, I wanted that trust. I wanted that confidence, just like Peter. Except I didn’t. Wait! whoa! This can’t be possible. No way. Like the disciples in that boat, I saw Jesus coming near to me, and I was terrified.
The Holy Spirit had sent her secret agent in Father Mike, and I was shaken.
Now Christ Episcopal Church is located yards away from where the grassy plains drop into the Badlands. Have any of you ever been to the Badlands? It feels like a different planet, an ocean of rocky pinnacles and buttes whose layers tell the story of an ancient inland sea turned to floodplain, strata of lines marking where the water had been and then receded. Looking east from that tiny church, the ragged labyrinth of rock stretches far past the horizon.
The organizers of the pilgrimage warned us not to go into the Badlands because it’s so easy to get lost.
But for worship, we did step into the very edge of that ocean. A path marked by two by fours and electric tea lights dropped us into a ravine where a cross and an altar and the flags of the four directions were set up. There, we sat on the rough, patchy grass, and we chanted together. That final night’s worship culminated in a traditional Taizé ritual: a cross with the icon of Jesus was brought out, and every person was invited to come and reverence it. Some would simply touch it, others bowed. When I got up there, I don’t know why but I dropped to my knees and I rested my forehead on the cross.
All around me floated the voices of my fellow pilgrims chanting, “oh lord, hear my prayer” together with the steady beat of drums that echoed into the wide open sky. In that moment, the Holy Spirit stepped aside and made way for Jesus. ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’
I still don’t really understand what happened in those few days in Pine Ridge, but now, looking back, I know something shifted. I’d been saved. No, not from hell, but saved into…something. I could claim Jesus as my own. Even as Jesus asked me, “Why do you doubt?” he also reached out a hand and caught me, bringing me to safety, and he let me have my doubts, let me find my faith in the way I needed to find it.
But not without a bit of help from that blessed trickster Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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