The Rev. Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A
St. Matthew’s Benton, AR
August 9, 2026
Good morning! My name is Melanie Lemburg, and I serve on the Bishop’s staff as the Canon to the Ordinary. I’m glad to be making my first visit here with you today, even as I regret the circumstances of Jay’s health that have necessitated your need for supply clergy today. I’ve really appreciated working with Debbie this week; y’all are in very capable hands as you navigate these next days, and I’ll be continuing to offer support to her and y’all from our office as well.
A few months ago, I read a book, and I jotted this quote down in my journal: “You don’t have to be particularly brave. You just have to be a tiny, tiny bit more interested in something than you are frightened of it. You just have to be one percent more curious than afraid. This idea is powerful and transformative.”[i]
I was reminded of this quote as I spent time this week in conversation with the gospel passage. Our reading for today from Matthew is coming right on the heels of last week’s passage. Jesus has just learned that his cousin, John the Baptist, has been executed by Herod. He seeks to withdraw (maybe to mourn? to rest or reset? to reckon with the fate that he sees laid out before himself?), but the crowds follow him. And they are hungry, so he has compassion on them and feeds them with a miraculous feast. Our reading for today picks up, and Jesus again seeks to withdraw to a deserted place for rest, restoration, and reconnection with God. He sends the disciples on ahead across the lake where the seasoned fishermen spend all night being battered by the waves. In the early hours of the morning, Jesus comes to them walking across the water, and this is when they really get scared. (And who can blame them? Seeing a person walking across the water toward their besieged boat in the middle of a storm defies everything we know about how the world works!)
When they cry out, Jesus speaks to them; and I suspect it is the sound of that familiar voice as much as the words that he speaks that calm and reassures them: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
It is in that moment, filled with Jesus’s reassurance, that Peter becomes one percent more curious than afraid, a tiny bit more interested than frightened. He wants to know what it’s like to walk on water with Jesus.
Miraculously, Peter gets out of the boat and walks on the water, but Matthew tells us, when he notices the strong wind, Peter becomes frightened, begins to sink and cries out: “Lord, save me!” And his friend grabs him by the hand, gently chides him for losing his nerve, and they get back into the boat together.
For a moment at least, Peter’s curiosity wins out over his fear. It’s an interesting story about faith and fear and curiosity and how we navigate the storms and opportunities of life. The disciples don’t have any control over the storm that blows up and batters the boat with wind and waves, and also, Peter doesn’t have to get out of the boat to join Jesus walking on the water.
In her book How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith, Bishop Mariann Budde writes about how we as individuals navigate our lives bravely through a series of decisive moments (like the one Peter experienced when he got out of the boat). She writes, “I am convinced that we all have the capacity to live within a narrative of great adventure, no matter our life circumstances. The courage to be brave when it matters most requires a lifetime of small decisions that set us on a path of self-awareness, attentiveness, and willingness to risk failure for what we believe is right.” She continues, “It is also a profoundly spiritual experience, one in which we feel a part of something larger than ourselves and guided, somehow, by a larger Spirit at work in the world and in us. Decisive moments make believers out of everyone, for no matter what name we give to it, the inexplicable, unmerited experience of a power greater than our own working through us is real.”[ii]
Our curiosity, our courage both open us to a partnership with the workings of the Holy Spirit that are life-giving for us and for the world around us and allow us to be participants in the resurrection life that Jesus offers.
There are times in our lives when we get to choose to get out of the boat, to take a risk, to be brave and curious and see where Jesus is calling us. There are other times when life forces us into situations that invite curiosity and courage from us, with the help of the Spirit.
Several years ago, when I was on sabbatical in Hawaii, we decided with a group of friends to go sky-diving. Now, I’ve never really wanted to go skydiving, and I knew that the hardest part for me would be getting out of the plane. When the time came to jump, I found myself harnessed to the front of a man named Viktor, and when they rolled open the door in the side of the plane, I thought there was no way I was going to be able to jump. But Viktor knew what he was doing. He had us sit down on the floor of the plane with my legs dangling out and before I knew it, we were plummeting through the air.
What I learned later from my friends is that Viktor basically through me out of the plane, and as we free-fell, he kept encouraging me to open my eyes, to look around at the beauty—the sparkling blue of the Pacific Ocean and the lush green of the mountains, to be just a little bit more curious than I was afraid.
Sometimes when it’s time to get out of the boat, and we can’t do it on our own, the Holy Spirit acts like Viktor and throws us out, all the way encouraging us to be just a bit more curious than we are afraid.
Your invitation this week is to think about where in your life or in the life of this congregation God is inviting you to be a tiny bit more curious than afraid? How are you being invited to step out of the boat in faith? Or if you have already been thrown out, where are you being invited to be curious, to see beauty and opportunity? What work is the Holy Spirit already doing that invites you further into the resurrection life?
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