What’s in a word? Though some translations suggest the apostles were afraid that they were seeing a ghost, what really caused them to fear was they knew they were encountering the divine! How can we know that? This is the first spot in the Gospel of Matthew where a human being proclaims Jesus as the Son of God! We can call on Jesus and expect help, because truly, he is the Son of God!
Sometimes a show becomes so popular that certain catch phrases become part of the language. Even people who don’t watch the show know the phrase.
I don’t know if the apostle Paul spent much time in the theater, but even if he hadn’t, he could hardly escape the comedies of Menander. He even quotes one of the comedies, in 1 Corinthians 15:33, when he states, “Bad company ruins good morals.” That’s not the Hebrew scriptures he’s quoting in this chapter about the Resurrection. It’s from Menander’s play Thais.
Menander (342-291 BC) was the most popular writer of comedies in the ancient world. Despite that, most of his comedies survive only in fragments. One of his comedies might just give us some insight into what exactly the storm-tossed apostles thought they were seeing when Jesus appeared to them, walking across the water.
The play is Phasma. A young man discovers his step-mother often secludes herself, to pray before the family altar. Once, when the young man spies on her, he discovers she is talking to a young woman, who he believes is a phantasma, from which we get the word phantom. He is horribly frightened because he believes he is seeing a goddess. But he has also fallen in love with her.
Spoiler Alert. His stepmother had given birth to a daughter before she married the young man’s father. That is not a goddess he sees, but a real flesh and blood woman with whom he shares no DNA. After many mishaps and misadventures the young man and woman will be wed. But the key takeaway here is that the young man assumes the woman is a phantasma, he does not think he is seeing a ghost. He knows he sees someone divine.1
Remember that.
Let me drink my coffee first
Today’s scripture passage is from Matthew 14. That chapter includes the story of the death of John the Bapti
...approximately 1,763 words remaining. You are not logged in. Please see options at the top of this page to view complete sermon.
