The belief in ghosts is one that has worn thin in the twenty-first Century, even though it stretches back into history for almost as long as we can trace human recollection.  In the first sustained narrative, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian hero of the title, has lost his closest friend, Enkidu, the brother of his heart, and he searches to find Enkidu and, he hopes, obtain immortality.

         Of course, he fails in his quest for immortality, but he does find the ghost of Enkidu, who warns Gilgamesh of the underworld, a nightmare vision, in which the dead are bedraggled, dirty birds of prey, chained to a bench, with a plate of ashes to eat and a cup full of dust for drink. 

         In the ancient world, ghosts were fearsome, but not always hostile—the ghosts in the Greek heroic poems and plays could warn and counsel.  Or, they could demand sustenance—blood—as the price of their words, as when Odysseus came to seek guidance from Achilles.  Ghosts were scary and dangerous, but a glimmer of comradeship or affection might—might—be invoked.^[1]

         Ghost stories in modern times are usually told for entertainment, requiring a heavy suspension of disbelief to make them successful, or a carefully planned out narrative that slowly reduces our modern skepticism and lulls us into the story.  When my father accompanied my old Boy Scout troop for our camping expeditions his stories were masterful—he would plot them out carefully (even I didn’t know in advance), plan his special effects (a bit of flash cloth wrapped in a tissue and carelessly tossed into the campfire only to blow up in a few seconds), and he got us every time.  

But that is not what happens in today’s Gospel reading.  We are not dealing here with a tale, told by a clever storyteller, enthralling the listeners.  The narrative is brisk, matter-of-fact.  The disciples in the boat have been struggling against the sea since Jesus told them to go on ahead to the other sides, leaving him behind to dismiss the crowds. 

Jesus, meanwhile, has sent the crowd away, and has gone up the mountain by himself to pray.  He stays there until evening, by which time, the boat is further off from land in either direction, and the boat is straggling despite their best efforts.  In the hours since they left Jesus behind, the wind and waves have been relentlessly pounding against the boat, and  slowly wearing the disciples out as they vainly struggle to reach shore.

This isn’t a ghost story.

Or is it?

We know from last week’s Transfiguration gospel that the disciples are not at their best when confronted with the uncanny, the inexplicable, those moments that the Irish traditionally call “thin” places—where the  boundaries between normal life and the numinous are found—in its early meaning of the sudden presence of the supernatural or of the divine.

At the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John want to be a part of the extraordinary tableau of Jesus, shining with dazzling light, and flanked by Moses and Elijah, so they come up with the idea of building, um, booths for them all.  Yes, booths. Does Moses need a booth, or Elijah? Of course not.  Jesus certainly doesn’t.  But there it is, the disciples are thinking about building booths. Not that they have any wood or materials, but, hey, booths for everyone.

Is their reaction a bit comic? I have to admit, that it is.  But I love them, all three of them, in this moment, almost more than at any other time we see them in the Gospels. Because their desire to commemorate, to hallow, that which is already sacred beyond measure is moving.  They want to hold on to it, and of course they can’t.  And so, booths don’t get built after all.

What happens on the sea is similar, if a little more complicated.  It’s early in the morning, still dark, and the disciples are still struggling to reach shore.  They must be exhausted, and they are still no closer to land.  

And Jesus begins to walk toward them, across the sea that is still hindering them.  As they struggle, they see their teacher, their friend, approaching them, walking on the sea as if it were a solid floor. Or is it him at all, or are they seeing what they long to see?

Of course these exhausted men, still trying to cross to safety, are near panic, as they see Jesus once again in a numinous manner—casually defying the normal laws of nature.  The fact that they are in danger on the sea makes this sighting of Jesus more not less frightening. Trapped as they are in the failing boat, they will drown if help doesn’t come soon.

So they see what they perceive as a ghost, and are understandably terrified.  They haven’t been trained to think of ghost stories as a pleasant entertaining fiction; they think they are, in addition to all their other problems, about to encounter the uncanny.

And so they do.

Even when he is close enough to be seen clearly, Jesus’s walking across the sea is at best startling; Jesus is embodying the Holy before their very eyes.  The man, their Teacher, their friend, is temporarily eclipsed by the supernatural presence of the Holy One of Israel. His attempt to calm them down leads Peter (it’s always Peter, isn’t it?) to challenge him, asking him to command him to join Jesus on the sea.  

Jesus does so, and Peter leaves the boat, and, at first, is walking toward Jesus. As he steps closer, the sheer impossibility of what he is doing suddenly hits him, and he panics, and begins to sink, calling out “Lord save me!” Jesus does, of course, and he gently rebukes Peter’s lack of faith.  The winds and the waves still, and the sea is like glass.

This is not a ghost story.  

But it chronicles a supernatural event. Not a haunting, not a nightmare story, or even a well told tale.  This reading reminds us that sometimes the walls between the mundane and the Kingdom of God are tissue thin, and that God can part those walls, finding yet another way to hearten, to strengthen, to love his people, even while we struggle to comprehend just what it is what we have seen.

The disciples, like us, are struggling to understand just what Jesus means to them, who he is. This latest manifestation, so like a ghost, is unsettling, until Jesus takes Peter’s hand, pulls him back to his feet (still on the water) and fondly shakes his head at Peter’s failing courage.  Like Peter, we try to understand Christ, but that just doesn’t work, no matter how hard or how often we try.  No, we become closer to him through experience—sometimes seeing Jesus in the face of a friend, or of a teacher, or of a parent. We can see Jesus in our memories of those we have loved and who are no longer with us. Most of all, we can see Jesus in those he served, the poor, the hungry, the woman living on the street who still carries her head high. As we swim through a constellation of all kinds and types of people, we can suddenly realize that God is here, and Christ is now. And we don’t even have to get out of the boat.   

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^[1] See generally Jan N. Bremer, “Descents to the Underworld from Gilgamesh to Christian Late Antiquity,”Studia Religiologica, vol. 50, issue 4, (2017), pp. 291-309.