Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge ;-)

I'm preaching this week on the story of Jesus walking on the water, from the Gospel according to Matthew.  This morning I met with a bunch of pastors to talk about the lectionary texts for this week.  We had a good discussion going, but because we're all intellectual sorts it is inevitable that at some point one of us is going to kind of blithely mention the possibility that in fact this might not have happened the way it says.  None of us are what you would call literalists, but we're all searching for an angle that seems interesting in this particular story.
One problem, as it appears to the modern mind, is that this doesn't make sense as a miracle.  Most of Jesus' other miracles were born out of compassion for people (even in one case, compassion for a wedding party that was going to be over a little too soon).  The walking on water thing just seems like Jesus is showing off.  There's no human purpose to it, other than to create this little scene with Peter and the other disciples.
But why is that not okay?
The struggle to understand Scripture for modern people is no longer about debunking myths.  Much damage has been done in the name of God, using flawed interpretations of Scripture and often doing so in an excessively literal or fundamentalist manner.  But in the world today, I think we need to hold on to more of our sacred stories, not hack away at the roots of our very humanity.  There is danger, of course, in understanding that Scripture, including the Gospels, is not a detailed historical record of everything that happened, and admitting that perhaps some stories were included for didactic purposes and perhaps were even driven by some agenda or were written in response to a situation that came up well after Jesus was actually walking around.  The danger is that we somehow negate the value of anything our rather limited modern historical perspective says is unlikely to be actually true.
Which is stupid, because we create meaning through fictional stories all of the time.  Outside of the Bible, Shakespeare's works have been incredibly formative to western civilization, and last I checked, he didn't write any non-fiction, even his histories of the English Kings are at best "based on the true story."  But does it matter if Henry V really gave the "band of brothers" monologue on the eve of Agincourt?  Is it any less inspiring?  Does the fact that Hamlet or Macbeth were fictional characters make their contribution to the world any less important?
I'm going to say that it matters not one whit.
But if I'm going to take that position, I need to be consistent.  If I'm going to say that I find sacred value in the story of Noah or Jonah, or some of the more suspect tales about Jesus, I need to actually embrace that sacred value, and not be a scoffer under my breath.
If I'm going to say that the truth of Scripture is greater than literalism allows it to be, then I need to allow it to be as well.  I should not narrow my perspective until I make the actual mistake that literalists always claim is down a slippery slope: if it's not all true than none of it is true, and if it's not completely true in our "objective" framework of understanding than it's not true at all, in any way.
This is a place where ancient people, who believed all sorts of things that we know to be false, actually have a leg up on us in understanding the mystery that truth doesn't have to be factual or rational to be truth.
Sure it helps when truth and the facts line up.  It's nice when you can back up your conclusions with nicely ordered proof and explanations, but I suspect that if that is the only criteria you accept, you are giving up on an awful lot of the beauty of being human (not all, just some really important parts).
Faith, hope and love are damnably subjective things, and yet they are the crowning glory of the human condition.  They are things we understand from stories and relationships and they absolutely refuse to be valid subjects of scientific investigation.
I'm going to believe that Jesus walked on water because it helps me learn something deep about faith and life.  Because I like the way things are better in a world where it's true.
There is, I believe, a historical reality to the life and teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
There are also places where the raw material of that reality has been formed in the hands of the Gospel writers, and places where translation and interpretive decisions have been made with regard to how they have been passed down.
I believe that perhaps the biggest miracle of Jesus is that he can still speak to so many, so that we can hear the truth through so much static.