Matthew 14:22-33
Lord, If It Is You…
James Sledge August 7, 2011
Have you ever wondered what the other disciples thought when Peter made is little excursion out onto the Sea of Galilee, walking on the water toward Jesus? The way Matthew tells us the story, these disciples are a nameless, faceless mass. We never see any of them individually, besides Peter. We know that they are terrified. Matthew says they cry out, “It is a ghost!” Did they shout in unison. Did someone cue them saying, “Okay, all together now. One, two, three, go! It’s a ghost!”?
So how did these nameless, faceless disciples react as one of their number heard Jesus saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid,” and responded by saying, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” The story doesn’t tell us. The disciples are have no role in the story after they think they see a ghost until after Peter and Jesus are back in the boat. Only then do we hear from them again as they worship Jesus saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
That Jesus is said to have walked on water is one of the better known reports from the gospels. It is so well known that the idea of walking on water has become a metaphor symbolizing the impossible, the miraculous. Certainly walking on water is impossible as far as I know, but I’m not sure that this fully appreciates what is going on in our story.
There are a number of places in the Bible where water functions as a kind of anti-creation force, a danger and even a foe to God’s life-giving, creative activity. Many Christians are fond of saying that God created ex nihilo, that is “out of nothing.” But in the Creation story that opens the book of Genesis, there is already a chaotic, formless deep over which God’s Spirit hovers and out of which God calls forth order and life.
And the Noah’s ark story is about whether or not God will give up on wayward creation and allow it to be swallowed back up in the anti-creation forces of water.
At the end of the Noah story creation is still just as wayward, but there is the absolute promise that God will never allow the waters to overwhelm that creation.Alongside the powerful, anti-creation, chaos metaphor of the stormy waters, the boat was adopted by the early Church as a symbol. And so in this story we have a nameless, faceless group of followers in a boat, believers in the Church, buffeted by the forces of the storm, when Jesus comes to them. But in their precarious situation, in their fear, they do not recognize him, and his appearance makes them even more terrified… Until he speaks.
Actually, we do not know how they reacted when Jesus spoke. At that moment, the nameless, faceless disciples recede, and there is only Peter. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” For some reason this story cannot end simply with Jesus coming to them. The power of Jesus over the anti-creation, chaos forces demands something more. It invites the disciples, the Church, or at least one disciple, one Church member to step from the safety of the boat. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
Perhaps this is simply Peter’s petulant bravado speaking. But Jesus does not dismiss it as such. No, Jesus honors Peter’s request. He does just as Peter asks saying, “Come.” And Peter climbs out of the boat, right out onto the anti-creation, chaos forces churning around it. Peter steps onto the water and begins to walk toward Jesus.
But those nameless, faceless disciples, the “they” we last saw terrified, screaming about a ghost… what are they doing? Are their mouths agape? Did they urge Peter not to do something so foolish? And when they see him actually walking on the water, what must they be thinking? And when he falters and begins to sink, did that gasp and reach toward him? Or do they shake their heads at how is own foolishness had gotten him in this mess?
I don’t know about you, but hearing this story growing up somehow left me with the impression that Peter failed. I heard the story as a cautionary tale about a lack of faith. Yet how many of us have ever walked on water for even a short distance? This is no cautionary tale, rather it is an invitation to risky faith. And I wonder if it is not an invitation the Church desperately needs to hear.
I ran across a quote made some years ago by Earnest Campbell who died just last year. Campbell was pastor of Riverside Church in NYC back in the 70s, and at some conference e was discussing the state of the Church and said, "the reason that we seem to lack faith in our time is that we are not doing anything that requires it."[1] Or to phrase it in terms of today’s gospel, the Church seems not to have much faith in our day because no one is willing to climb over the side of the boat.
If this gospel story is meant as instruction in faith, as I am convinced that it is, then it seems to say that faith requires great risk. It demands climbing over the side and onto the turbulent waters. It even expects that we will falter on those waters. We will become frightened and fall. But Jesus will reach out to us and lift us up. In fact, I suspect that slipping into the waters and being grabbed by Jesus is an absolutely essential lesson of faith.
In our day, the Church often finds itself facing great difficulties. To perhaps press the metaphors of storm and boat too far, we have been battered by storms, and quite often the reaction is to draw in on ourselves, to batten the hatches if you will. We become nameless, faceless, frightened disciples, huddled in out boats. Is Jesus out there anywhere? And if he is, who among us dares say, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
Perhaps water is not the best metaphor. Water doesn’t carry the same sense of danger and threat to faith it did for First Century Jews. So what is it that lies over the edge of the boat for us? What is beyond our church walls that keeps us from boldly engaging the world around us, from carrying the good news of God’s new day out into the community. What is it that keeps us huddled in our little boat, frightened and hoping for the storm to pass?
Do we think Jesus has abandoned us? Are we truly alone in the storm with nothing but our own devices to rely on? Or is Jesus moving on the storm, a power greater than all the anti-creation forces of chaos? Can you see him? Can you hear him calling? And are there a few among us like Peter who will call to him? “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you.”
[1] Told by Clifton Kirkpatrick in the “Pastoral Perspective” comments for Proper 14, Matthew 14:22-33, in Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 3, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) Kindle location 11968 of 14135.
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