Matthew 14:22-33
Testing Faith: Stepping Out of the Boat
James Sledge August
9, 2020
Even
in an age of biblical illiteracy, a great many people have heard of Jesus
walking on the water. It’s a well-worn metaphor. The part about Peter walking
on the water may not be as well known, but I heard the story enough growing up
in the church that it’s familiar to me and, perhaps, to many of you.
If
you are familiar with the story, what are your thoughts on Peter? How does he
function in this story, as a heroic figure, an example to follow? Or is he a vivid
illustration of the disciples’ regular failure to “get it,” their struggles
with faith?
I
don’t know if I came to this on my own or if I picked it up along the way from
sermons and Sunday School, but I’ve long thought of Peter as a cautionary tale,
a failure, the one you don’t want to be, soaking wet with Jesus wagging a
finger at you. “You of little faith…”
I
mentioned in last week’s sermon how my father read Bible stories to us as children.
This helped me learn many of the major stories from the Bible, but it also
oversimplified them, making them a bit like comic books. And that view of
Scripture stuck with me well into adulthood.
I
thought of the Bible as mostly a collection of simple, even crude stories with
clear and obvious meanings. This thinking was encouraged by popular notions of
the Bible as straightforward reports of “what happened.” It never occurred to
me that much of the Bible was written by sophisticated theological thinkers who
told carefully nuanced stories, filled with symbolism and multiple layers of
meaning.
In
my simple, comic book view, our gospel reading is a plain old miracle story,
another fantastical account of the unbelievable stuff Jesus could do. The
disciples are there just to provide terrified, awe-filled witnesses, and Peter,
well Peter’s tendency to speak first and think later always got him into trouble.
And here he goes again.
It
may have been seminary that finally helped me see Scripture for the great
literature that it is. Perhaps I was slower than most to give up my childish
understanding of the Bible, but I have met many intelligent, well-educated, enlightened
adults who regard Scripture with a certain disdain, thinking it a primitive, unsophisticated
collection of stories and tales.
With
all of that in mind, let’s take a look at our story. But we first need to
recall the story that precedes it. In this feeding miracle, the meager
resources of the disciples – who almost always a symbolize the Church in
Matthew’s gospel – provide more than enough to feed thousands of hungry people
with an abundance left over to spare.
Having
demonstrated to the disciples/Church what amazing things can be done no matter
how sparse their means, Jesus sends the disciples out in the boat on their own.
The boat was adopted by the first Christians as a symbol of the Church, and so
perhaps we could say that Jesus sends out the Church, having been shown how
much they can do with Jesus’ help, onto the waters, into a dangerous world.
For
ancient Jews like the author of Matthew’s gospel, and the congregation of
Jewish Christians he wrote for, the sea had largely negative connotations.
Israel was never a seafaring people. In their Creation story, God’s good world
is drawn out of a watery, formless void, pre-creation chaos. And in the Noah
story – another sophisticated, misunderstood, theological reflection – the
question of whether God might allow a wayward world simply to descend back into
watery chaos is asked and answered.
In
our story, the boat/Church, sent by Jesus out into a world where anti-creation
forces are at work, finds itself battered and tossed about when Jesus comes
toward them. Here the disciples seem no longer to be people but more like the
chorus in a Greek play, operating in unison. They were terrified, and
they say, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.
But
then Jesus speaks into the chaos, and the scene shifts dramatically. The Greek
chorus vanishes, reappearing at the story’s end. Now it is just Jesus and
Peter, another symbolic figure. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come out
to you on the water.”
There
goes Peter again, shooting off his mouth without thinking as he so often does.
Yet Jesus does not chastise him, does not correct him as we would expect if
Peter is out of line. No, Jesus does precisely as Peter asks, and this disciple
steps out on the water with Jesus.
Peter
leaves the safety of the boat, the protective walls of the Church, and goes
toward Jesus, goes to join him among the wind and the waves, amidst the forces
of chaos. We so often hurry to what happens next that we may fail to notice
what a remarkable feat this is: Peter, walking on the water just as Jesus does.
Peter, stepping out in faith, taking a huge risk.
But
eventually, the dangers all around get the better of Peter, as surely they
would most anyone. He cries out, perhaps thinking of the psalm. Save
me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck… Do not let the flood sweep
over me, or the deep swallow me up.[1] And Jesus quickly offers his hand and
lifts him up. “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” In my image of this
scene, Jesus is smiling, not wagging a finger. He’s not chastising Peter but
encouraging him for the next time.
What
if Peter had never left the boat, never left the safety of the church walls? He
would never have known the feeling of walking on water, of facing the
anti-creation forces that would thwart God’s good and abundant world. He would
never have learned that when his faith wavers, when he stumbles and falls,
Jesus will lift him up.
I wonder if this story isn’t much more
than an emphatic statement about Jesus being a more powerful than the
anti-creation forces of greed, hate, racism, selfishness, despair, and more. I
wonder if this story isn’t inviting us to join Peter, to step out of the boat,
to join Jesus in ministering to a broken world. I wonder if Peter isn’t the one
we are supposed to emulate.
___________________________________________________________________
Some
years ago, Ernest Campbell, a Presbyterian minister who pastored Riverside
Church in New York City during the turmoil of the late 60s into the mid-70s,
spoke to a group of faith leaders about the crisis in the Church. That was a
time when people’s trust in institutions started to break down, and the
institutional church began a decline that persists until this day. Campbell
said, "…the reason that we seem to lack faith in our time is that we are
not doing anything that requires it."[2]
Stepping
out of the boat and into the storms of a troubled world requires a great deal
of faith. It involves no small amount of risk, even more so when Covid-19 is
raging and racial unrest is boiling over in cities and towns large and small.
It is tempting to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. But if this
story is any guide, we discover the amazing things Jesus empowers us to do, and
the certainty that Jesus will lift us up should fall, only when we have faith
and take the risk to step out into the storm with Jesus.
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