Walking on Water Is Overrated

Proper 14A: Matthew 14:22-33

There is an old story often told in the Eastern part of the church about a devout abbot. The abbot decided to make a long spiritual retreat in a small cabin located on a remote island in the middle of a large lake. He told his fellow monks that he wanted to spend his days in prayer, so as to grow closer to God. For six months he remained on the island with no other person seeing him or hearing from him in all that time. But then one day, as two monks were standing near the shore washing their laundry, they could see in the distance a figure moving toward them. It was the abbot—walking on water!— coming toward the shore. After the abbot passed by the two monks and continued on to the monastery, one of the monks turned to the other and said, “All these months in prayer and the abbot is still as stingy as ever. After all, the ferry only costs 25 cents!”

What this little story does is remind us of how easily we can miss the significance of something that is right in front of us. The same can be said about another story of walking on water, the one we just heard from Matthew’s Gospel.

Now, I've heard quite a few sermons on this passage that can basically be summed up by the title of a book by John Ortberg: If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. According to these sermons, Peter had the right idea getting out of the boat, literally “stepping out on faith.” The problem, as it is usually put, is that Peter took his eyes off Jesus, and his faith faltered, but Jesus was there to save him. So, we are told, we just need to be like Peter and summon up the courage to swing our legs out over the boat's side and step out onto the waters. If we do, then we will be able to do great things for God, if we just keep our eyes fixed on Him. We just need to have the guts to get out of the boat, to take risks, to put our full faith in Jesus alone, and then to walk upon the waters! Here endeth the sermon. Amen.

As an exhortation, it's not bad. It implores us to a more active and vital faith than we often seem to manage. And I’ll grant that there are many in the church who need to hear that particular message, that they need to stop sitting in the boat and step out on faith, perhaps especially now, given the decreasing influence of the church and our weakened confidence in the faith today.

But that’s not the only interpretation we can make of this passage, and it may not be the most faithful or the most helpful. Indeed, to make Peter a model of faith kind of misses the point, just as those monks did in the story I just told. After all, when Peter gets back in the boat, the other disciples don't congratulate him on his first water-walking attempt and wish him better luck next time! The focus of the story is not Peter, but Jesus, whom the disciples rightly worship when he joins them in the boat.

Consider for a moment another story, from earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, a story that also involves Jesus, a boat, and the disciples caught in a storm. In that story, Jesus is in the boat, asleep, not walking on water. The disciples are frightened because they’re caught in a big storm and think they are going to go under. But when they wake Jesus, he rebukes them, calling them “you of little faith,” as he does Peter in today’s story, before rebuking and calming the storm. In today’s story, there is no storm, but there are wind and waves. The disciples don’t seem to be fearing for their lives here, as before. What does spook them though is seeing someone walking on the water! They think it's a ghost. Jesus tries to reassure them he’s not: “Fear not. It is I.”—but Peter isn’t sure he can believe what he’s seeing. "If it is you, Lord, then command me to come to you."

Now, when you start a sentence about Jesus with “If,” you know you’re in trouble. The very word smacks of doubt, of needing to put something or someone to the test. There are only a couple of other times in the Gospel when someone addresses Jesus with the word "if." The first time, it was the devil in the wilderness, testing Jesus, saying repeatedly, "If you are the Son of God, then do this miraculous feat— turn stones into bread, leap off the temple.” It happens again near the end of Matthew’s Gospel, when the chief priests and other onlookers taunt him: “If you are the Son of God, come down from that cross!” So, Simon Peter’s not exactly in good company when he says, “If it is you, then prove yourself by commanding me to do something spectacular.”

Still, as much as we might hate to admit it, Peter is doing no worse than what we sometimes do. Sometimes we say things like, “Lord, I've served you all my days and have tried to live a good life. So make me exempt from the storm of illness. Show the world that I am your fair-haired child by enabling me to rise above the storms of life that bedevil other, less faithful people.” Or we say, “Lord, since I've gone to the trouble to be here at church, and in the middle of summer, no less, show me some irrefutable sign that you really are who the church claims you to be. Prove to me that my faith in you is justified.” Or, “Lord, look at me! I'm a spiritual warrior, a hero of faith! Watch me show the world how good I am at believing! Watch me now; here I go out into the waves. Watch me glide untouched over the foam! See? I have real faith!” Ok, maybe we don’t say things like that, but we may well think them. The point is, we can act just like Peter, if we are being honest.

Surprisingly, Jesus gives in to Peter’s request. “Well, then…come on out here.” So Simon, whom Jesus renamed Peter, “the rock,” gets out and makes it a few steps on the water, before he starts to sink…well, like a rock…because he “sees the wind” and becomes afraid. He cries out “Lord, save me!” And Jesus grabs hold of him, pulls him up and then chides him for his doubt. “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Notice: He scolds only Peter. There is no rebuke of the others, who had faith enough to stay in the boat, hauling on their oars until their Lord came to them.

Quite opposite of what it is usually taken to mean, this story teaches that if we have faith, we will stay in the boat. Human beings are not intended to walk on water, and if we try, we will quickly find ourselves in deep over our heads and unable to save ourselves. But when we find ourselves in that situation, by our own fault or by events beyond our control, this story teaches us to follow Peter’s example, to call on Jesus: “Lord, save me!” Peter calls out and Jesus immediately reaches out and catches hold of him, stopping him from sinking into the depths. When we feel like we are going under, we can call on Jesus and he will save us.

But Jesus is more than just someone who gets us out of trouble when we are in over our heads. In both stories—Jesus asleep in the boat and Jesus walking on water—we see Jesus as nothing less than Lord over the storm, the waves, and the sea. For ancient Jews, you see, wind and water were not simply meteorological phenomena, but forces of chaos present in nature, held at bay by the power of God, but always threatening. To Jews, being on the sea is to be in peril, for the sea represents all the anxieties and dark powers that threaten to undo the goodness of God’s created order. And so whereas we modern-minded people think of walking on water as defying the laws of gravity, to the biblical mind, Jesus’ stroll across the stormy Sea was an act of overcoming the power of chaos. Quite appropriately then, at the end of this passage, instead of just wondering what sort of person Jesus is, the disciples worship him as Son of God. They recognize, or have begun to recognize, who this man is who can still the storm and conquer the chaos of our lives, as well as of the deep.

We should note also that in both stories of Jesus at sea, Jesus ends up in the boat with the disciples. Rather than commending the courageous faith of believers, the point of these stories is that Jesus is in the boat with us. He puts himself there, not above the roiling waves of life or at a distance from our struggles, but alongside us, in the same boat we are in. Indeed, this is the point of the Incarnation, God becoming human. Jesus subjects himself to the same chaotic forces we are subject to, even though he has authority over them. Jesus is “God with us,” Emmanuel, in all that we experience, the highs but also more importantly the lows, with us in our trials and travails.

But there’s yet another lesson we can take from this, one that is hinted at in Christian art. One of the earliest Christian symbols was the ship, the boat, which was taken to be a symbol for the Church. Often the connection was made between the Church and Noah’s ark. The ark was how God saved Noah and his family and all the animals, carrying them through the flood to repopulate the washed and restored world. In the same way, the Church is the vessel God uses to save his people and carry them through the tempests of this life to the shining new world God has prepared for those who love him. And this symbolism persists even today in church architecture. The interior of the church is typically called the “nave,” from the same root where we get the words navy and naval. It’s called a nave because if you look up at the ceiling of the church, it looks like the inside of a boat upside down.

This idea of the church as a boat fits well with our story today. For just as Jesus’ disciples are left with only the fragile craft to save them from the chaos of the wind and waves, just so Christians today, buffeted by suffering or sickness or persecution, are given this boat, the church, to weather the storms of life and bring us through. And we take solace and strength from knowing that Jesus is in the boat with us. He is with us in the ship that is the church. You want to know where to find God, where to find Jesus, come aboard the good ship “Church,” for Jesus is here.

But make no mistake, if you are coming aboard, this ship is not a cruise ship. It doesn’t keep close to shore, where it’s safe. Jesus calls us out into the deep, out onto the sea and the rough waves, for that is the only way to get where we are going. A ship is safe in a harbor, but that is not what a ship is for. It’s for venturing out, chancing the storms and seas, to reach others with the message of Jesus, and in the process discover what we can about the world, ourselves, and God’s goodness.

Now, as I said, there is some truth to the conventional reading of this passage: if you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat. That’s a lesson we need to hear sometimes. But that’s not the lesson we should draw from this story this morning. The point of this story is not “If Peter had enough faith, he could have walked on the water,” just as the message to us is not “If we had enough faith, we could overcome all our problems in miraculous, supernatural ways.” Following Jesus is not about spectacular feats. Far more often, it is just about staying in the boat that is the Church and pulling faithfully on our oar against the winds that howl, believing that Jesus is near. Leave walking on water to Jesus. The ship which is the Church is where we want to be. This ship provides the way for us to make it through the storms of adversity to reach the distant shore of God’s Kingdom. That is where Jesus is, in the storm, in the same boat we are in, standing by us and leading us on to new horizons. And for that we say, “Thanks be to God.” Amen.