One of those false beliefs that plagues the church in these days of
rampant narcissism is the idea that pursuing Jesus is something that I can and
should do in “my” pursuit of a better “me”. If “I” have enough faith in Jesus, “I” can
leap over walls, move mountains, walk on water, tread on serpents, and soar
like an eagle. This story of Peter
walking on water is one of the key passages this vein of thought relies on to
undergird its point. The story goes that
Peter took that leap of faith. At Jesus’
command he jumped out of the boat and actually started walking on water. But, he took his eyes off of Jesus and then began to sink. Christian self-help-ism
tells us to “in faith take those risks of doing those things you’ve always dreamed
of, do what you feel passionate about and if you stay focused on Jesus,
miraculous things will happen”. It’s
bunk.
The problem with this way of believing is that it requires us to
divorce faith from the real situations of life and to separate ourselves from the
true relational love and support of genuine Christian fellowship. The faith that Jesus calls us to is not found
in heroic individualism and self-fulfilment.
The faith he calls us to is struggling together as his disciples with
the troubling difficulties of life and recognizing who he is and that he is in
the boat with us.
Let me just cut to the chase here.
What Peter did in this passage was not admirably take a leap of faith
and then blow it. What he actually did
was the polar opposite. He put the Lord,
his God, to the test.
Here’s how it went down. The
disciples are in the boat in the dark of night in a windstorm that’s causing
waves to batter the boat. That word for
batter can also mean torment or torture.
It’s violent, tumultuous out there.
I think we are supposed to be getting the image here of the first
day of creation. Genesis 1 says that
darkness covered the waters and a wind from God was blowing over the
waters. The disciples being in this
windstorm in the dark in a wave battered boat is a raw image of primordial
chaos…the primordial chaos of the New Creation.
Genesis goes on to say, “Then God said “Let there be light” and
there was light and God saw that the light was good.” In Matthew, the light is a ghostly looking
Jesus walking to them on the storm-tossed sea.
Being fishermen, they probably were familiar with rough water and so we
find that they aren’t really frightened until they “see the light”, the ghostly
Jesus. Jesus tells them, “Take heart. It
is I. Don be afraid.” “It is I” there in
the Greek is literally “I am” – ergo eimi.
The Hebrew name for God, Yahweh, simply means I am. The light coming to the disciples in the
battered boat in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of this mighty wind
blowing is the Lord God himself. Jesus
is the Lord God himself.
In the midst of all this what does Peter do? He puts this ghostly looking Jesus who has
just identified himself as his God to the test.
He says, “Lord, if it is you”…command me to do something impossibly
stupid. What’s the test? If the ghostly Jesus is God, then his word,
his command, must come to its fruition? If
Jesus commands him to, Peter will walk on water. What’s wrong with this picture? God walks on water and if Peter can walk on
water, then he would be a god like God as well.
That’s the issue Adam fell over. Peter tested the Lord.
Where have we heard that tone of voice before? Well, Satan.
When Satan tempted Jesus he used more or less the same question. “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone
to bread.” (4:3) “If you are the Son of
God, throw yourself down”…from the pinnacle of the temple (4:6). The High Priest when he had Jesus on trial
said to Jesus, “I put you under oath before the Living God, tell us if you are
the Messiah, the Son of God” (26:63).
Those who mocked Jesus on the cross said, “If you are the Son of God,
come down from the cross.” Peter has
found himself in the company of those who put the Lord to the test of proving
himself. Ultimately, that’s what leaps
of faith do.
Peter the Leaper is the “one of little faith” who nearly
drowns. He is the disciple who got out
of the boat. The other disciples stayed
in the boat. Throughout the history of
the interpretation of this story, the boat is the church – the loving
fellowship of the disciples of Christ.
Jesus brings Peter back to the boat and when Jesus gets in the boat, the
wind ceases. Those in the boat worshipped
him and professed, “Truly, you are the Son of God.” The first day of New Creation had occurred
and it was good.
In Christian fellowship, in the boat, is where Jesus, the Son of
God, will come to us. We don’t have to
take heroic leaps of faith to find Jesus or to get him to prove himself to us. Yet, if there is a risk Jesus calls us to, it
is to the faithfulness of the cross-shaped way of life that we must take as we
go about learning how to love one another as he has loved us, to love our
neighbours as well. Staying in the boat
is putting the highest priority on how we love one another and our neighbours,
on the quality of our relationships in Christ.
Getting to know one another by sharing our struggles and praying for one
another and finding Jesus in the middle of it all making all things new. I hope you can catch a glimpse of the
profundity of what God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit is doing among
us in the midst of our relationships with one another
One thing I saw in this passage this time through that I had never
seen before was that Jesus made the disciples get into that boat and go to the
other side of the lake. He compelled
them (that’s a strong word) to get in the boat for a journey that would find
them out in darkness in a great wind on a violent sea. More or less, he intentionally put them in
harms way. All the while, he was up on
the mountain praying for them. Then
towards morning, he came to join them in the boat and the result of it all was
that they now knew him, knew who he really is, the Son of God...and the walking
on the water bit demonstrates that he is Lord of all Creation.
As disciples of Jesus we have to struggle with the notion that
everything that happens to us, particularly even the worst of it, is the boat
Jesus has put us in and he will use that to reveal to us who he is and make us
new. When we are out there in our
battered boats he himself is praying for us.
When the time is right, he will come presently come to us. But we have to remember that this happens in
the boat. Stepping out of the boat is a
lesson we don’t need to learn. Jesus is
God the Son, the Word of God that must come to its fruition, the Lord of All
Creation. He prays for us. When we are hurting the most. He is praying for us. He comes to us, he is with us in the boat of
our fellowship with one another. He is making
us to be New Creation in his image. We
don’t have to be Lone Ranger faith-warriors.
We just have to stay in the boat.
Amen.
