SHOULD WE GET OUT OF THE BOAT -- OR, NOT?
(Preached on Sunday, August 7, 2005)
But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, if is I; do not be afaid.” -Matthew 14:27
On the morning of July 26, 2005, the world got a small glimpse of what it must have been like for Jesus’ disciples as Peter walked out of the boat on the water to meet Jesus. They must have held their breath in suspense as Peter climbed out of the boat, exactly like we held our breath as the space shuttle Discovery took off from launch pad 39B of the Kennedy Space Center. The past few years have been difficult for NASA. It has been two and a half years since the tragic loss of the Columbia space shuttle and her crew. The launch of the Discovery shuttle had been bumped back several times due to safety concerns.
When Discovery finally launched, many people stopped to pray and many literally stopped breathing for a moment or two. Even the commentators on the radio and television fell silent for a number of seconds. We are all still here on planet Earth, but we were watching a brave crew of seven people step off of the boat, so to speak, despite many worries for their safety. We will continue to hold our breath until their safe landing tomorrow, August 8th.
Please pause with me in prayer: Almighty God, shepherd and guide, help us to support those who take leaps of faith in their lives. Guide us in our own leaps of faith and give us
strength when we face challenges to our faith. Bless the crew of the Discovery shuttle and their brave voyage. We pray for their safe return to Earth. Amen.
This is one of those stories where you can get way off track by arguing over whether Jesus and Peter actually walked on water. Whatever anyone says about that topic may be interesting but misses the point.
The question is not whether Jesus, by the will of God, could or could not, did or did not, walk on water.
If God wanted Jesus to walk on water, Jesus would do so.
Not by magic but by the power of God.
The important question is why was this story so treasured by those early Christians who spread the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire? Why did it end up written down in three of our four biblical gospels?
The answer to that, of course, is that is spoke to them in a special way. It spoke to them of their situation in the world and of their relationship with God.
Think of it as a sort of enacted parable.
It is all about trust.
It is about trusting God when everything in life seems to be working against you, as the winds and the waves were working against Jesus’ disciples in that boat.
It’s all well and good to say “trust God” when the seas are calm and the sailing easy. It’s another thing all together to actually trust God when the storms are blowing fiercely against you and you seem to be making no headway whatsoever.
But the really strange question that lies at the heart of Matthew’s account of this story is this: Does it take more faith to stay in the boat, or to walk on water?
Matthew is the only gospel to add this little account of Peter trying to join Jesus on the waves of the sea.
The other two gospels don’t include that bit.
So what is Matthew trying to communicate?
The traditional answer has always held Peter up as a role model of faith: the only one courageous enough to get out of the boat and try to follow Jesus.
But is that really what is going on here?
That approach actually overlooks Peter’s initial question.
Look again at the story with me.
The disciples are struggling in the midst of a great storm at sea and suddenly they see Jesus walking across the sea coming toward them. It is the middle of the night and they don’t recognize him, they think it is a ghost, perhaps a demon, and they cry out in fear.
But Jesus says to them, “Courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.”
In response Peter blurts out, “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
Now notice, Peter’s response is rooted in doubt - “if it is you.”
What is that about? Didn’t he recognize Jesus’ voice? Didn’t he think that if it was a demon that it might call him forth anyway? How would this prove anything anyway?
It also rings loudly with an echo of the challenge from Satan to Jesus in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread; if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the top of the Temple and God’s angels will bear you up and save you.”
“If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
Jesus would have been utterly justified in saying “Peter, sit down and shut up. Your embarrassing yourself. Forget the heroics and get back in the boat.”
But Jesus doesn’t reproach Peter at this point.
Instead he calls to him, lets him venture out, then sink, then cry out.
Maybe that was all Jesus needed to hear from him all along.
Not, “Hey, Jesus, if it is really you, help me do something great and miraculous and spectacular for all the world to see” but rather, “Thank God you are here, please help us for we can’t do it alone and we need your strength, your presence, your guidance in this storm.”
Jesus saves him and then says to Peter, “Faint-heart, what got into you?” (That’s sort of how the Greek reads, “Faint-heart” like Jesus is renaming Peter again after once calling him “The Rock.”)
Maybe it wasn’t that Peter began to doubt once he felt the wind and the waves. Maybe his doubt was in his demand of Jesus in the first place. “O Faint-heart, why didn’t you have enough faith to stay seated in the boat with the others and let me come to yo in my own good time? Haven’t you learned enough of me to know that in the storm is when I most love to come to you and love you? You don’t need to jump the gun and dash off after me. Just wait in the boat and have some faith that I’ll come in good time to you.”
Notice that Jesus only rebukes Peter for his lack of faith.
To the others seated in the boat who didn’t even attempt Peter’s spiritual gymnastics, Jesus just comes, gets into the boat with them, and there is a great calm at the ending of the storm.
“You’ve just got to have faith,” well-meaning friends sometimes urge upon us when we are faced with some storm in life.
Venture forth. Be a hero. Dismiss your doctors and have faith that prayer will heal you! Don’t plan what to do next, just close your eyes and jump and demand that God catch you before you fall.
But maybe faith, great faith, is the calm, unheroic, but still impressive conviction that enables you to stay at your place in the boat, even though there’s a storm, confident that you don’t have to come to Jesus.
In good time, he’ll come to you.
In truth, God is already with you.
Maybe you are familiar with the saga of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, who led the crew of his ice-trapped ship, the Endurance, on a perilous journey to safety, by open boat and on foot across barren ice and snow. The final part of that journey was accomplished by a hiking party composed of Shackleton and the two strongest of his men, who made it back to civilization and summoned help to rescue the others. Reflecting on his survival experience, Shackleton recalled, “When I look back on those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snow-fields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant island from our landing place in South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterward Worsely said to me: ‘Boss, I had the curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.’”
Often it is in the crises of life, when unexpected trials come our way, that we sense the presence of God most clearly in our lives.
Finally, staying in the boat doesn’t mean doing nothing.
If you look at the story, the disciples were not panicking or despairing, they weren’t passively waiting and hoping for some kind of miracle.
On the contrary, they were working through a long dark night to make progress, and were seemingly doing so.
Nor were they overcome with fear, until they saw what they thought was a ghost.
As in all the gospel, the main point of the story is to teach us about Jesus and God. And that lesson is that God is always with us, no matter what storms come our way. Therefore, we do not need to be frozen with fear, nor need we doubt God’s presence, love and care.
Rather we are to live our lives and do the work God sends us to do with courage, trusting God to be with us always.
We can also remember that even when we stray from the boat and strike out on our own, even when our doubts get the better of us and we challenge God to prove God’s love to us, even when the storms begin to overwhelm our courage and trust, even then, God will be there to reach out and grab us and bring us safely back to the boat.
The most important thing for us to remember, always, is that whether we get out of the boat or not, we are never out of God’s hands, we are never outside of God’s care.
That is the power for living.