The biblical text for this sermon is Matthew 14:22–33.
Video link below. The sermon starts at 0:24:00.
My favorite activity that my wife and I do with our kids is our regular family prayer ritual. We sing, share our joys and concerns for the day, take a moment of silence, and discuss some short passage of spiritual literature. One night, during this ritual, we were discussing this passage from the gospels, where Jesus and Peter walk on the water together.
My son, then about ten years old, spoke up and said, “Stories like this are why I have a hard time believing in the Bible.”
I sympathized with his skepticism, saying, “Yeah, I can understand that. Jesus walking on the water is something that seems impossible.”
But he surprised me by responding, “Oh, no. That’s not it. Jesus is God, so he can do whatever he wants; it’s Peter walking on the water that I don’t understand!” He explained that Peter is supposed to be a regular person, like any of us, and regular people can’t walk on water.
Admittedly, this threw me for a loop. However, I think my son has raised an interesting point with this observation.
The story of Jesus walking on the water appears in three out of the four gospels in our Bible. Only Luke neglects to mention it. But only Matthew includes the part where Peter gets out of the boat and joins Jesus on the water.
The important point my son raises is this: With a little bit of faith, regular people can do impossible things too.
Peter, by all accounts, is a regular guy. He’s a fisherman on the shore of the Galilean Sea. One day, some itinerant preacher named Jesus borrows his boat to use as a pulpit, all heaven breaks loose, and Peter finds himself swept up in an adventure beyond his wildest imagination. The rest, as they say, is history.
Regular old Peter never expected to find himself in a situation where he would have to do the impossible. Yet, there he was: stuck on a boat in a storm at night, squinting across the water, and trying to figure out whether the spooky figure he saw was a ghost or his best friend who knew how to make a twelve-course meal out of a few loaves and fishes.
In that moment, Peter shouts the only idea that comes to his mind, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” To his great surprise, Peter hears the mysterious figure say, “Come.”
I don’t know whether to credit the following events to his faith or his impulsivity, but Peter gets out of his boat in the middle of a raging storm. He takes a few brave steps toward Jesus, but the wind and waves remind him of the stupidity of what he’s doing. He gets scared and down he goes.
The scenes of which this story reminds me are the old roadrunner-and-coyote cartoons where the coyote chases the roadrunner off the cliff, but doesn’t begin to fall until the moment when he looks down. The coyote, who never speaks, holds up a sign that says, “Help” and plummets once again to his doom at the bottom of the cliff. Peter is the coyote in this moment.
Thankfully, for Peter’s sake, the roadrunner he’s chasing in this moment is Jesus Christ himself. He cries out, “Lord, save me” and Jesus obliges.
The next words out of Jesus’ mouth sound like a stern rebuke, but I like to imagine him laughing hysterically as he says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Peter may be a knucklehead, after all is said and done, but he’s Jesus’ knucklehead.
What is the message we can take from this week’s gospel reading? On the most practical level, we could say, “Always wear proper safety equipment when participating in dangerous water sports.” Not bad advice, but I think it falls short of the deeper spiritual meaning of this passage.
In life, we often face impossible situations. The metaphorical wind and waves of this world frequently threaten to overwhelm us. When this happens, the most cynical among us are tempted to look at storm itself and conclude, “This is a dog-eat-dog world and you’ve got to get it while the getting is good. It’s eat-or-be-eaten and my only job is to make sure that I’m not the one who’s being eaten.”
People who think this way tend to look for concrete assurances of their security and prosperity. They feel at ease when the stock market is performing well and their preferred political party is winning elections. They get nervous when the opposite is true. When I say this, I’m not picking on any particular group of people because I see people of all ideologies falling into this temptation, from time to time. If I’m perfectly honest, I have to admit that I’m guilty of it myself. Like St. Peter and Wile E. Coyote, I too have paid too much attention to the wind and the waves, held up my little sign that says “Help,” and then fallen into the depths of despair.
This cynical way of looking at the world sees chaos and competition as the fundamental facts of reality. People who think this way are not wrong. Chaos and competition certainly are facts with which we have to contend in this life, but they are not the whole story. The cynics’ reduction of reality to chaos and competition is a naïve point-of-view that fails to account for the fuller picture of the world, as God created it.
Scientists in the field of evolutionary biology are beginning to wake up to the fact that cooperation plays at least as big a role in the development of life as competition. Similarly, they are discovering that the evolution of life as a story of increasing complexity, consciousness, and creativity in the midst of chaos and competition. As people of faith, we have a tremendous opportunity to bear witness to the hand of God at work in the scientific story of the origin and development of life. This, in part, is why I believe it is so important for Christians to be supportively involved in the work of science. Cooperation, complexity, consciousness, and creativity are at least as central to the evolution of life as chaos and competition.
In the heart-language of the Christian tradition, we could say it like this: Jesus is with us in the midst of the wind and waves of this life.
So then, what are we to do? The story of Peter’s failure in today’s gospel makes it clear: Keep your eyes on Jesus.
Now, arguably, this is more difficult for those of us who live two thousand years after the flesh-and-blood Jesus walked this Earth. We don’t get to hear the sound of his laughter or see the sparkle in his eyes when he tells us that God will care for us in the same way that God cares for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
Unlike Peter, we cannot keep our eyes on Jesus, in the physical sense.
What we can do is stay engaged with the spiritual practices that have been handed down to us through two millennia of Church history. By coming to church this morning, you have already taken the first step in that direction. By singing the hymns, participating in the liturgy, hearing the Scriptures, and receiving the Sacraments, you are already dedicating an hour of your week to keeping your eyes on Jesus. The question is what to do with the other six days.
I’d like to encourage you to take some time, every day, to dedicate yourself to some spiritual practice. Prayer, meditation, Bible study, and spiritual reading are not just for priests; anyone can do them and everyone should. Here in the Episcopal Church, we have a wonderful tool for this work in the Daily Office of the Book of Common Prayer. If you already say the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, congratulations! You are already well on the way to keeping your eyes on Jesus. If this practice is new to you and you don’t know where to start, then I would recommend beginning with An Order for Compline on page 127 of the prayer book. The directions are clear and uncomplicated, without much flipping around to find psalms and readings. Start by saying the Office of Compline each night at bedtime. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you can look at the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, which offer a much more robust diet of liturgy and Scripture. As time goes by, you will find the words of prayer and Scripture melding themselves with your heart and transforming you from the inside out.
If this practice doesn’t appeal to you, or if you want to expand your spiritual practice beyond the Book of Common Prayer, there are any number of spiritual books at your local bookstore; find one that speaks to you and go from there. Watch an instructional YouTube video on contemplative prayer or mindfulness meditation. If you have some time after church today, I will be leading a workshop on how to pray the Anglican Rosary at our adult formation class. All of you are cordially invited to attend.
Friends, kindred in Christ, I encourage you this day to keep your eyes on Jesus as you weather the storms of this life. Stay engaged with the spiritual practices of our Christian tradition. Keep praying, keep reading, keep sharing, keep serving, and above all keep loving and knowing that you are loved. Keep your eyes on Jesus. This is how you will know that Jesus is with you in the storms of this life and we will weather this storm together.
Amen.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 