Preached at Holy Cross, Seend; Christ Church, Worton; and St Mary’s, Potterne
Romans 10.5–15; Matthew 14.22–33
“…beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’”
A couple of summers ago, I was on the way to Jersey, on a very hot summer day, on a big slow ferry across the English Channel, when I decided to get off and go for a walk. The water was lovely and cool after the stuffy cabin, and it was enjoyably strenuous to climb up and down the waves, but my shoes were starting to get soaked and stained with salt water, and I worried about how they’d stink the cabin out.
Of course, this never happened. I made this up. People don’t walk on water. If God had wanted us to walk on water, we would be born with skis instead of feet.
Jesus can walk on water because Jesus isn’t just another small-town preacher and holy man, but the Messiah, sent by God as Saviour of the human race. This is one of the miracle stories in the middle part of Matthew’s Gospel where the disciples, and Peter in particular, are confronted with more and more evidence of Jesus’ divine origin. These form the backbone of our readings from Matthew’s Gospel through this late summer and autumn and Peter will, before too long, be the first to work it all out.
Peter was the first person to confess that Jesus is the Messiah. A great man. But Peter wasn’t God. So, Peter couldn’t walk on water. It isn’t that Peter couldn’t walk on water because he didn’t have enough faith – or that he was able to walk on water while he had his eyes on Jesus, but lost it when he got distracted by the wind. Jesus isn’t telling off Peter as “You of little faith” because he can’t walk on water. People can’t walk on water.
Things become clearer when we read the story from Peter’s perspective. He is on a boat on the Sea of Galilee with some of Jesus’ other close followers. They had just heard the news that John the Baptist had been beheaded by King Herod, and then witnessed the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus isn’t with them, because He has gone up a mountain to pray – and probably to get a bit of headspace after hearing His cousin has just been brutally executed.
The disciples’ heads must have been absolutely spinning, living at a moment of tragedy, terror, bewilderment, and wonder, all piled up on one another. So they’re on this boat, and conditions on the lake are pretty rough, but at least they have a bit of space away from the crowds that have been following them everywhere. At the crack of dawn, Jesus comes walking over to them – over the lake. Obviously, people don’t walk on water, so they think this is a ghost, and they’re absolutely terrified.
When Jesus tells them not to be afraid, because it’s Him, Peter doesn’t believe Him. Instead, Peter asks Jesus to prove it’s really Him, so he asks Jesus to command him to come to Him on the water.
Give me a sign! Not long before today’s Gospel, in Matthew 12, some of the scribes and Pharisees tell Jesus that they wish to see a sign from Him. Jesus doesn’t give them one – instead, He tells them that “an evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign”. And a little bit later on, in Matthew 16, some Pharisees, accompanied this time by the Sadducees, again ask Jesus for a sign, and He tells them exactly the same thing about evil and adulterous generations.
Peter is behaving like the bad guys of Matthew’s Gospel – the self-described religious leaders who are obsessed with every jot and tittle of Scripture but can’t actually recognise God right in front of them. That’s why Jesus is telling him off for lack of faith. I mean, Peter has just witnessed the Feeding of the Five Thousand – in fact has just taken part in it – how many showy miracles does this lad need? Surely Jesus’ close friendship should be enough.
But anyway, Jesus does tell Peter to come. You’ll notice that Peter didn’t ask for the power to walk on water, just for Jesus to command him to come – and Peter got what he wanted, didn’t he?
It’s only when Peter messes up completely, knows he’s out of his depth, and begs Jesus to save him, that Jesus can actually rescue him from the watery mess he’s made of things. There’s the lesson.
Don’t ask for signs. Ask for Jesus to save you unto eternal life in the world to come. You are not called to be God – you are called to be you. An ordinary woman, an ordinary man; that is good enough for God. An ordinary person called to follow Jesus Christ as part of the extraordinary family that is the Church, and on to an extraordinary destiny.
You don’t have to be exceptional. Paul writes in today’s Epistle reading that “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” God “is generous to all who call on him” – not looking to find reasons to count us out of His Kingdom, but instead promising that “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That’s enough. You don’t need to work wonders – just to believe and confess your faith – and we know from the parables we’ve been hearing over the last two months that a little mustard seed of faith is enough for the Kingdom of God.
But Paul also asks, “And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” There is a new openness to faith at this moment. Earlier this week, the Match of the Day social media accounts shared an interview with Manchester City’s Antoine Semenyo about his Christian faith and “being able to share it with team-mates”. It would have been hard to imagine a BBC TV show – other than Songs of Praise – sharing a video like this on its social media a decade ago. The times are changing.
In this time, may God give us the confidence to share our faith, in our own words, with the people we live among and meet in our daily lives – the faith we actually have, even if it’s only the size of a mustard seed. We don’t need to share stories of miraculous power – people are rightly sceptical of those anyway – but ordinary lives lived in God’s loving presence.
And while not everyone is called to be an evangelist, we should be praying for God to raise up from among us a new generation of priests and evangelists, teachers and preachers, who will call people to follow Christ. Perhaps your job is to pray for them, and to work in all the ways behind the scenes that seem small – but matter so much if there are to be thriving churches for new Christians to join in every village and town and estate in this country.
But perhaps God is calling you to serve Him as a priest, or in a commissioned lay ministry of preaching and teaching. Priests are ordinary people, most of whom are called to make Christ present in the midst of day-to-day life. Listen for His voice, calling you across the storms of the world. Don’t demand some grand sign – that’s not what this is about – instead, trust in His love for you.
And however God is calling you, trust most of all in what St Paul wrote – “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and for evermore. Amen.