Walking on Water: Matthew 14:22-33

by Rev. Deborah Troester, STHPC, August 20, 2023

Our story today is probably familiar to you: Jesus walking on the water. It even makes an appearance in the musical Jesus Christ, Superstar when King Herod sings, “So if You are the Christ/the great Jesus Christ/Prove to me that You're no fool/Walk across my swimming pool.” But what led up to this amazing event?

Earlier in the same chapter, possibly the same day, Jesus had heard the terrible news that John the Baptist was dead, executed by King Herod in the most shocking way – his head served up on a platter as a reward for entertainment at a royal banquet. Sickened, he felt the need to retreat to pray, to grieve, to try to understand how and why this horrifying thing had happened. John was his cousin, and the first one to confirm his ministry – affirming that Jesus was indeed the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world. Yes, Jesus is God, but he was also human. He withdrew to a deserted place, but the crowds followed him. Having compassion on them, he preached and healed the sick. When they became hungry, he fed 5000 with only five loaves and two fish.

Afterwards he told the disciples to get in the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side of the lake, while he went up on a mountain to pray. Perhaps he planned to take another boat to join them, or more likely, he just preferred to walk the 7 or 8 miles around the northwest shoreline from Bethesda, where the miraculous feeding took place, to Gennesaret, where he met the disciples.

Storms can come up quickly on Lake Galilee, and even though several of the disciples were experienced fishermen, Peter among them, it seems that this one took them by surprise. They found themselves far from the shore, battered by waves, with the wind against them. They were terrified. Sometimes God comes to us when we least expect it, when the storms of life are battering us, and things seem out of control, when we have lost hope, and are fearful of what might happen.

Lately our world has seemed pretty scary, with terrible fires in Maui, Canada, Tenerife, and elsewhere; A hurricane is bearing down on the Baja Peninsula and southern California for the first time in nearly a century; there are floods in Norway, war in Ukraine, new reports of genocide in Darfur, continuing unrest in Cameroon. I could go on…our whole world seems battered and tormented by forces out of our control.

We need this story today, the story of Christ walking on the water. Earlier, in Matthew Chapter 8, Jesus calms the storm, saying “Peace, be still,” according to Mark. But this time Jesus comes to them in the midst of the storm, walking on the water. The disciples, terrified by the wind and waves, don’t even recognize him at first. They think he is a ghost, maybe a water spirit of some kind. Like the disciples, we don’t always recognize that it is God at work in our lives, that even in the midst of turmoil, God is there. Even in the storm, God comes to us to calm our fears and assure us of his presence. Just as Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid,” Jesus speaks to us in the midst of our failures, difficulties, and fears, “I am with you. Don’t be afraid.”

We are not our best selves when we are afraid. We don’t make good decisions. It is hard to hear God’s voice when we are paralyzed by fear. John reminds us that perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18). Jesus’ love for us is perfect – it is unwavering, omnipresent, never-failing. Pastor Jill Duffield writes in Presbyterian Outlook, “…while Jesus may send us out on the ocean without him for a time, he will not abandon us and is surely coming to us as we attempt to navigate the strong winds that work against us. We may well struggle to perceive him through our anxiety and weariness, but he will tell his battered followers over and over again, ‘Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.’”

It is easy to overlook that the words Jesus speaks, “It is I,” are the same in Greek as the words God spoke to Moses from the burning bush: “I AM.” The same God who delivered the slaves from Egypt, across the burning desert and through the waters of the Red Sea is the same God revealed in Jesus Christ, who comes to his disciples in the midst of the storm, walking on the water.

Peter – always the man of action – calls to Jesus, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus answers, “Come.” It strikes me as a little strange that Jesus calls to Peter to come join him before he calms the storm. We would prefer that Jesus calm the storm first, then call us to serve him. But that isn’t how it works most of the time. Jesus doesn’t always calm our storms right away. Instead he comes to us, calling us to step out of the boat, the place of safety, and walk across the water to him. I am speaking metaphorically, of course – often when the winds and waves of life buffet us, we seek the safest place we can find – in this case a boat, which was, humanly speaking, the best place to be. Yet, although it is counterintuitive, the best place to be is always near Jesus, regardless of the wind and waves around us. Jesus calls to Peter, “Come, step out in faith and draw near to me. Then you will see what I can do, and what you can do together with me.” If Peter had stayed on the boat, he would not have walked on the water.

When we trust God, things happen that we can’t always explain. With God’s help, our problems may not go away, just as the winds and waves did not go away, but we may in some way be able to overcome them. This is how God usually works – by coming to us in the midst of our problems and helping us through them, not by miraculously solving all our difficulties.

If we think people who had great faith and accomplished much for God, we usually see that their lives were just as hard as ours, if not more so. Yet God worked through them  to do great things. Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – all 20th century saints, as we might call them – all of them led lives filled with problems and difficulties, yet all of them left the mark of God’s love and grace in the world. God did not wipe out poverty in the streets of Calcutta or New York. Rather God helped Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day minister to the poor. God did not suddenly cause Hitler to surrender, as Bonhoeffer would have liked, rather he helped Bonhoeffer to stand and witness to the love of God even in a Nazi prison. God did not suddenly change all the laws of the land to grant civil rights to African Americans, rather, God helped Martin Luther King and many others to fight for freedom for all races.

Most often, God doesn’t still the storm. Rather, God walks with us through the storm. Indeed, Jesus invites us, like Peter, to get out of the boat, and join him in the adventure of faith. But even Peter, the one whom Jesus would later call “the rock” began to sink when he took his eyes off of the Lord. My friend, Bishop Reinhart, writes: “When the seas of life get choppy, it is normal to be afraid…If you lose sight of Jesus you’re likely to sink down…It is faith that buoys us up. In times of grief and sorrow, when the waters of life get rough, it is a deep-seated trust of God that puts things in perspective, bringing peace and comfort.” When he realized he was sinking, Peter cried out, “Lord, save me!” Like Peter, when we are in trouble, we must call on God, and the sooner the better. Of course, Jesus reached out his hand and kept him from drowning.

Jill Duffield writes, “In the end…we will declare that Jesus truly is the Son of God and we will worship with our wounds and our worries, our losses and our dreams. And together with Jesus in the middle of us, we will rejoice that nothing we endured managed to take us away from the God who loves us and will not leave us alone…While we may still be in the middle of the sea, the shore out of sight and the waves still swamping our boat, even now wherever we are, no matter how afraid, we…know the storm will not last forever and Jesus is near.”

I will close with the words to a song some of you might know:

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of a storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

Amen.

©Deborah Troester 2023