The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, 2014 – Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45c; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33
It’s hard to resist the power of today’s gospel account of Jesus walking on the waves of a stormy sea. Many great painters have over the years been drawn to the drama of this story. Some have Jesus draped neatly in flowing robes. Almost all capture the serenity of Jesus’ posture. He’s standing on the roiling waves with confidence of his mastery of the elements. Contrasted with this, most artists capture the terror of the disciples in the boat. Waves towering around them are crashing into the boat. The most successful works focus on the identity of Jesus, and in this sense they get it right, because the heart of the whole gospel account that appears in both Marks and in Matthew is simply this question: Who is this who comes to them over the waves?
As good as a painting may be it cannot give us what the gospel accounts achieve despite their brevity. It’s worth a careful review.
Jesus compels his disciples, or makes his disciples go out on the lake and into the storm.
While they are out there in considerable danger, Jesus goes up the mountain alone to pray through the long hours of the night. He is communing with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
With the light of dawn, Jesus finally comes to his struggling disciples. There is confusion about his identity. They are so terrified after struggling with the storm they think Jesus is a ghost. Jesus then identifies himself with crucial words that draw us and the whole Church to the heart of this story: Jesus reaches the ship and says, “Courage! Take Heart!”
Then come the most central words. The Greek manuscript says, “ego emi” or “I am.” The usual reader-friendly translations have rendered it as, “It is me.” But in doing so they have done us a great disservice.
This isn’t an everyday greeting, “Hi it’s me!” No. It’s the Lord of all things, of nature, of history, addressing his disciples, addressing the whole community of faith, the whole church in a storm-tossed life.
It is extremely significant that Jesus identifies himself with these words, “I am.” It’s the Divine Self-Revelation which resonates all through scripture. They are the words of divine identification to Moses at the burning bush: “Tell them, I AM sent you.” They capture the unutterable solemnity of God’s presence to the prophet Isaiah, Holy, Holy, Holy, and to Elijah at the mouth of the mountain cave, and in the clear voice from heaven at the baptism of Jesus or at his transfiguration.
These words by which Jesus identifies himself in the storm fit, not surprisingly, with the images and the words of Isaiah that, in all probability, every Jew in first century Palestine would have known well. Let’s hear again that passage from Isaiah chapter 43:
“But now thus says the Lord
He who created you, O Jacob,
He who formed you, O Israel.
Do not fear/ for I have redeemed you
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you
And through rivers, they shall not overwhelm you
For I AM the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Saviour
And I love you.”
The words, “I AM” in Matthew’s gospel make the incident of Jesus walking on the waters a theophany: that is to say, a manifestation of God.
After saying this, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.” The Holy One is here — there is no place for fear. These are same words addressed to almost all those who fall down before the Divine imminence.
The gospel account shifts almost immediately to Peter. And of course the Church has understood that Peter is a stand-in for all of us. What would you do if the Lord of glory came to you in the worst storm you could imagine? The gospel captures Peter’s human-ness and our human-ness. Why does Peter ask, “Lord if it is you command me to come to you on the water”? It sounds erratic and even foolish. But Jesus grants his request and Peter steps out of the boat and walks on the water in the strength of God. But human as he is, he looks around and panics. He loses faith, we are told, and begins to sink.
“Lord save me!” he cries out – the cry of every Christian. It should be the daily cry of every Christian. Jesus doesn’t say, “What’s the matter fella? Having problems trusting me?” He simply reaches out his hand in mercy and draws Peter to himself.
People have read-in all kinds of meaning and emphasis in what follows. Some say Jesus begins to scold him. But it is just as likely that Jesus held his beloved disciple close to him and said without a hint of accusation, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
This is something every one of us understands in our walk with Christ, particularly when there are prolonged storms. They’re difficult because they challenge our faith in the God who has promised in our baptism to be present always. It may be the illness of someone we love, or a prolonged interior struggle. It could be a whole community, like the ones in Syria and Iraq facing years of persecution and outright war. It could be a long bout of unemployment – as one of our own parishioners, a senior economist, faced. He sent me these words this week and he gave me permission to share them with you:
“Being laid off triggered a tempest of stress and insecurity. My professional life had started a spontaneous reboot and I had no idea how long it was going to take.
Eight months into my job search I had zero interviews and zero callbacks after over a hundred applications. I felt a panic that would wake me at night. But I was comforted by the cliché, ‘the night is darkest before the dawn’. Then things started to change I received three interviews during the following weeks. Now, I am set to start a great new job and the tempest of fear has passed.”
We share such stories by way of encouragement. We are all like Peter whether or not we are in a long and dangerous storm. We have trouble knowing what to ask God for in prayer. But surprisingly, as we see in the gospel story this week, God answers our prayers.
About prayer, the great Father of the Church, Origen once asked, “If God knows what we are going to ask, why bother to pray?” His answer is a classic: God knows, of course, what we are going to say and do, but God has decided that he will work out his purposes through what we decide to say and do. This is hard to comprehend, but it remains true. About this, Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said,
“So if it is God’s will to bring something about, some act of healing or reconciliation, some change for the better in the world, he has chosen that your prayer is going to be part of a set of causes that makes it happen. So you had better get on with it, as you and your prayer are part of God’s overall purpose for the situation in which he is going to work.”
What did Peter learn about prayer in this storm? We usually think of his impulsiveness. But we know that later after the resurrection and especially after Pentecost in the power of the Holy Spirit, he learned to be bold in prayer for the advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ in a pagan world. He was a different man than he was in the boat. Remember the words of Jesus to him? “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” That’s as much a description of his journey in prayer as anything else. In the tradition of the Church there is the account of Peter in later life, fleeing from likely death at the hands of the Roman government and along the road outside the city he meets the risen Jesus. In the Latin account of the story Peter, the once impetuous disciple asks Jesus, “Where are you going?” to which he replies, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” Peter, with great courage, somehow knowing the will of God for the advance of the gospel returns to the city. That’s the man who once did not know what to ask or to pray for and blurted out “command me to come to you on the water!” Now his response has deepened for he has entered deeply into the life of God and of his love for the world.
And what of us here at St. Matthew’s, in our little boat, sailing along the waters in Riverdale. How shall we as a people grow in our life of prayer? How shall we pray for those in Iraq or Syria or Palestine or Israel, for those facing terrible disease in West Africa? For particular individuals like the little six-year old we will be mentioning in our intercessions later on – after four years of prolonged treatment for cancer she is now in one of only two hospitals in the world being treated with the last option for a cure. How shall we voice our prayer? How might we make our requests of God as we are together in his presence?
God waits for our prayer. He calls us to pray for his purposes in a world he loves.
Do not be afraid, have courage for the living God is standing before us.
One final point should be made about this gospel story. After the storm, after Jesus comes, after God’s presence and love is affirmed and Peter’s request is heard and answered, the storm subsides and Jesus steps into the boat. The text simply says, “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God”. That’s what we do when we gather together each Sunday, we humble our hearts before the Lord who makes himself available to us in the elements of bread and wine. In such a setting each Sunday we are in a place where we can put aside all our craziness and confusion, all the heartache about a world in pain, all the worry about our finances and our families and we say to the God who saves us, “Have mercy, O Lord, in your great love for this world. Have mercy.” Amen.
