Today we find ourselves almost in the same place that we found ourselves last Sunday before the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus is trying to steal a little bit of time away for himself, time to pray. He was trying to get away from those crowds that were besieging him. And he had so much love and compassion for them that he healed them and then fed them nourishing their bodies, nourishing their souls.
And now that that time has passed, Jesus very likely spent himself. He’s heading away for a time to pray. And he sends the disciples on ahead – you all go ahead take the boat go to the other side of the sea; I’ll catch up with you.
But a storm comes up. By the time Jesus catches up with them they are far from shore and he comes walking across the sea. Not surprisingly, the disciples are frightened by all of that. Jesus identifies himself and reminds them not to be afraid.
And Peter -- oh dear Peter -- needs some proof. “If it really is you, Jesus, if it really is you then you command me to come walk out there with you.” “Okay, Peter, come on.” And Peter starts walking with some real confidence: I got this, I can walk on water. But then he notices that there's really a storm going on around him. He looks around and realizes that this is scarier than he had anticipated. And in his fear he begins to sink. Jesus, of course, is right there.
But it's what happens after they climb into the boat. this storm that has been raging suddenly ceases and then we're told the disciples now they realize this is truly the son of God because he commands a whole lot more than we ever imagined.
I want to talk about Peter for a moment because isn't Peter a lot like us. “Prove yourself to me, God.” Isn't that a lot like us? When we want to embark on an ambitious undertaking? “Prove yourself God.” We start out pretty confidently but then when we look around us and we see the threats and the storms that surround us, we forget where we are, that we are in God's hands. We fear and we sink because our focus is on the storm.
Jesus says to Peter, “why did you doubt?” This is the question none of us wants to have to answer. And yet we ask ourselves the same words. We might ask ourselves, “why can’t I trust God? Why am I afraid to let go and let God care for me? I believe I am in God’s hands and that they are good hands, but then I face a setback in life and as I have to navigate through it, my faith goes with it and I begin to sink.”
I believe that God is present and active in the world, but terrible things keep happening. Read the front page of the LA Times or scroll through your online news feed. It seems storms are never ending. I believe in life after death and a bright future with God but then I get sick, or someone I love gets sick. I pray with great specificity for a miracle but it does not come and the waves creep up around my legs and I begin to sink.
Why do we doubt? Because we are afraid. Because the sea is vast and we are so small. Because so much of life is beyond our control and we are so helpless in its grip. Why do we doubt? Because we are afraid even when we do have faith. Like Peter, we have a little and a little is better than nothing, even thought ere are times when it does not seem enough to save us.
Like Peter we take a few steps and when we sink, we cry out “Lord, save me!” and he does – giving us both his hand and his rebuke: O you of little faith, why do you doubt? Hearing that, most of us count ourselves failures. But I wonder, if we can imagine the story going the other way? Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor offers this perspective to consider:
What if Peter had not sunk? What if he got out of the boat and, full of confidence, right away started to glide across the water toward Jesus? What if, then, the rest of the disciples all followed after him – piling out of the boat after Peter and all of them in perfect faith, frolicked on the water oblivious of the storm raging around them?
It would be a different story. It might even be a better story. But it would not be a story about us. The truth about us is more complicated: the truth about us is that we obey and we fear, we walk and we sink, we believe and we doubt. But it isn’t like we do only one and not the other. We do both. Our faith and our doubt are not mutually exclusive. They both exist in us – at times lifting us up and other times pulling us down, giving us courage and feeding our fears.
This is why we need Jesus. Our fears and doubts may paralyze us but they can also make us cry out for his saving presence. If we never sank, if we could walk on water all by ourselves, we would not need a savior. Our doubts, fearsome as they are, remind us of who we are, and whose we are and whom we nee din our lives to save our lives.
When we sink, as Peter does, as we all do, our Lord reaches out and catches us, responding first with grace and then with judgment asking “why did you doubt” – but never with rejection. He returns us to the boat, knowing full well that the only reason we are in the boat in the first place is because we believe or want to believe and because we mean to follow him throu all our doubtful days.
All at once, the wind ceases, the waves calm and in the awesome silence of that night Peter and the other disciples are able to recognize God at work. Because there's power in quiet, there's power in stillness. We need the stillness and we need the quiet to be able to discern God's presence in our lives.
Jesus knows how important it is to find that quiet and that silence and that stillness. That's why this text opens with Jesus going away by himself to pray, to know the quiet. Because it's not in the middle of the storms that we can hear our creator speaking to us.
It's not in the middle of our busyness and urgency. But it's in the quiet. It's when we stop. It's when we are still that we can hear the Creator and know that the Creator is God. Amen.
