As a hospice chaplain, I am called to be present with people whose spiritual journeys are many and varied. My patients run across the spectrum from people who have a deep and abiding faith tradition all the way to atheists. Regardless of their belief systems, everyone seeks meaning in the end of life journey and my role is to journey with them to find that meaning. And every patient has a unique journey and life story.
One of the patients with whom I journeyed was named John. John was an atheist, but not one of the angry “new atheist” types. John was extremely intelligent and had studied cosmology intently and felt that this all could happen without a God. He was tolerant of those who believed in God and expressed his understanding that some people need to believe in God and lean on that belief to find answers or meaning in life. He just didn’t need that. I assured him at my first meeting with him (as I was wearing my black clericals) that I was not there to change his mind or demand conversion – I said, “That’s now how I roll. My function on the team is to accompany him, help him put his affairs in order, support his family and to reflect with him on what brings meaning to his life’s journey.” John was cool with that.
Ironically, my pastoral visits with John were the longest of any of my other patients. I’d arrive at his house around 1:00PM and the next thing you know it would be 5:00 o’clock! John once said, “You know, I always think we’ll have a short visit but it never turns out that way.” John loved to talk about his music collection, his love of science (especially physics and string theory) and his family. At times, John would poke at my faith but I didn’t let it get to me – in fact, we laughed about it quite a bit. He shared with me how he was raised in a strict Calvinistic upbringing that imaged God as a punishing judge. He just couldn’t believe in a God who would predestine some people to be damned regardless of what they did or didn’t do.
John also had a hard time with the whole “God thing” because he was a concrete thinker. He wanted proof and certainty of God’s existence and he could not accept the punishing God of his childhood. At our last visit, we discussed the concept of a God beyond human projections – a God who is, if you will, bigger than any one religion and who embraces all of creation. John said to me, “You know … I could believe in that God. Maybe we need to rescue God from religion.”
We all live in the tension between living by faith and the desire for certainty. This is the tension we find in today’s Gospel reading. Now one of the conventional ways of reading this story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter’s attempt to walk on the water is to focus on Jesus’ words to Peter after being snatched up from a sure drowning – “You of little faith. Why did you doubt?” This could lead us to believe that if only Peter had more faith, he would have surely been able to walk on water too and if he’d only kept his eyes on Jesus, he would have been ok. Now if you walk away from hearing this passage with the message of keeping your focus on Jesus, that’s a good message – nothing wrong with that at all. But today, I want to approach this story from a different angle as a story about the tension between living by faith and the desire for proof.
The story of Jesus walking on the water appears in all four gospels, but only in Matthew do we have Peter stepping out of the boat. Matthew is writing his gospel for Jews who believe Jesus to be the Messiah and so he uses imagery in this story which had deep meaning in the Jewish community. First, Jesus tells the disciples to get into the boat and go to “the other side.” The “other side” of the Sea of Galilee is gentile territory. This would have raised some concerns for the Jewish hearers of Matthew’s gospel – “Wait a minute. The Scriptures say we are not to mix with those bacon-eating gentiles. Why would Jesus do that?” Additionally, the disciples get into the boat at evening and row into this headwind all night long. Night was considered a time when evil spirits came out – a dangerous time to be traveling and most folks would avoid night travel whenever possible. And one more element of danger – the disciples are on the water. Water is indicative of chaos: it cannot be controlled and it can kill you. So Matthew’s audience is feeling the anxiety of the danger of night, going into the unknown on the “other side” and being on the water. And now, Jesus comes out in the fourth watch of the night – sometime between 3 and 6AM – and he’s walking on the water.
This idea of walking on water, or moving on water, is a common image in ancient near east literature. From the Genesis story where the Spirit of God moves on the face of the water (a walking on water image) to the Epic of Gilgamesh from the ancient Sumerians to our gospel stories of Jesus walking on water, the common image of walking on water is that this is something God does but humans cannot do. So when Jesus walks on the water, he is revealing himself as divine – but the disciples think he is a ghost and they are terrified.
In response to the disciples’ collective fear, Jesus responds with what translates literally from Greek into six words: “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!” It’s important to remember that up until the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, there is no mention of fear in this story. These are fishermen in a boat being battered by a headwind - something they had likely experienced before. They were likely tired from rowing against the wind, but they were not afraid until they saw Jesus and mistook him for a ghost.
Jesus’ words are a call not just to courage but to faith. “Have courage! I AM. Fear Not!” calls the disciples not just to be strong and not fear, but again Jesus reveals himself as divine with the words “I AM.” The way it is phrased in Greek would have jogged the memory of Matthew’s community – “I AM” is the same phrase Moses heard from the burning bush on Sinai. Jesus reveals himself as the incarnation of the great I AM. He is Emmanuel – God with us – and his words to the disciples were a call for them to believe that God is with them even in their struggle against the forces of chaos and uncertainty.
But … that’s not quite enough for Peter. He replies, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Instead of believing Jesus’ words, Peter wants proof: “if it is you.” A similar phrase is used by Satan against Jesus in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to be turned to bread.” It will also be echoed in the words of the crowd at the cross: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” All of these are demands for proof: “Prove yourself Jesus.” So Jesus tells Peter, “Come.”
Peter sets out of the boat but when he feels the wind he becomes fearful – he’s doing something only God can do – and he begins to sink. When Peter cries out “Lord save me!” he has learned that Jesus is God and Peter is not. When Jesus tells him he has “little faith” perhaps this is a statement about Peter’s demand for proof instead of believing Jesus’ statement: “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!”
Admittedly, there are times when all of us would like some certainty, some proof of God’s existence. There are times I wish God would just write in the sky what Anjel is supposed to do. But certainty and proof are the opposite of faith. If we are certain, there is no need for faith. All of us struggle with storms in our lives and times of chaos and uncertainty: losing a job, an illness, moving to a new town, death of a loved one, tensions in our families. It is in these hard times where we might have trouble trusting Jesus’ words, “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!” I think the image of the disciples who stayed in the boat, continuing the struggle of rowing in the storm is important for us. The disciples continued to struggle together in community. As we face difficulties in our lives, it is important to remember we do not struggle alone – we have community as the Body of Christ. Rather than going it alone as Peter did in his quest for certainty, we can rely on our community to hold us up and help us hear and trust when Jesus says, “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!”
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