I am always intrigued to know peoples’ thought processes as they hear or read the Gospels. How do we process these stories? How do we seek to apply them, particularly on this, a Baptismal Sunday? I’d love to know what everyone is thinking right now in relation to today’s passage.
As a general principle I try to imagine my way into Gospel
stories. I try to see myself as an anonymous member of the crowd as I try to
walk through the story. Who do I most identify with? Who do I sympathise with?
Who irritates me? What if I sat here or over by him? What if I couldn’t hear
properly because of the crowd? What if I didn’t actually trust this man Jesus?
What if I was a Pharisee?
I have to do this because I am almost always disappointed by
the brevity of the gospel stories and their lack of background detail: they
seem so clinical and succinct. I want to know that there was someone there who
kept coughing at inopportune moments, or that there were children playing
nearby, or that there were cooking smells or that it had just rained.
But not this time: today’s Gospel taps into a phobia of mine.
I am not at all comfortable on a boat – however big. Some years ago, I
travelled from Tallinn in Estonia to Helsinki in Finland by ferry and back
again – in the depths of winter with a leaden sky and horizontal snow. It was a
memorable journey. I wanted to kiss the ground when I disembarked.
As we arrived at the ferry terminal I was immediately
horrified by our ferry: it looked like a tug. It fought with the ice for most
of the journey so violently and my travel companions and I couldn’t escape to
the outer decks to nurse our misery because of the intense cold – colder than I
have ever been before or since. We finally found a place in the bar but we didn’t
think drinking would be too clever, but we did note upon arrival back in
Tallinn that there were many who had decided on that refuge to the extent that
they were so drunk the crew couldn’t tell whether they were Estonians or Finns.
So we sat there in the most surreal of settings imaginable, pale green with
sea-sickness while half a dozen couples - seasoned veterans clearly - spent the
evening dancing exhibition Latin American and ballroom to a live five piece
band - including (I kid you not) the theme to “Titanic”. So strong is that
image at a time when I firmly believed I was going to die that I fully expected
my journey into resurrection to be accompanied by a woman wearing red sequins
and dancing a rumba!
Fear is the word that comes to mind: fear of circumstances
being beyond our control, fear of the ice, of the cold and fear that death
could be just a moment away. Such is the fear, I’m sure that the disciples in
the boat felt when they were “battered by the waves” on Lake Galilee one
evening as they waited for Jesus to finish his private prayers.
I can hardly imagine someone walking on a sea when it is
calm, much less when the waves are rolling and the wind is whipping the surface
of the sea. Yet Jesus comes along, not reassuring the disciples by his arrival
but initially adding to their fear. Their first reaction is that he must be a
“Ghost”. Jesus’ unrecognized presence on the sea was a threat to the disciples.
So, in order to calm their fears, Jesus identifies himself, but the real test
for that early morning, was whether they could trust his four-fold word to
them, “Take heart; have no fear; it is I;” and then to Peter, “come”.
These words might just seem like a quick reassurance but they
are full of resonance and meaning and we must imagine them being delivered with
great authority.
“Take heart,” recalls Moses’ words to the Israelites on the
edge of the Red Sea with the pursuing Egyptians right behind them. “Take heart;
do not be afraid, stand firm and see the deliverance that the Lord will
accomplish for you today.” says Moses. And “do not be afraid” runs through the
Gospel narratives spoken by God’s messengers to Joseph and Mary, by Jesus to
Peter, John, and James on the mount of the Transfiguration, by God’s messenger
to the women at the tomb and by Jesus as he sends the disciples into the
mission field. Finally, “it is I,” that takes us back to the burning bush and
God’s thundering, “I am who I am,” and all the “I am” statements of Jesus in
John’s Gospel.
Walking on water has come to be synonymous, even outside the
church, with the idea of stepping out in boldness, taking a risk. It has become
another phrase along the lines of “When the going gets tough, the tough get
going.”
And here we are as Emma and Paul bring Luke, and Wayne and
Kelly bring Kyara to baptism this passage takes on another resonance: Emma and
Paul and Wayne and Kelly have decided that they, their friends and family want
what Peter experienced for Luke and for Kyara: they want the children to be
equipped to respond to Jesus’ call to “Come”. They want Kyara and Luke to be able
to cope with the storms and the uncertainties which life will throw at them
with the confidence that keeping their eyes on Jesus will bring them through;
confident that they can, in Jesus own words, “Take heart” and be reassured;
that they can overcome their fear because their lives have been built on the
foundation of he who said, “I am who I am”, and “I am the bread of life”, “I am
the good shepherd” and “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
When Jesus says, “Come,” Peter has to respond. In this respect
we have to see Peter here as a template for Christians down the ages and
therefore for Kyara and Luke - and that for me is the key point: we are faced
with how we interpret Jesus’ words in any given Gospel passage whether we read
it or hear it. We need to be clear who Jesus is talking to. Well, we see Jesus
here talking to Peter and if we, all this time later, consider ourselves also
to be disciples then this passage is most certainly for us to hear - and to act
upon. The Gospel passages have to have the power to challenge us and to change
or they will remain marginally interesting pieces of religious literature,
nothing more.
So, in whatever situation we find ourselves, when Jesus says
“Come!” we’re faced with the same choice as Peter was and today as Wayne and
Kelly and Emma and Paul are for their children.
When Peter steps out of the boat, the reader and Peter are
given the startling truth that this indeed is the one who commands the waves.
This is the “I AM” who revealed himself to Moses and who has intervened with
saving power so many times in the history of Israel that we should pay
attention now.
This changes everything in terms of how we now see ourselves
in this story. In Jesus, the great “I AM” has come to dwell with us and for us,
whether we are tossed about on the seas or hungry on the hillside, whether we
are in the boat or out of the boat. The point of this presence is not to show
us that God has supernatural powers so much as to give us calm in the midst of
our stormy world to imagine that we too might wade out into the storm with
God’s help. In fact, like Peter, when we recognize God present in our world, we
are commanded to go out into the water, knowing that in the storms of this life
Jesus is with us.
In a book I was recently reading, several Characters are
about to embark on a dangerous journey. One of them, fearfully asks, “Is it
safe?” The leader replies, simply, “No. Let’s Go!” This is, I suppose, the very
situation that we face, really when we wake each day. We rise in the morning
and look at the news to discover that our world continues to be rocked by bombs
and terror, by kidnapping and murder, by disease and famine. We might not even
know that we do it, but each of us prays wordlessly to God, “Is it safe?” And
the reply comes back, simply, “No. Lets Go!”
It is hard, isn’t it, to imagine ourselves in such a set of
circumstances as Peter however we might seek to put a personal gloss on what
“the storm” might be interpreted to mean in our own lives when we are in the
midst of our own discomfort and we call on Jesus for help: work; study;
relationships; personal crises of faith; frustration with the culture and
politics of our time; our own sense of our Christian calling – whatever
destabilises us and distresses us. And as we consider ourselves, let’s not
forget those whose personal storm is to be driven from their homes with the
threat of death hanging over them for being identified as disciples – in Iraq
and Syria, in Southern Sudan and Northern Nigeria. What can this passage mean
to them? Is there any way that we can respond to Jesus on their behalf when he
calls “Come!” rather than concentrating on our own woes, given the contrast in
their traumas to those of our own?
We also know that when Peter’s attention returned to the wind
and the water, he began to sink and then, as if it had not already been so, his
only hope was Jesus. The final good news in this passage comes as Peter falters
and starts to sink. We too will surely falter. We too will feel that we are
drowning in the depths of our world’s darkness. We too will surely feel that
the chaotic waters of life are too treacherous for our tentative footsteps. We
too will sink. That is real. That’s life. Only fools pretend otherwise.
This isn’t, as some Christians might imply, a story of Jesus
as the magic talisman, protecting us from all dangers. No. This is Jesus who
enables us to cope in those dangers.
And see as Peter does - and as Luke and Kyara hopefully will
- that Jesus’ hand reaches out to us. We also discover that our doubts and
fears, while the cause for a rebuke from our Lord, do not, in fact, take us
outside of his care and concern.
It is my prayer that we will look not to our own feelings for
a way out of the problems that we face as individuals and as a church, but
rather look to the one who walks calmly in the midst of our storms, our
anxieties and our personal and institutional controversies. When, surrounded by
the moving waves, we falter, will we too grasp Jesus steady hand? Or will he
huddle in the safe and comfortable boxes and routines we have established for
ourselves as our inadequate coping strategies to fend off the outside world?
The choice is ever before us! The great “I AM” continues to walk out in the
chaotic waters of the world. How will we answer when he bids us, “Come!”?
