Every three years, this passage comes up in our lectionary, and every three years, I struggle with what to do with it. I’m all about it when God comes to us in the human form of Jesus. It gets harder for me to relate to when Jesus comes to us in the form of God. These so called “nature miracles,” where Jesus defies all the laws and breaks all the natural rules and upends the delicate balance on our earth, are tough for me. This walking on water, the raising of the dead, the multiplication of something out of nothing, changing water into wine, they don’t make sense. I want to understand them. I want them to make sense. I want a logical explanation that does not offend my Post-Enlightenment sensibilities.
See, I’m the guy in the back of the boat, while everyone else is bailing out the water and shouting out commands and battening down the hatches, I’m the one sitting somewhere in the back, asking all the questions. My brow is super furrowed. I’m chewing on the inside of my cheek. I’m shrugging my shoulders and getting existential while everyone else is fighting for their lives. This is a good time to read a book, I think. It’s a good time for some whiskey and a deep discussion about romanticism or ontology or eschatology or questioning the benefits of a capitalist structured society. When things get hard, I get cerebral. I contemplate. I ask questions and I doubt.
I want to get up, get moving, make a difference and actually do something, but I get paralyzed, I get stuck, I start questioning the meaning of it all. It’s a survival mechanism, even if I’m actually doing nothing to promote the survival of any of us on this boat as it is being crushed by the wind and the waves. But maybe if I get to the heart of the problem, maybe if we root out why the boat is sinking, why it’s not more seaworthy or why the thunder crashes so loudly or the lightning flashes so brightly, maybe if we got to the bottom of all this chaos, we’d be able to unravel it, unwind it, set it straight and even again. If I figure out how Jesus is walking on the water, how he’s defied the laws of physics and rejected the pretty sound and intractable theory that is gravity, maybe I’d get to the heart of what this passage really means for all of us today.
But crashing waves and assailing winds are not always conducive to deep philosophical contemplation.
I just read a statistic that says the average life expectancy of a transgender woman of color is 35, and whoosh, a wave comes crashing down on top of me. 150 people died in the explosions in Beirut this week, and thousands were injured. Whoosh, crash, down comes another wave. We’re at 161,000 corona virus deaths in the US. Slam, another wall of water rushes over my head. Jeff Bezos makes $2,489/SECOND, 4,000 churches close in the United States every year, my city no longer recycles strawberry or blueberry containers and people keep wearing their masks below their noses, and I lose my balance, I lose my sense of direction, I don’t know which way is up and out and into the open air. I’m tossed overboard. And all I can see after that is that everything is awful. Everything is wrong. Nothing makes sense, and injustice and heartache and brokenness are everywhere. Let’s give up. It’s all so unfathomable. It’s all so unclear. There are no certain answers. Let’s just go down with the ship.
Even while I’m here, at the beach, and the weather’s been beautiful and sunny and not too hot and the water is clear and cool and the boys aren’t even fighting and we just saw a bald eagle soaring overhead, I still tend to focus on how wrong everything is, how unfixable it all is. I sit back in the back of the boat, arms crossed, resigned to accept our fate, resigned to the sinking of the ship, even when something strange, something mysterious starts to appear.
And then, of course, ugh, then there’s Peter. Peter’s so…optimistic, even if he’s getting it all gloriously wrong. While everyone is bailing and shouting and battening and rocking in the corner in the fetal position, Peter’s looking out into the horizon. Peter is looking out. Peter is seeing something. He calls to us. He points. We all stop and stare. The bailers and the captains shouting orders and the batten-ers and the rule followers and the direction takers and the sullen whiners and the navel gazers all stop what they’re doing and look up, look out, look beyond the immediate needs of their tiny sinking boat. Is it a ghost? An aberration? Are we just exhausted and hallucinating? Is it a leviathan come to swallow us whole and make us pay for our lack of faith? Are we finally getting punished for all those things we can’t fix? First it was this wretched storm, but storms we’ve seen before, storms we can handle, but now this?
And the vision speaks. It says, “It’s just me. Don’t be afraid.”
It’s coming closer. It’s starting to take the form of a man. And through the lashing of the rain and the wind whipping at our hair, we can see a familiar looking cloak. And as we’re rocking back and forth, stumbling, trying to maintain our balance, we can see a dark beard, a recognizable form. A body. A similar build. He carries himself the same way. He has the same gait. And, coming closer, he has that same smile, that same smirk that says both “I love you,” and “you’re ridiculous.” Could it really be? Could it really be who he says he is?
Now. Stop right there. Pause the tape. I want to know a few things. If this is Jesus, and if he can walk on water, why in the world would he send us out on to the lake? I mean, if a guy can walk on water, can’t he also, you know, predict the coming of hurricane force winds and lashing waves and storming seas? If a guy can walk on water, can’t he also get all this wind to stop? If he can heal and feed and hover over the surface of the waters, if he can raise the dead and turn water into wine, if he can walk on top of the sea, then why can’t he also find justice for the murdered, for the poor, for the hungry, for the earth? If Jesus can defy the laws of physics and upend the theory of gravity, then why can’t he fix all of this for us? The boat is swaying, the wind is knocking us over, the waves are crashing down and I want to press pause, I want to stop and ask, “Why?” I want to have a conversation. I have questions. Come back to the back of the boat Jesus, and let’s work this all out so that it makes sense in my brain. I need a file to put this in. Is there a doctoral degree program that I can enroll in to clarify what in the world is going on here? Some commentaries I can read? At least a few footnotes? What does all of this even mean? Shouldn’t we understand this a little bit more before we take the risk, before we trust what is happening, before we step out of the boat without fulling comprehending the consequences of these events? I know, let’s form a committee. A task force? A think tank? Let’s have a congressional debate. Let’s organize a three day conference at the Hilton Hotel. We can include a free continental breakfast. Let’s understand and know before we move forward, before we…make a mistake…
But, ugh, there goes Peter. As usual, stepping out before he knows what he’s stepping in to. “If it’s really you,” he shouts, “command me to come out to you on the water.” He’s always rushing forward, rushing ahead. He’s always acting before he’s thinking. He makes assumptions and he wastes money and never has a plan and he never stops. So of course, I smile a little when he starts to sink. That’s what you get for being so impulsive. That’s what you get for not thinking things through, for not being practical, for wasting your resources, for using up your endowment, for risking it all. That’s what you get for being all heart and no head. Heh. See, Peter. I told you. Stay back in the back of the boat and think about things before you act. Be wise for a change. But now it’s too late. Now you’re sinking. You should have known better. Use your brain. You always act on your first impulses and now look at the mess we’re in.
Now we’re all in big trouble. Peter didn’t think it through, and now, amidst the crashing and the lightning and the thunder, we have a man overboard. What are we going to do now?
Amidst the chaos, I hear that familiar laugh. I hear his gentle reprimand. I see his strong, rough carpenter’s hands reach down and lift Peter up.
I don’t know how to end the story, but I’m a bit smug. Suddenly, Peter’s not sinking anymore. Of course, the guy who jumps in without thinking has been rescued. Suddenly, the boat stops rocking. The waves stop tossing. The thunder stops rolling and it’s just us. It’s just Jesus.
None of it makes any sense. None of it is logical. Nothing about this day went according to plan. What does any of this mean?
I don’t know. I really can’t say. Maybe if I could recite the passage in the original Greek or write my own commentary or go back in time or speak Aramaic or spend a year in seclusion pondering these events, I’d get it, I’d understand, it’d all make sense. But I guess I only know a couple of things:
I just know that when things are chaotic and frantic and falling apart, when we are losing our grip and living in confusion and we don’t know how to fix it, when a virus and cancer and racism and poverty and hunger and political division are sinking our ship, it’s Jesus who comes to us. It’s Jesus who enters in to our mess, strangely, miraculously, ghostly. Jesus reaches out to us. Jesus is the ultimate With.
And I guess I just know that we don’t have to “get it”. We don’t have to understand it. We don’t have to fully comprehend what is going on here in order to experience the presence of Christ. Faith is not logical assent. Jesus, as the ultimate With, shows us that, as Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “the truth of the story is that [our] abundance of faith or lack of faith does not deter God from drawing close.” Jesus, With us, calls us out of the boat, into the treacherous, uncertain waters, and asks us to do illogical, incomprehensible, strange and uncertain things. None of it makes any sense.
And I know there’s still a lot of pain and heartache out there in the world, outside of my little boat. And I still want to fix it. Even if I don’t know what to do and I don’t know how. I just know that being a part of Christ’s mission means getting out of the boat, it means leaving the shore, it means uncertainty and mistakes and some sinking. It means reaching out for Jesus even as he reaches out for us. It means entering in, trying, making mistakes, being uncertain, going to the places where we don’t really want to go. Jesus is out there, With. Jesus calls us to join him out there, With.
And I also know that there’s something to be said for Peter’s impulsive action. There’s something to be said for his immediate, unthinking, spontaneous, reckless response. He knows Jesus is the ultimate With, he knows Jesus can be found in the most treacherous of waters, he knows Jesus is found in the mess and uncertainty and danger and hopelessness that is the real world, the world outside of the boat, the world outside of my head, the world of brokenness and mistakes and sinking and being lifted up. Peter is willing to risk his doubt. He is willing to risk it all on the off chance that that hazy, ghostly vision out there on the stormy seas just might be Jesus. He knows that, as Matthew Skinner says, “if God might be encountered anywhere, God will be found in places where the regular delineations and predictable endings don’t apply as before.” He knows, as Skinner says, “Sometimes incredibly turbulent places are also ‘thin’ places, where God breaks through.” He knows, “It’s the nature of faith — humble, active faith — to be willing to throw oneself into a disorderly world and expect to encounter Jesus there.”
And I know there’s still the good. The waves are warm today and the sun is out and the boys aren’t fighting and we spotted a bald eagle soaring through the sky. There’s a kiteboarder out there, harnessing the wind so that he can hover, mysteriously, miraculously, just above the water. I don’t fully understand how he’s doing it, how he gets that kite up there, how he’s strong enough to hold on, how he looks like he’s defying the laws of physics and the theory of gravity and conquering the waves and the wind. I don’t know how any of this works. But it works. And it’s good.
And that’s how the story ends. We all gather around Jesus. We are with him. We look like drowned rats. We’ve been through the wringer. The storm has come and we’ve almost sunk and we’ve been terrified for our lives, but at the end of it, we come to know who Jesus is. The Son of God. The ultimate With.
Thanks be to God.
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