|
And Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water."
Culturally, one must suppose, the allegedly humorous stickers that you used to see in the back windows of cars must have been the successors of the mottoes on the saucy seaside postcards, which you may still be able to buy. My favourite window sticker, and the most wittily placed, I saw one day when rambling around the paddock at Silverstone. It was on the back window of a very shiny and magnificent black Porsche Carrera. It said: "My other car is a Porsche".
Some stickers, of course, are just a bit too earnest. Nearly forty years ago, I taught for a while in Southall, where I had a young colleague who was the sort of teacher whom you suspected was more interested in converting your children than in teaching them, especially if they were Sikhs or Muslims. He drove an Austin A40 and on the back window was a sticker that said in big capital letters: "Behold the Lamb of God". Well, I looked in his car one day, and there was only him in it… I didn't see any lambs, divine or otherwise. No, if you want to see amusingly appropriate sacred texts on the back windows of cars, go to Ghana, which is a profoundly Christian country. Driving through Accra one day, we were horrendously carved up by a kamikaze taxi driver who sported on the back window of his taxi the text: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do".
And then there are the stickers which make punning reference to one's profession, hobby, or sporting interest: Toilet attendants do it conveniently… Ramblers do it in fields… Managers do it badly (and senior managers do it even more badly)… Clairvoyants do it predictably… Laxative consumers do it regularly … I just want a sticker in the back window of my car that says: "Methodist ministers walk on water". Why do I want this? Because, after twenty years of listening to church members' opinions, it is what all of you think that we ought to be able to do, isn't it? The humour is found in the sheer irony of it, when somebody expects of you something that, in the normal run of things, would be considered to be totally impossible. As a rather world-weary ministerial colleague once said to me as his holiday was coming to an end, "Ah well, back to attempting the impossible for the ungrateful!"
I suppose that most people would still realise that the expression, walking on water, derives from the bible, and refers to a story about Jesus – from one of the so-called "nature miracles", indeed. Most interestingly from the point of view of scriptural analysis, the fullest version of the story – the one that includes the part about Saint Peter being called to walk to Jesus across the waves – only appears in Saint Matthew's Gospel, whilst Saint Mark has a shorter version of the story, and intriguingly, so too does Saint John – an unusual sharing of miracle stories between the so-called Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth Gospel.
So, three Gospels record Jesus walking on the water, but Saint Matthew's account takes us further. Indeed, it makes the whole story far more difficult, because it includes Jesus' invitation to Saint Peter to do what he is doing: And Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water."
As soon as we hear Saint Peter saying, "Lord, if it is you," and see him preparing to step out of the boat, the Christian's mind begins to dance all over the rest of the bible. Initially, of course, we go to the story of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down (from the pinnacle of the temple). We note carefully Jesus' reply: You shall not tempt the Lord your God. What a strange counterpoint to that story is this one: Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water." Is this truly proof requested in place of faith? Show me at least enough certainty in extreme circumstances to keep me afloat in the storms of life! The story plays out, and ultimately it is the general conclusion of all the disciples in the boat: Truly (Jesus), you are the Son of God.
But only a chapter of the gospel later, we come to another point of the interaction of perception, faith, and/or certainty – Saint Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi. Without a miraculous sign this time, and with only an analysis of public opinion and personal reflection, Saint Peter confesses to Jesus, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." After Jesus has said to Saint Peter that he is the rock, and will be the king-pin of the Church, he then proceeds to tell his disciples that he himself will suffer many things and be put to death. Effectively, Saint Peter protests, "But you will never slip beneath the waves of pain, and sorrow, and injustice. The waters of a death like that shall never close over your head!" And what does Jesus say to him? "Get behind me, Satan!"
Saint Peter had one advantage over us as he hesitated to step out of the boat. He actually heard the voice of Jesus say to him, "Take heart, it is I; have no fear." He heard Jesus speak to him these wonderful words, these immensely comfortable words, as we used to call them. So he stepped out. When we in our turn face the storms of life, we long to hear that voice as clearly as Saint Peter heard it. Did not John Bode write in his much-loved hymn, "O let me hear Thee speaking / In accents clear and still"? Yes – clear! And though they might also be still, they will be clear enough to be heard above the raging waters or the roaring storm.
You hear people talking about finding a "centre of stillness", with the expectation that it is to be found within ourselves somewhere. That fits well with Jesus' teaching that his Father's kingdom is to be found within us. But it also takes us back into the Old Testament, to the story of Elijah on the mountainside. Elijah is alone – abandoned by all, pursued by many who seek his death. He longs to hear the voice of God speaking to him clearly about where his next steps should take him. Where is God? Not in the tornado, not in the earthquake, not in the fire. And after the fire a still small voice… Still, small – but in spite of that discernable!
But what happens when the storms of life are raging about you and you are not sure that you have discerned the voice of Jesus? What if you have not undeniably heard him say to you, "Take heart, it is I; have no fear"? Do you step out of the boat then and still trust him? How many of us have said to him, and how often have we said it throughout our lives, "Lord, if it is you…"? What does a Christian do then if he or she is not sure, and if the accents have been so still as not actually to be clear? Do you still step out of the boat and try to walk to him across the waves?
Have no fear. If, like me, you are the sort of Christian who is not ashamed to admit to having religious doubts or to the things of the spiritual life about which you are not too certain, then take comfort in the fact that most of us here have been there many times – on the point of stepping out of the boat, but wondering whether it really was Jesus who was calling us to do so. Generations before us have often felt like you or like me.
Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water." Consider the case of those in the first century AD who heard or read Saint Matthew's Gospel, but who had not been part of the original grouping of disciples in the time of Jesus' earthly life. What would they have made of this story? They too are afraid, not of the waves this time, but of persecution and martyrdom. Since the crucifixion, like the disciples on Galilee, they too have been separated from their Lord, in the physical, literal sense. Jesus came to his disciples sometime in the fourth watch of the night, that is to say, sometime between 3.00am and 6.00am, so they had been alone on the stormy sea for three quarters of the night already. He had not come to assuage their fears immediately, so what had he been doing throughout their night of fear? Well, he had been praying for them.
The early Church understood the "nature miracle" story very clearly as a parable of their present situation, but Jesus had promised that he would come to them again as the Son of Man. However, the message of the risen and glorified Jesus for the early Church was the same as it had been for the disciples on Galilee: "Take heart, it is I; have no fear." The call was not a function of their over-active religious imagination. The echoes of that Galilee night spread not only over the waters but also down the centuries.
Methodist ministers walk on water. Well, not just Methodist ministers, for it is a call to all Christians – to step out onto the waters of the doubts, fears and tragedies of life, and to follow the voice of the carpenter of Nazareth that still echoes through our life, tantalisingly yet comfortingly, knowing that in the meantime he himself has been praying for us. That step of faith over the side of the boat is something that I have to take on your behalf every day, because of whom God has called me to be for you. The question is: if, in the name of Jesus Christ, I offer you my hand to share the journey together across those waters, will you come with me?