Walking on water.
Here we’ve got one of the all-time-high stereotypes from Scripture. It probably even beats the burning bush for the air-time it gets.
It’s all over the place. “She thinks he walks on water.” Or - “he thinks he walks on water himself.” Or – “hey mom, I’m walking on water,” and there’s some kind of floatation device under my kid’s feet. And in all these places, the expression can mean different things, positive or negative, adoring or arrogant or just goofy.
And at first, that might seem unfair, like it somehow insults the sanctity of the original story or miracle or whatever you think it is. But I actually get a kick out of how people use it – mainly because I think the Scripture passage itself is full of both loveable humanity and loveable divine.
So let’s get away from the stereotypes of “walking on water,” and go into the storm for a moment.
Let’s say you climbed into the boat on end side of the sea – the southern end, more familiar territory. Jesus has just fed thousands with a few pitiful fish and loaves that you would have sworn would never have made it past even just the hungry disciples. And you’ve just found out that John the Baptist has been beheaded, so things are heating up on all sides. And now you’re on the move again. Jesus has said he needs to pray, he’ll catch up with you later. So you’re in the boat heading over to the other side, to Gennesaret, a place a little less known, with different culture and history than you’re used to. So – from more familiar territory, to less familiar.
So get into the boat and feel the changing air, the colliding currents. It’s been day and then night and then day again. And then you see the edge of dark gray clouds coming to cover you up like a big black hat.
And you start wondering what the heck Jesus could still be praying about, when you look up, and by gum, there he is – only there’s no boat in sight. Just Jesus, his two feet, and the surface of the water.
Everybody starts freaking out, but Jesus says, “Have courage, it’s me.” Or rather, more literally translated, “I AM,” and don’t miss the reference here to God’s name that came out of the burning bush back in the Old Testament, “I am who I am.” And then Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid.”
The two great twins of biblical assurance. The holy is here – and – don’t fear it. “I AM
- and “it’s ok.”
And Peter buys it. And you know this because you see him respond. Total response. Things are in flux, John the Baptist is dead, the stakes are getting higher, and so are the waves, and Peter responds to the holy in the only human way he knows how.
He goes over the edge.
He reaches for the holy, he tries to be like it, he gets caught in his own panic, and then through the wind and rain he manages to look up once again to … the holy.
And however that sounds to you now, whether you’re in the boat still or back here in the pew, whether it sounds arrogant or crazy or whatever – if we go into the heart of Peter’s experience with him, what we may find is something really simple and basic that we probably share with him.
And that is – we want to approach the holy. To come closer to it, and even to act like it.
Now, that can sound arrogant. It probably looked arrogant, or just plain crazy, to the other disciples. And it’s true, we have to watch those desires to be more holy – because they can lead to all kinds of things, some of it wonderful and some of it pretty bad.
But we only need to watch those feelings – we don’t need to squelch them. That’s what’s so great about this whole picture: the desire to be more like God is fantastic, and we are invited into it. “Come,” Jesus says. And don’t let anybody, including yourself, tell you that you shouldn’t come. In fact, it may be exactly why each one of us is here today – however the reason presented itself to you this morning, whatever the rationale. Maybe something in you needed to come closer to the holy.
Because when there is something we love or hope for, don’t we want to reach for it? Don’t we want to embrace love itself with our very being? Don’t you know that feeling?
I think that’s what lifted Peter out of the boat and set him on the water – and actually worked for a few miraculous seconds. Given what we know about Peter, the only thing that could have done that was love. A messy, human love that goofs up more than it’s any kind of role model. But what’s important is that it’s a love that loves. That reaches and tries to embrace and then finds that it’s sinking, and then calls out to the Beloved for help.
All of that, swirling around inside of Peter, motivating every movement of an arm or a leg, every wild glance forward at Jesus and backward at his shocked colleagues – the anxiety that probably made him feel like throwing up, and then the feeling of “I’ll still try to reach you, Jesus” –
All of this was about the mixed, wild, human ride that comes in response to love – and not just any love but the love that’s beyond human understanding or human capacity.
Sometimes that response to God may look big in our lives, like walking on water, and sometimes it may be as quiet as Elijah’s still, small voice. And a lot of times, like with the disciples crossing the sea, we reach for the holy when we’re crossing from one territory into another. From the familiar to the unfamiliar. We can usually suppress the longing when you’re on solid ground, but in transition, the usual defenses are down and there’s space for something to leap up out of our hearts and reach farther than we usually let ourselves reach.
And when we do that, our response will probably be something like Peter’s, at least on the inside: an eagerness that pushes us over the edge, a vision that we hold onto just for a moment, when we’re eye-to-eye with what we seek. And then the fear that we are not worth it crashes down on us, and we thrash around, gasping for air.
Whatever our response to love is, though, we can embrace and claim this process with Peter. We can accept it and love it as ours.
Jesus did. Because, if you notice, it’s Jesus who stands – on water, on shoals, on an upside-down bucket, if that’s what you need to believe to get through the night – it’s Jesus who stands unwavering. And I don’t care what he’s standing on, the other is the part that interests me.
That love – Love writ large – doesn’t waver. And it doesn’t suggest that we should not have tried. That love – that is, God – may show us ourselves, it may weep with us, it may be beside us when we’re floundering. But it’ll still be there when we surface again. When we dare to hope for a God who is bigger than the one we were so sure we knew on the shore just hours ago.
If your idea of God remains unchanged for too long – jump over the side of a boat. Get baptized again, thrash around in water where you don’t have the certainty of even a leaky old boat – and maybe you didn’t realize how leaky it was.
Let your longing push you over the edge to something bigger, to that moment when your heart leaps and drags your body with it. The moment when all the voices that rationalize against that leap of faith, when the voices that keep all the questions of us and God at arm’s length while we keep doing good social works–
There’s a moment, folks, when all that stuff just won’t work anymore. It may be now, it may be later, it may be in quiet or in crisis or at the end of your life.
But there will be a moment when the only thing you want is to approach the holy, just as you are, and you don’t care anymore about all the reasons you’ve kept it at bay.
Your longing is finally free.
Let your longing out of the cage of all the explanations why it can’t be satisfied. True, that deep longing in each of us may never be fully satisfied in this life. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t real and that it can’t be nourished.
That’s what’s so joyful about this story. We are invited to plunge right in, to our longing to be fully human and our longing to be divine – which itself is very human.
And Jesus will find us one way or another, before we’ve jumped in or after we’ve kicked around. And his message will be, “I AM” – and – “don’t be afraid to come near.”