On the Cusp
Text: Matthew 14:22-33
What Peter said? I wouldn’t have said it.
I would not have said to Jesus: Command me to come to you on the water. Not on a stormy sea, in the dark, at 3:00 in the morning.
The disciples were far from shore. They had been compelled by Jesus, it says, to go out in the boat. The wind and waves were battering the boat. Tormenting the boat, it really says. A scary moment. Yet the disciples, or some of them at least, were persons of the sea. Fishers. It is not the storm that terrified them. Or better to say, it is not mainly the storm, for even fishers give respect to the dangers of the sea. They are terrified because they glimpse a man walking to them on the sea. They think it to be not a ghost, as our Bible has it, but ghostly: an apparition, a vision of something that should not be there.
If you were Peter, you might say: Lord, please calm this storm. Or get me out of this boat and back on shore. Or if you are as bold as Peter usually seems to be, you might ask for some ID, some authentication. Who was Martha’s sister? What happened at the wedding at Cana?
But Peter is not testing Jesus. Peter knows it is Jesus. Jesus has just said so. It’s me, he has said. Don’t be afraid. And Peter is not.
Lord, Peter says, call me to come over to you on the water. Peter calls him Lord. Peter knows who the water-walker is. Peter—who later is accused of little faith—Peter’s call to Jesus to call to him, Peter, is a statement of faith.
The word for faith in Greek, as you know, also means trust. There is one word for faith and trust, or belief and trust. There is no strong distinction in this word between thoughts that you hold and actions you perform.
Faith sometimes comes upon us suddenly, out of the blue. An unexpected trusting or trust in something unexpected. A transforming moment. A cusp, a doorway: on one side your old life, on the other a new life. A scary moment, for it entails a loss of something familiar and the a discovery of something never imagined.
More often faith grows in us, like affection for a friend, or the call of a new career, or sympathy for someone once an enemy. Trust usually develops over time, a linked series of tiny life experiences and experiments. Getting through good times and rough times. With God, as with people.
But sometimes faith is hidden in us, a secret even to us. When in an argument, say, we suddenly realize what we hold to be true. Or when we jump out of a boat in a storm for reasons unknown. And then we realize that we have been acting in faith all along, in our whole lives, trusting in God, listening all along for God’s voice as we plan our future, or try to understand what is happening now.
Peter’s faith is like that, revealed to him by his actions. He steps out of the boat because Jesus asks him to, not because he believes anything about water and sinking. But when he does not sink below the waves, then his faith is known to him. He has performed one of those life experiments, and discovered that he can trust Jesus.
Yet even so, after a moment, Peter is overwhelmed by fear. Fear corrodes trust. Fear is anti-trust. Our fear battles our trust. It is as if fear and trust occupy the same limited space. When one expands, the other contracts. Peter suddenly notices the waves (weren’t they there before?) He notices the waves, and he becomes fearful. Peter sinks.
How could Peter not be frightened? Things are scary. We are long-lived rugged creatures, but we are creatures all the same, fearful of death and pain. Knowing (perhaps too much) about biology and physics. And fearful, too, of other things. Not having enough money. Of being lonely. Of being exploited. You can make your own list. As they did Peter, these things distract us from God’s gifts. Our fears do not make us safer, as we think, they make us sad. They do not keep us afloat.
Jesus asks Peter why he doubted. The word he uses means to have second thoughts, or to be of two minds. Peter’s first thought was to run to Jesus. Peter’s second thought was: This is water I’m walking on. One mind noticed Jesus. The other mind noticed the waves lapping up against his feet. That is what both faith and fear do. They change what we notice.
O you of little faith, Jesus tells Peter. Little faith. These are not words of criticism, I think. They are words of admiration and affection. It is not that Peter has too little faith, but that he has little enough. It is Peter who trusts in Jesus. Maybe not 100%. But enough.
The fruits of trust are adventure and freedom. The fruits of fear are paralysis and heartbreak. Peter’s revelation—I think we can call it that—as he stands by the gunwale of the boat, seeing an apparition that he is beginning to notice is Jesus Messiah the son of God, and wondering what to do next—is that he needs to be called.
He realizes that this is a moment of choice between adventure and not. That he is on the cusp, at the door, maybe walking into a new but uncertain life ahead of him, maybe leaving a good and predictable life behind him. But being a fearful creature as we all are, he cannot make this choice by himself.
He knows that he does not need in this moment to be reassured about the physics of water or the efficacy of heavenly powers or messianic meteorology. He knows that he needs to be called forward into life.
And that is why he calls out: Command me to walk to you over the water. Command me—call me. For in this exact moment it is Jesus whom he trusts to issue that call. And that is why he calls out: Lord. Lord, I trust you to call me.
To have faith in Christ is to be eager to let him call us. And in the face of fear, eager to pray as we do in evening prayer, asking to be called to adventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths … untrodden … not knowing where we go, but … that Christ’s hand is leading us and his love supporting us.
Lord, call to me. What Peter said? I hope to say it, too.
