Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
6^th of August 2023

Matthew 14:22-33

‘But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”’

Thirty-one years ago I was studying first year law and second year history. Both those degrees were teaching me how to analyse documents, which led to me having lots of discussions with my then-flatmate, the daughter of a Uniting Church minister, about how I could possibly continue to read the Bible as ‘unique prophetic and apostolic testimony’ (Paragraph Five of the Basis of Union) rather than simply as a collection of historical documents to be scrutinised in exactly the same way that I was learning to investigate the Babylonian Enūma Eliš or Donoghue v Stevenson, the 1932 case that created the law of negligence. In one of these discussions, I said that the Bible remained important to me, but I did not think I could just pick a verse, “like Matthew 14:27,” I said, making up a verse at random, and have it mean something for my life. A little later in the conversation my flatmate and I decided just to have a look and see what Matthew 14:27 said, and we found that Matthew 14:27 is the verse I just quoted. It could not have been more relevant to a discussion in which I had confessed that I was finding the one holy catholic and apostolic church deeply problematic as I learned more of its history, but that I could not bear to leave Christianity because if I did “I would miss Jesus”.

I have held on to Matthew 14:27, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid,’ over the past thirty-one years, along with the awareness that I would miss Jesus if I ever gave up my faith.

The situation that elicits that reassurance from Jesus is the battering of a boat in which the disciples are trying to cross a lake. It is probably because of this story that the church has from its beginning been considered metaphorically to be a boat. It is no accident that the part of the church in which the congregation sits is called the nave, a word that comes from the same root word as ‘navy’ and ‘navigate’ (Latin navis meaning ship). Whenever you sit in a church’s nave you are sitting in a symbolic ship. As you can see on today’s Order of Service the image of church as ship is used in various ecumenical Christian logos, and we can see a boat in our own Uniting Church logo.

I have sometimes wondered, though, whether a boat is the right image for the church in modern Australia, especially when we connect the church-as-boat to this particular gospel story. Saint Augustine said that today’s story is an allegory that shows the boat-church being thrown around by the storms and high seas of life, but weathering any wind that blows with Jesus’ help. Augustine was living in a time when the church was under constant attack, so it made sense for him to equate it with a boat that holds and protects disciples from the terrifying wind and waters when they cry out in fear, but we have been lucky enough that we have never needed to seek sanctuary in the church while the city around us is sacked by barbarians. And most Australians are happy coastal dwellers, likely to be much more apprehensive when in the vast inland than when we are in or near the water. For Australians, the sea has even been a place of sanctuary when bushfires have threatened, a source of protection rather than fear.

To really understand today’s story we need to remember that, as I have said before, the people of ancient Israel were not Australian, and they hated the sea. The Book of Revelation even offers a vision of paradise where the sea will be no more. (Revelation 21:1) For the people of Israel the sea was traditionally the source of deep and threatening power, a place of danger and terror, a reminder of the primordial chaos that existed before a wind from God swept over the face of the waters at creation. When the disciples, in today’s reading, are in a boat, battered by the waves and far from land, they feel not only the immediate fear caused by their situation, but the primeval fear of chaos and the abyss inherited from their ancestors. For them, wind and waves are terrifying, even before Jesus comes to them walking on the water like a ghost.

To the people of Israel the only one who has ever had any power over this dangerous element is God. From the very beginning of creation God has been the one who can control the seas. This is repeated through the psalms, God is the one who has ‘gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle’. (Psalm 33:7) When Matthew tells us of Jesus walking on the water, he is showing Jesus as someone who has God’s authority over all the powers that threaten humanity. And so the disciples realise that this man who walks on water is someone in whom they can have faith, which leads to the second part of Matthew’s story.

Matthew’s version of today’s story is the only one that adds the description of Peter walking on water to the revelation of who Jesus is. Luke and Mark both have Jesus calming a storm, Mark also tells the story of Jesus walking on the water, but only Matthew gives us the extra story of Peter joining him. As I have said before, I adore Peter’s habit of jumping in first and thinking afterwards. He does it on the mountain during the Transfiguration; (Matthew 17:3) he does it when he tells Jesus that Jesus must not suffer and die; (Matthew 16:22-23) he does it when he insists that even if everyone else deserts Jesus, he will not. (Matthew 26:33) In today’s story we see this same Peter, eager, impetuous, willing to take risks.

Why does Peter leave the boat in the first place? None of the other disciples do; none of them take the risk of that step from battered boat to stormy lake. Peter does because Jesus commands him. When Peter challenges Jesus, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water,’ Jesus answers, ‘Come,’ and Peter has the faith to take that step out of the boat, willing to obey. There is more than one miracle in this story. Peter, rather than sitting fearfully in the boat in the hope that the storm will pass, takes a literal and metaphorical leap of faith and joins Jesus.

Peter, as so often, represents all of us. Peter recognises who Jesus is, and obeys Jesus’ command to ‘come’. He has the faith to follow Jesus. Then the reality of his situation strikes him, he takes his eyes off Jesus, and he begins to sink. Like all of us, Peter is torn between faith and doubt, boldness and fear, strength and weakness. Sinking, he cries out, ‘Lord, save me!’ and Jesus immediately reaches out his hand and catches him, saying to Peter, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’

Peter had the faith to risk stepping outside the boat. So why does Jesus address him as ‘you of little faith’? Not because of the faith he lacks, but because of the faith he has. Peter has a little faith. Repeatedly in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus refers to his disciples as those ‘of little faith’ but he also tells them, ‘if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you’. (Matthew 17:20) If moving mountains is what a little faith can do, how could we ask for more than a little? To be of ‘little faith’ is to be one of the disciples, struggling, asking questions, misunderstanding, fearing, and starting all over again. It is to be within the circle of those who have glimpsed who Jesus is. It is to be like Peter, able to step out of the boat and, just as importantly, able to call for help when sinking. To be of little faith is to answer Jesus’ invitation, and then to allow Jesus to hold us up when we begin to sink. To be of little faith means to believe that when we do sink, Jesus will offer us his hand.

‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’. ‘Do not fear’ or ‘do not be afraid’ is the most common command given in the Bible, whether by God, prophets, angels of the Lord, or Jesus. It is said to Abraham, to Hagar, to prophets as they are called, to Mary at the Annunciation, to shepherds when the birth of Jesus is announced, to the disciples as we hear it today. It is the message that we implicitly give to the babies we cradle when they are born and that we all need to hear as we face our inevitable deaths. It is a message that we need to hear in the church, too, because today it does sometimes feel as though the church is threatened, in a way that it did not when I started my ministry almost twenty years’ ago. At the very least, it can feel that the tiny boat that is the church is in danger of being swamped by the waves of the wider world, waves that are more often threatening than protective.

As you know I currently chair the Ministry Formation Committee of Yarra Yarra Presbytery, and we will present Andreana Reale to the August Presbytery meeting for the Presbytery to discern her readiness for ordination after her theological studies. She has prepared a statement on her understanding of ministry, and I have her permission to quote from it. One of the things that Andreana says is:

My role is not to crack a whip and tell exhausted and depleted people to do more; it is to remind us, week by week, that our first task is to abide in God’s love. In fact, it’s not a task at all, but a putting down of burdens and entering into rest. In rest, we surrender, putting away the delusion that we can somehow ‘fix’ the church, or indeed the earth, ourselves, and trusting that it is in the cracks of our vulnerability and brokenness that God has the chance to grow something new, like grass growing up from the cracks in concrete.

It reassures me that people like Andreana are entering into ministry, aware of the fragile state of the battered small boat that is the church, pointing to the God who has power over the wind and the waves. Andreana talks about abiding in God’s love, which is very Johannine, ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love’. (John 15:9) ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid’ offers us the same comfort and reassurance. When the world threatens our small boats, and the little faith we have does not seem enough, we can rely on Jesus who immediately reached out his hand and caught Peter when Peter began to sink. Jesus is always walking towards us; we simply need to accept his invitation to join him. Thanks be to God. Amen.