“When Our Sight Fails”
Matthew 14:22-33
The story of Jesus walking on the water is as familiar a story to us as Jonah and the big fish. It is full of rich symbolism and metaphor, and it’s message is often used by scholars and preachers alike to talk about Peter’s lack of faith in Christ and the disastrous consequences of doubt. “If only he would have had a stronger faith”, many of them say, “he would not have doubted and begun to sink.”
Every once in a while when I’m
watching TV, I will stop on one of the religious channels to listen to a
preacher give his or her sermon. I
normally do not watch televised worship services mainly because I have a theological problem with some of the underlying messages I
hear. I don’t know if it is a product of
denominational teaching or a self-prescribed theology, but I always cringe when
I hear someone talking about faith as if it is a standard of measure of
someone’s worthiness of Christ, that if a person really, really believes then
he or she will be safe from troubles, sufferings, or doubts, that God will
protect them. The underlying message is
that if you do experience troubles, sufferings or doubts then your faith must
not be strong enough and therefore you are not really a Christian, and God is
not with you.
Maybe my problem is that I find
this kind of theology strange and lacking in a religion whose central truth and
witness is the suffering and crucified Christ who was raised from the
dead. I don’t think anyone would suggest
that if Christ just had a little more faith and a positive attitude and smiled
a little more that he would not have been crucified, or if the martyrs really
had faith, they would have escaped torture and death.
The danger
with this kind of theology of faith, besides the fact that it puts one on the
edge of a Christological abyss, is that it encourages people to think of faith
as a kind of “self-protection life insurance,” that if I have a strong enough
faith then I will be impervious to life’s struggles and heartaches and doubts,
and that I will even escape death. This
kind of theology turns faith into a measuring stick of one’s life. The better the attitude and spiritual health
one has the less trials and tribulations and doubts they will encounter. And conversely, the worse the attitude and
spiritual health one has the more trials and tribulations and doubts they will
encounter.
Sure, faith
does put a lot of what we go through into perspective. If we don’t know what we believe, or if we
have not thought about what we believe, then we will more likely be frustrated
by what goes on around us, and we may even doubt God’s sovereignty and
providence. But from a Biblical
perspective, faith is not a quantity that can be measured by our attitudes or
spiritual health. It is not a measuring
stick of one’s life that makes it possible for us to be impervious to or escape
from life’s storms.
Faith is the outworking of what we
have come to know about who God is and what God is
doing. It is the visible expression of
our belief and trust in the Triune God who loves us and reaches out for us in
the midst of life’s storms, not apart from them. Faith is the trust that in the midst of
life’s storms God will not forsake us and let us sink and be overtaken by the
waves, even when we feel like we are, even when our sight fails to remain
focused on the One who suffered and died and rose again.
But there is
another aspect of faith that is as important as our belief and trust and
assurance in the Triune God, which I believe this story points to. This story is about faith and doubt, but its not about having faith in or doubting God; it is about
having faith in and doubting ourselves, or more to the point, having faith in
the ability God has given us to do what Christ has summoned us to do.
Whenever I
read this story, and think about what Peter did, the first picture I see in my
mind’s eye is that of Peter walking on a glass-like surface of the sea. But careful reading of the text reminds me
that Peter is not walking on a glass-like surface, when everything was calm and
peaceful, but amidst the wind and waves of the storm.
The amazing thing about Peter
walking on the water was not just that he had faith in who
Jesus was, but that he also had faith in his ability to do what Jesus had
commanded him to do. Peter does not ask
for supernatural powers to defy the laws of gravity and water surface
tension. He asks Jesus to give him to
the ability to recognize that whatever Jesus commands, Jesus makes
possible. Peter stepped out of that boat
that day on the sea with a faith convinced that Christ had given him the
ability to walk on water. My friend and
seminary professor, Dr. Charles Cousar, writes about
this story, “The commands of Jesus, taken seriously, create miracles; they open
an incredible reservoir of divine resources.
Apart from such commands, not much unusual is going to happen.” (Texts for Preaching: Year A, p. 441)
Peter, after having been reassured
about who Jesus was, in spite of the storm around him, stepped out of the boat
with a visible expression of his faith in Christ and in his
ability to do that which Christ commanded him to do. He could have just as easily believed in
Jesus, and not gotten out of the boat, but that would not been the way of
discipleship. Instead, Peter leaves the
boat at the risk of his own life, and turns faith in Christ into a faith-filled
action of obedience. Theologian Dietrich
Bonhoffer,
writes, “For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and
faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.” (The Cost of Discipleship;
New York: Macmillan Co., 1963, p.69) And
for a few short steps, Peter is doing just what Jesus had commanded him to
do.
But then something happens. Peter notices the strong wind and the waves
crashing around him. His sight fails him
and he cannot help but see the circumstances going on around him. When his sight fails to remain focused on
Christ, he becomes distracted and frightened by the storm, and he begins to
sink. But Peter did not lose his faith
in Christ, because he still called out, “Lord, save me!” And those are not the cries of a person who
has lost faith in who Christ is as Lord and Savior. But what Peter did lose was his faith in his
ability to do that which Christ commanded him to do.
This story is
not about the skeptic who always doubts; it is about the faithful follower who
becomes overwhelmed by the storms of life and begins to lose confidence in the
ability Christ gave him to walk through the storm. Peter falters because he begins to realize
that the storm around him is too much for him to bear, that he does not have
the ability to weather the storm and move on through it, that he does not have
what it takes to do what Christ commanded him to do.
The church and its people are not outside the effects of the storms of life. We are not isolated from the world impervious to the trials and tribulations, the sufferings and heartaches that brew up all around us. We are not impervious to the doubts that come when faced with the monumental wind and waves of poverty, famine, disease, and war that crash around us, nor are we impervious to those storms that affect our individual lives. But, this does not mean that God is against or that we do not have faith in God or in Christ as Lord and Savior.
What it does mean is that in the
midst of the storms, it is easy for our sight to fail and to notice the
crashing waves and the rushing wind. It
is easy to become distracted and discouraged, and believe that it is too much
for us to bear, that we do not have the ability to weather the storm and move
through it, that we do not have what it takes to do what Christ has commanded
us to do.
In those times, it is easy to have
little faith, to not believe and trust in the ability God has given us to take
a step out of the boat and start walking.
Being disciples of Jesus Christ is not always easy. It requires us to be faithfully obedient and
obediently faithful and to keep on walking in the journey we have been called
on. It requires us to keep our sight,
our vision, centered on the one who commands us to follow and come to him, to
step out from what is safe to that which risks our own lives for the sake of
his gospel, for the sake of Christ. And
the good news of gospel is the promise of our Lord, that when our sight fails,
and it will from time to time, and we become frightened and begin to sink, he
will be there to lift us up and calm the raging storm around us, and secure our
faltering faith, and renew in us the courage to take that next faithful step. Amen.