Sermon Archive
Walking on Water
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 11 August 2002
Genesis 37 1-4; Romans 10 5-15; Matthew 14 22-33
Peter Seller's final film Being There tells the story of a simple-minded gardener who finds himself, through a series of accidents and misunderstandings, giving economic advice to the American president. He is incapable of offering anything other than homely garden epithets but these are pounced on eagerly by the sophisticates as words of profound wisdom.
It was a phase cinema was going through - Forest Gump was another example. Making heroes out of people who in other circumstances would be described as idiots. Perhaps these stories were simply a reaction to a world that seemed to have over-complicated itself. They expressed a longing for a more innocent time, a true age of innocence, when people were in tune with the simplicity of nature and its self-evident truths. Whether such an age ever really existed is doubtful but the Sellers character wins you over nevertheless. Might it be, you wonder, that the people in the film actually perceive a dimension to this man that you have missed? This impression is heightened when, in the last scene, Sellars appears to walk on water across a lake - although none of the other characters seem to notice.
Are we then to see this character as a Jesus figure? Is Jesus' walking on water, that we read about in the gospel today, an indication that he too was a wise idiot? I would say not. For one thing, Jesus was politically very astute. He may be seen as subversive, like a court jester or clown, but never as educationally subnormal. For another, I just do not go with the rationale that complicated things can be dealt with simplistically. Indeed, part of the trouble with current rhetoric surrounding situations of conflict is that it is far too simplistic. It reduces complex cultural and historical matters to black and white, good against evil. In terms of Iraq this seems to be leading us inexorably towards something very dangerous indeed.
No, the story of Jesus walking on the water is about the depths not the shallows. There are those, of course, who would explain the event away as precisely that that Jesus is in fact not walking on water but in the shallows close to the shore whilst his disciples, in their confusion, do not notice. But they are missing the point, that Matthew, the gospel writer, is exploring here real spiritual depths. For Matthew focuses not so much on the miracle itself as on the effect that Jesus' presence has on Peter and the disciples and what it promises for the early church.
Jesus goes to pray and tells the disciples set off across the lake without him. The waves are against them as they struggle into the wind. They are already apprehensive, and when Jesus first comes they think he is a ghost and are terrified. But once they hear his voice, they are reassured and as soon as Jesus enters the boat the storm is calm.
Peter has a special section to himself. Although the leader of the church after the resurrection, perhaps because he was the leader, he is never spared a story that shows his weaknesses. At Jesus' command he climbs out of the boat and walks on the water but is quickly frightened by the storm and cries out in panic as he sinks. Jesus catches hold of him - Peter the fisherman is caught. This seems to offer in a nutshell both Peter's later doubts about and denials of Jesus and also his restoration. Remember how in John's gospel after his resurrection Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him and tells him to feed his sheep. He sets him back on his feet.
But most important of all, this is a story to encourage the church of the first century. Matthew's first readers were a small community battered by the waves of persecution - Jesus at times must have seemed a long way away. The wind was against them and their voyage a struggle. This story tells them to take heart, Jesus prays for them and will come to them even in seemingly impossible ways.
In other words, God is very close to us. This is at the heart of Paul's argument in the second reading. Do we need to ascend to heaven to bring God down? No God has already come in Jesus. Do we then need to descend to the place of the dead to bring Jesus back? No, for he is already risen. In other words, there is nothing we can do; nothing we need to do; God has already done it. 'The word is already very near to you, on your lips and in your heart.'
Faith in Christ, therefore, is an immediate possibility not a distant dream. It is not something we need to earn by believing the right dogmas, using the right language, behaving in the right way. With this faith the very things that terrify us can point us Godwards. The stormy waters themselves become a clear pathway to God.
But these waters are deep and frightening. For us, like the early church, God can seem a long way from us. God can seem to be hidden, and when God in Christ comes to us we find that we do not recognise him or, like the disciples, that we are afraid of him. Or that we are surprised at the path he chooses. Yet nevertheless, the assurance is there for us too, that when we cry out to him he reaches out to stop us drowning.
Does this ring true? That it is the very things that ought to contradict God that can end up bringing us closer to God. That it is often only after the event that we see the influence of God touching, guiding, holding. That God feels as much present, in some ways more present, in the depths of loss, failure and fear as in moments when all is sunshine and delight.
But this is not to offer, or to give us an excuse for offering simplistic answers in a complicated world. We may feel God's presence in dark moments in our own experience but it would be smug and naïve to claim it on behalf of those who hunger in Southern Africa, or who live in daily terror of bomb or bullet in Palestine and Israel, or face the growing threat of war in Iraq. Or, for that matter, are caught up in a seemingly endless cycle of deception, guilt and suffering like Joseph and his brothers. Or, like Jacob, must face the awful possibility that their child has died a violent death.
The truth is that, as for Jacob and his family, God's closeness in suffering does not mean the end of suffering. They were to journey through slavery in Egypt and forty years in the wilderness before they reached the Promised Land.
But our awareness of God's presence is also there to stir us into action. To make us realise that we too have a part to play in the complicated business of bringing food to the hungry, that we are implicated in issues of international injustice, and that we can help to be peace-builders. In other words, in all that really influences human life and happiness, in great matters or small, to understand that because God is there, we must be there too.
Who knows what we might achieve if we are prepared to brave the storm, heed Christ's call and, perhaps, even to find the courage to attempt the impossible and walk on water.
Worship >> Sermons >> Sermons