Sinking

Matthew 14:22-33

You know those old Road Runner and Coyote cartoons? The ones where Wile E. Coyote is so caught up in chasing the Road Runner that he goes zooming off the edge of a cliff and (after you've watched a couple of these) you just want to shout to the coyote,  “Don't look down!”

Of course, inevitably, he does look down and goes crashing to the floor of the canyon.

I feel that same urge every time Peter gets out of the boat.

“Don’t look down!” I shout (inside my head) just about every time I hear this story. But of course he does look down. He realizes he can’t walk on water any more than he can walk on air,

and he begins to sink, just as inevitably as that coyote falls. Every time.

It’s comic sometimes. It’s a powerful, because you and I know, too, just how thrilling, how fearfully exhilarating, it would be to step out ON to the water, to walk atop that chaos, to defy nature and gravity,

and you know – I know – we’d sink. 

Every time.

Oh, we of little faith!

I’ve been thinking about that this week, watching the news – an escalating threat war between nuclear nations, a woman dead and so many injured after white supremacists rally in Charlottesville, everyday political waves.… It all seems as chaotic as that stormy sea around Peter and the other disciples. And the boat sometimes seems so small.

I wonder, this week, if the problem is not that Peter’s faith failed him when he tried to walk on that chaotic sea, but before he ever got out of the boat.

In the gray of the earliest morning, Matthew tells us, Jesus came, walking across the stormy sea. (A thing, by the way, that the disciples know only God can do, because the storm and the sea are the forces of chaos that only God can tame, and chaos is everything counter to God’s good creation.) And the disciples see, and are terrified. “A ghost!!” they cry.

This can’t be Jesus – our friend, familiar, gentle, healing Jesus. This mighty, storm-walking power doesn’t come with the comfort of the man they know – we know – and love. This is a supernatural being – strange, powerful, too close for comfort. Scary, to be honest.

“Take heart!” Jesus says. “It is I; do not be afraid.”

“It is I;” – in Greek, “I am” – the same words that God uses to name Godself at the burning bush. Now even the words of reassurance are disturbingly dramatic, divine. It’s pretty hard not to be afraid.

It’s hard not to be afraid when the Jesus we know and love – gentle, wise, faithful, welcoming – when our friendly, familiar Jesus suddenly appears as powerfully and dangerously divine as the storm itself.

So Peter – still afraid, unwilling to keep it silent – yells back, “Lord, if it IS you, command me to come to you on the water.”

If it is you….

It might be a trick. It might be a ghost. It’s certainly the power of God, but it doesn’t look like the safe, gentle God we know and love.

(Oh, we of little faith.)

It is Jesus, after all. So he says, “Come.”
And Peter does.

And Peter sinks.

He was always going to sink.

Just as you and I would sink, trying to walk on water.

It wasn’t a matter of faith being able to keep him afloat. It was a matter of doubt pulling him out of the boat.

When you’re looking for a friend to be a comforting presence, the arrival of one who can defeat the chaos, instead, is too good to be true. Or too scary, if we’re honest. Because a God who can walk on chaos is too powerful to simply be a friend. Too strange to be someone who really, fundamentally, thinks like I do. Too likely to demand more than it’s convenient for me to give – more confrontation with the chaos, more truth-telling, more self than I want to face or give.

What if God ended the chaos of this threat escalation between the US and North Korea by cutting off all of both nations’ communications with the rest of the world?

That’s not natural. It’s not what we’re looking for.

But it’s the sheer power to calm chaos by force.

What if a figure came striding out across the crazy waves of political discontent around us, silencing every voice, left and right, old and young, ours and theirs?

It might be a relief, for a while. But would it be possible – truly possible – to not be afraid? To welcome this disruptive silencer as a trusted friend?

That’s not how I pray for God to come to me.

In the chaos, in the surging waves of global news and local life, I keep looking for Jesus to be a friendly presence, a gentle healer, a wise teacher, a friend who can navigate us home. Maybe you look for something else. But I suspect we’re all mostly looking for the Jesus we already know and trust. And when God comes in a way we’re not looking for, it’s almost impossible for us humans not to doubt.

I’m learning that it’s possible that when I look for peace – among nuclear nations, on the streets of our towns, God might come in power and bring radical change instead;

that when I look for a way forward, when I say I want unity rather than division, God might just drastically shake up the whole map;

that when I look for change – social or personal or global – God waits… layers powerful silence atop the chaos, and waits some more.

In the face of that, it’s almost impossible not to doubt. At least a little.

IS this Jesus? It doesn’t seem like him…

The answer to doubt like that, of course, is trust. Radical, risky, trust, whether we believe our eyes or not.

And so I suspect that Peter’s failure of faith – Peter’s stepping out of the boat that day, Peter sinking in the waves – was not a bad thing after all.

“If it is you…” I don’t know. I can’t tell. This is not what I expected. I can’t believe, right now, so I’ll leap, instead: If it is you, call me out onto the water. Call me out right into the danger and chaos and doubt.

It’s a failure of faith, and a plea for more faith, at the exact same time;

Peter practices trust, when there’s no reason on earth to trust his eyes or the waves.

Jesus calls.
Peter steps out of the boat, into the fearful wind and storm, and sinks.

Of course he sinks.

And now there’s nothing left to do but to be saved.

“Jesus immediately reached out his hand, and caught him.” Matthew tells us.

He is saved.

By doubt, perhaps, instead of faith, but he is thrown into the hands of God, and he knows himself saved.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next in the world, in the news, in my life. I don’t enjoy this chaos, and I don’t know if what I see in this is God, and I don’t know what to do, so…

So if it is you, Jesus, command me to come.

If it is you,

call us out into the waves – into what we can’t control, and only you can.

I’ll sink.

We’ll always sink.

And then there will be nothing left for us to do but be saved.

We just have to doubt enough that we need to take that risk, that we need to step out of the boat and sink, so that there is nothing left to do but to be saved.