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Surface Tension
A sermon by Dr.
Jim Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church,
Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 14:22-33
When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by
the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in
the morning he came walking toward them on the sea (vss. 23-25).
When I was a boy we used to visit
my grandmother’s home in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. She lived in a house on
a hill with a big front porch and a breathtaking view of Grandfather Mountain.
At the bottom of the hill was a clear, mountain stream that rushed over smooth,
round rocks, and it was there, in one of the still pools at the side of the
stream, that I first saw something walk on water. It was a bug, a “water
strider” to be exact, but as I watched it make its way across the pool my eyes
grew wide with wonder. How did it do that?
My brother Scott explained:
“Surface tension,” he said. Something about the way the water molecules held
together. If you were small enough and light enough, like that bug, the surface
of the water would behave like a sheet of Saran Wrap; you could just walk from
one side to the other. I was fascinated. I filed that information away in my
brain so that someday, when someone asked me how bugs could walk on water, I
could lift my chin just the way Scott had, put on one of my most knowledgeable
looks, and say “surface tension.”
On the surface, there is some
tension between what we read in this passage from Matthew 14 and what we see in
the world around us. Matthew says that Jesus walked on water, and that—for a
little while at least—Peter did too. I don’t know about you, but I have never
seen a man walk on water. I saw my cousin water-ski barefoot once, but that’s
not the same thing. That’s called hydroplaning, when something is moving so
fast that it skims across the surface of the water. It seems to defy gravity in
the same way an airplane lifts off the runway and into the sky by skimming on a
cushion of air. But if that airplane came to a sudden stop it would drop from
the sky, and if that boat had come to a sudden stop my cousin would have sunk
like a stone.
This is what observation has
taught us, this is what experience has taught us, but this story from Matthew 14
wants to teach us something else, and on the surface at least is seems to want
to teach us that once upon a time a man did walk on water. For some people
that’s a problem. Although they won’t usually admit it (especially not in
church) there are some sincere Christians who have a hard time believing that
things really happened the way Matthew says they did. Luke may have been one of
them. Although you find versions of this story in Mark and John you do not find
it in the Gospel of Luke. Is it because Luke, the beloved physician, the
thoughtful scientist, just couldn’t believe it? There’s really no way to know
that, but we do know this: that, for whatever reason, he left this story out of
the gospel he was writing in the same way some people leave it out of the gospel
they are reading. They turn the page and skip over it; their rational minds
just can’t accept it.
They gag on a story too big to
swallow.
I once heard someone say that
Baptists are people who get together to argue about who believes the Bible
more. If that’s true, then this would be one of those stories they would argue
about. Someone would jab his finger into someone else’s chest and ask, “Do you
believe the Bible is true?” Yes. “All of it?” Yes. “Even that
part about Jesus walking on water?” Yes. “Do you believe that he did it
physically, literally?” Um…maybe. “Aha! An unbeliever!” Do you see
how quickly we might divide ourselves into those who are able to believe
everything in the Bible is literally true and those who have some doubts?
“Here,” we would say: “if you believe the sun stood still as it says in Joshua
10:13 sit on this side of the church. If you’re not sure, sit over there. If
you believe a fish swallowed a man as it says in Jonah 1:17 sit up front, and if
you don’t then sit at the back. If you believe Jesus walked on water as it says
in Matthew 14:25 then sit in the balcony, a little closer to heaven, and if you
don’t then sit down here, a little closer to the other place.”
We could do that. In fact some
Baptists have done that—made belief in the literal truth of Scripture a test of
fellowship. But let me ask you: what purpose does it serve other than making
some people feel superior and others feel inferior—second-class citizens
because, for whatever reason, they are unable to suspend their disbelief? I
don’t mean that they are unwilling to believe, I mean that they are
unable! Suppose we asked everyone who could lift a hundred pounds over
their head to sit on one side of the room and everyone who couldn’t to sit on
the other. What would it prove except that some people are physically stronger
than others? Why do we try to separate ourselves on the basis of whose faith is
the strongest? And for that matter is an ability to believe the unbelievable
the same thing as faith? I know people who believe that Elvis is still alive.
Does that mean their faith is strong? Or does it only mean that some people
will believe anything?
Rather than arguing about who
believes the Bible more or dividing ourselves into the weak and the strong let
me suggest another way. When I talk about the Bible I like to say that it is
the Word of God for the people of God, and that it is authoritative in all
matters of faith and practice. To put it simply, the Bible tells us what to
believe and how to behave. But even before that the Bible is the Word of God.
It is how God talks to us. Therefore the appropriate question to ask when
looking at a passage like this is not,
Did it actually happen this
way? but,
What on earth is God trying to
say?
What does it mean to say
something like Jesus walked on water, and in this story what does it mean to say
that Peter did, too? Let’s take a closer look:
When Jesus heard that John the
Baptist had been beheaded he got in a boat with his disciples and went to a
“solitary place.” He wanted to be alone. But the crowds heard about it and
walked around the shore until they came to where he was and when he saw them, he
had compassion on them, and healed their sick. Later, when it was getting late
and they were hungry, he fed the whole crowd with five loaves and two fish, and
again I think it was because he felt sorry for them. So the picture of Jesus
that Matthew paints for us here is a picture of someone who is full of
compassion, who sees human need and responds to it. Why did Jesus walk on
water? Not to show off. Not to prove that it could be done. He did it because
his disciples were in trouble. There they were, out on the Sea of Galilee in
the darkest hour of the night, rowing hard for shore but buffeted (the Greek
word can also mean “tortured” or “tormented”) by the wind and the waves. Jesus
felt for them and came to them, and because he didn’t have a boat he walked.
Surely Matthew is trying to tell
us something here: not only that Jesus is full of compassion but that he is full
of God’s compassion, because who else can walk on water? The book of Job says
that God alone “stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea”
(9:8). Psalm 77 says God’s way was “through the sea,” and his path “through the
mighty waters,” yet his footprints were unseen (vs. 19). The one who made the
sea, who bound the molecules so tightly together a bug could walk on water,
could easily bind them together more tightly still, until they could support the
weight of a man. Or maybe Matthew is trying to tell us that it wasn’t a man.
Some scholars think that he is trying to present Jesus not just as a great
prophet, but as God himself—“God-with-us,” as the name Immanuel suggests—and
that his appearance to his disciples in that troubled hour was a theophany: a
“God-sighting.”
But that’s not what the disciples
thought. When they saw that mysterious figure walking on the water, lit up only
by occasional flashes of lightning, they thought they were seeing a ghost.
Matthew says they were terrified, crying out in fear, so that Jesus must have
had to shout above the noise of their cries and over the roar of the wind, “Take
courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Again it is the scholars who point out
that when you translate the words “It is I” into Greek you get ego eimi
but when you translate them into Hebrew you get Yahweh—the name of God.
The disciples are screaming that it’s a ghost and so Jesus identifies himself:
“It is I; ego eimi; Yahweh.” If that’s a legitimate interpretation you
could explain that Jesus walks on water because he is no ordinary man, he is the
divine man—God incarnate—who comes to his disciples in their darkest hour.
It would explain Jesus, but it
wouldn’t explain Peter, who is a very ordinary man. When he sees that it’s
Jesus he says, “Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water.” Jesus
says come, Peter steps out of the boat, and for a few moments at least he is
walking on water. If God alone has that ability then it must have been some of
God’s power, temporarily granted to Peter, that enabled him to do the same. But
if God can bestow his power on Peter he can bestow it on Jesus, too, and
suddenly we don’t have to assume that Jesus is the Divine Man, but a man on whom
God’s divinity rests. He is God’s chosen, God’s favorite, God’s Messiah, God’s
son. He comes striding across the waves like a water bug, light as a feather,
bright as a bubble, and Peter, eager as ever, wants to try it for himself.
“Tell me to come to you on the water!” he shouts, and for whatever reason Jesus
tells him to come.
What happens next is what you see
in the cartoons from time to time, where the coyote runs off the edge of a cliff
and keeps running for a few steps, until he sees where he is, looks down, gulps,
and then drops like a rock. What makes that funny is the “plausible
impossibility” of it. It looks plausible—that is, it looks like
something that could actually happen—but it’s not possible. As most of
you will remember from elementary school gravity is not just a good idea, it’s
the law. Somewhere, a few steps away from the boat, Peter sees where he is:
standing on top of the water in a storm-tossed sea with the wind howling around
his ears, and in that moment he takes his eyes off Jesus, looks down, gulps, and
begins to sink like a stone. But God bless him for what he does next, because
even in that surreal situation he remembers what to do when he’s in trouble: he
says, “Lord, save me!” And immediately Jesus reaches out his hand, catches him,
and pulls him back up to the surface. “Oh, you of little faith,” he scolds.
“Why did you doubt?”
Sometimes people use this passage
as a proof-text for faith. They say, “You see? If you only have enough faith
you can walk on water!” Isn’t it interesting that in all the years since this
event took place there have been no reports of anyone else walking on water?
There have been plenty of people of faith, and some of them had more faith than
Peter, I’m sure, but as far as I know there have been no reports that St.
Augustine, or Francis of Assisi, or Mother Teresa ever stepped out on the
water. Maybe that’s because Jesus isn’t scolding Peter for his inability to
believe that he can walk on water, but for his inability to believe in God. It
is God, after all, who made the winds and the waves and the water. He has
complete control over them. And if he wants to make the sea solid enough to
stand on, he can. Jesus, full of that kind of faith, helps Peter back into the
boat, climbs in with him, and when he does the wind ceases, the waves subside,
and the disciples find themselves on a calm, flat sea. There is a long pause in
that sudden silence, and then one of them says, “Truly you are the Son of God!”
And then they all join in, worshiping Jesus.
You may find that you still have
trouble believing this story, that no amount of explanation can convince you a
man walked on water. Maybe not. But I hope you can believe that you still have
a place in the church. Remember that even as Jesus chided Peter for his lack of
faith he helped him into the boat. And maybe you can believe this, that
something happened out there that night. In the space of a few minutes a
boatload of disciples went from screaming, “It’s a ghost!” to worshiping Jesus
and saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.” In other words they moved from
fear…to faith. That’s amazing, isn’t it? More amazing than walking on water.
And if the same thing could happen for us today, if we could look on the face of
Jesus, move from fear to faith, and come to the end of this story worshiping
him,
it would be more amazing still.
—Jim Somerville ©2008
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