(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Joke on the
Water”, originally shared on August 5, 2026. It was the 425th video
for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Life
in this world can leave us stunned. We need time to process what is happening,
time that often isn’t given. What then? Today, we’re going to find out.
Sally and I were checking out
at our local Costco and the customer in front of us lifted a huge chunk of meat
in his basket so that the cashier could scan the price; $162 and change! For
one chunk of meat! In a retail store!
The guy could have had a
business, or was buying food for a family reunion, or planned on turning it
into jerky for his Zombie Apocalypse storehouse. I don’t know.
But it was shocking to me that
a store would think that there was enough of a demand for one hunk of meat that
expensive to keep it in stock.
I asked the cashier if that was
the biggest hunk of meat they sold at Costco and he nodded sheepishly and said
that he thought so, though I’ve since found out that Costco sells large hunks
of meat for much more!
“Wow,” I said, “we could have
bought one hunk of meat instead of all of this,” pointing to our basket. 😊
When something happens that is
so unnatural, so unexpected, it can stun you while you attempt to process it. I
think that that’s what happened to Peter in this week’s Gospel reading.
Jesus had been teaching his followers at the
Sea of Galilee, he had been rejected in his hometown of Nazareth, he had
learned of the execution of his second-cousin John the Baptist and took a boat
by himself to a lonely place on the shore of the Sea. The people followed his
boat and when he came ashore they begged him to heal their sick, which he did,
all day. As the day was stretching on, he saw that they were hungry and ended
up feeding the 5,000 men, besides women and children, from the five loaves and
two fish that a little boy had presented. That meal ended with 12 baskets of
leftovers! Even in abundance, nothing went to waste!
And then he does something even more
shocking, in Matthew 14:22-27,
22Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go
on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the
mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far
from the land, for the wind was against them. 25And early in the morning he came walking toward them on
the sea. 26But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they
were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. 27But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart,
it is I; do not be afraid.”
There are those words again,
“do not be afraid”. It’s been said that they appear 366 times in the Bible, one
for every day of the year plus a leap year. And with unexpected and shocking
things like this happening, when things happen that stun even the closest of
Jesus’ followers, it’s not surprising at all that we need to hear those words.
Every day. And especially when our life’s seas are rough.
Sally and I and our son James were in Maui
in 1997. I swam for a competitive adult swimming club in the United States
Masters Swim program and the Pan Pacific Masters Swim meet was held there,
mostly in Lahaina.
I swam my pool events in the early part of
the day and the rest of the day we’d have available to explore the natural
beauty of the island. We visited a Lutheran church, saw the banyan tree, drove
the road to Hana, and toured a volcano.
The ocean had been red flagged that week
because conditions were very choppy, like we’ve had at our local beaches for
the past couple of weeks, but they allowed those of us who were there for the
swim meet to swim in the optional 1-mile ocean race for Masters swimmers. We
later met a guy who had actually broken an arm swimming in those waves.
On the last day we were there, I read an
article in a local paper about how many surfers had needed to be rescued by the
lifeguards that week. Most of them native islanders!
Maui is a popular tourist vacation
destination, but it is very expensive to live there. According to the article,
most residents needed to work two and three jobs, so they didn’t have time to
teach their kids how to swim. The tax base was low, so the schools didn’t have
the funding to offer swimming lessons either. As a result, something like 90%
of the island kids didn’t know how to swim!
They loved to surf, though, and they had
been using their surfboards as flotation devices! The stormy surf that week
meant that the leashes they used to attach themselves to their boards were
snapping and so the lifeguards had had to jump in and pull them out. Sound
familiar?
People don’t generally do well in the water
during storms at sea, as we see as our Gospel reading continues, starting with
a typically overconfident statement from Peter in Matthew 14:28-32,
28Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to
come to you on the water.” 29He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started
walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. 30But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened,
and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him,
saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.
This text reminds me of the Warner Brothers
cartoons with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Wile E. Coyote chases the
Road Runner, and swerves off a cliff. He
keeps going, running on air until he looks down and realizes HE’S RUNNING ON
AIR! And right then he sinks like a stone, crashing onto the desert floor.
The joke on the water is that Peter,
a disciple in Jesus’ inner circle, steps out of the boat and starts walking on
the water, until he realizes that he’s in a storm and HE’S WALKING ON WATER!
He’s stunned by what he sees, and he doesn’t know how to process it. And right
then, he starts to sink like a stone. 😊
But Jesus reaches out and saves him and
says to Peter, “You of little
faith, why did you doubt?”
Is this text telling us that if you have
enough faith, you could walk on water? I’ve known many faithful Christians, but
I don’t know anyone who’s ever done that!
So, what does it mean?
Prof. Dr. Roberta Hestenes, who taught at
Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena years ago, was called to serve as
president of Eastern College, an Evangelical college just east of Philadelphia.
She came back to California as a guest
speaker sometime later and told of how, one year, a graduating class came to
her with a special request.
Graduation at Eastern traditionally took
place next to a beautiful lake on the campus. The seniors would come over a
hill, walk down to the lake, then take a sharp right turn to go to their seats.
That year, the Seniors asked if they could
have the school maintenance department install underwater posts and sheets of
thick plexiglass just below the surface of the water so that the class could
walk down to the lakeside, step onto the plexiglass, and appear to walk on
water, taking a sharp right turn to the shore and then going to their seats.
President Hestenes said, “No.”
That’s as close as I’ve come to hearing of
anyone but Jesus, and Peter, briefly, walking on water.
I think that this text is, like all of
Jesus’ miracles, not about how to overcome the laws of physics. It’s about
Jesus pointing to the way the world was supposed to be, and about how it will
be again in the future, in the coming perfected Reign of God. God is Lord of
all things. The storms were, and will, be calmed.
We are naturally lost in a sea of rebellion against God. The good news
is that we have a Savior in Jesus Christ, who will return to judge the world,
and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. That’s the gospel, the good
news of Jesus Christ!
But, today, our Gospel lesson reminds us that the world is not what it’s
supposed to be, that the storms of life continue, but that everything good in
this world continues to come from God.
You may have heard it said that “If you want
to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.” Cute. But today’s Bible
reading about Jesus walking on water from the gospel of Matthew has nothing to
do with water and everything to do with the future of the Church.
The World Council of Churches is an
organization that seeks to coordinate the work of all Christian denominations
internationally. My wife, Rev. Sally Welch, is active in its work. Its logo is
a boat, not a ship. It’s small. It’s tiny compared to a freighter or a cruise
ship.
I think that that’s because the Church is
often more like a boat than a ship. We are more like salt, and light,
and leaven, the small things that make a huge difference because they maintain
their flavor, their character, their integrity, not their size.
I think often of the story of the Anglican
vicar who decided that what his church needed was a service of Holy Communion
at 6:00 a.m. every day.
Sometime later, some colleagues asked him
how it was going. “Great!” he said.
Skeptical, one asked, “About how many people
come to worship at that hour.”
“Well, there’s me, and the two widowed
sisters who come to everything, about a million Serafim, a billion Cherubim,
and all the hosts of heaven.”
We are light. We are salt, we are leaven.
The Christian Church is like a boat, but the
Christian life is not only lived in a structure. The Christian life is lived
where the people are. We seek out the lost and adrift. The Christian life is
lived everywhere, where Jesus is.
It’s lived in a living relationship with the
one true living God who is present in our storms.
Notice that when Jesus chides Peter he
doesn’t say, “You of no faith, why did you doubt?” He says, “You of little
faith…”.
We belong to God, even when we doubt. Even
when we fail. Even when our faith is small. We call out to Jesus, “Lord, save
me.” And he does, he has done it by his death on the cross, and the
resurrection that validates it.
The Church may be buffeted, it may be small,
but we are still saved and defined by the unearned grace of God.
Sally and I went on a cruise to Alaska to
celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary a few years ago, and our ship
made a stop at Sitka.
Sitka is a relatively small town known by
many as a base camp for hunting, fishing, photography and other outdoor
activities.
It includes Sitka Lutheran Church, St.
Peter’s by the Sea Episcopalian Church, and St. Michael’s Orthodox Cathedral,
which, though not a large building, is located at the center of town and highly
visible. It was the first Russian Orthodox Cathedral built in America, with
construction completed in 1848.
A fire burned much of Sitka’s downtown in
1966, damaging the Lutheran Church and destroying the Orthodox cathedral,
though church members and residents were able to save many of the church’s
furnishings, books, and icons. They continued to gather for worship in what is
now the basement of the cathedral.
Reconstruction began immediately using the
original plans but was not completed until 1977.
It continues today to be the worship space
of a living Christian community.
The Christian Church may be buffeted by
storms, it may be small, it may even be burned down. But Jesus still saves, and
the Church continues to live and proclaim the good news of salvation for all
who receive it as God’s gift. It continues to be a living presence in this
world. How does the Church do that?
At the end of his book Bad Religion,
Ross Douthat, who was recently added to the list of reporters on the flagship
weekly CBS News program “60 Minutes”, reflects on all the difficulties and
challenges, mostly self-inflicted, that the Church is enduring in our times.
And
then he observes that the Church has experienced decline many times in its
history and two things have brought it back: holy living and the arts.
The arts are seen and heard and smelled
throughout the Orthodox church in Sitka. They are a part of the daily lives of
most churches throughout the world. They are a means of communicating the deep
connection with God that God has called us to know.
Holy living is living in the presence of God
from the inside out. It is the product of a life lived near to God, in a living
relationship with the one true living God. It is expressed in what Paul
describes as the fruit of the spirit, in Galatians 5:22-23,
22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law
against such things.
The cathedral in Sitka was closed when we
got there. We knocked at the door for a long time and, finally, and a kind
woman let us in.
People all over the world are searching for
God, even and perhaps especially, when they can’t name the name of Jesus.
Who will open the door? Very often, it’s us.
We are the means by which God opens the door. It is opened by the way we live
our lives, by the way we serve, and by the way we worship in response to what
God has done for us on the cross. It is especially heard when we share it with
our close friends and relatives.
As in Sitka, God is rebuilding us, giving us
a new start, making of us a new creation. We are born again.
At the end of our Gospel reading for this
week, the disciples recognized Jesus for who He is in Matthew 14:33,
33And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you
are the Son of God.”
This is the past, the present, and the
future of the Christian Church.
The future of the church is in its renewed
nature, in the living relationship with the one true living God for which God
created us, which we rejected, and which was restored by the death of Jesus for
us, on the cross. It was, and is, and will be expressed in worship of God.
Soren Kirkegaard, the Lutheran philosopher
and theologian once said that many people attend worship services, but they
don’t worship. They treat worship as if they have gone to a play and then they
evaluate it as entertainment.
Worship, instead, is prayer, praise and
thanksgiving, all directed toward God.
Kierkegaard said that the question to ask
after a worship service is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I
do?” Not to please God, but in response to what God has already done for us.
We respond to the outstretched hand of
Jesus.
We are lost and condemned in the heavy surf
of sinfulness without a floatation device. We need a Savior, and we have been
given a Savior on the cross. How can we learn to trust Him? We can’t. But God
proves himself trustworthy.
The events and conditions of our current
time can leave us stunned. We sometimes need time to process what is happening,
time that often is not given. What then? We turn to the hand of Jesus for our
salvation.
How do we respond in the face of the
excesses of this world? By showing it the even more extravagant love of God in
the hand of Jesus Christ.
How do we live as Christians when our faith
is small? We don’t have to.
Jesus reaches out his hand to catch us. All
we have to do is to take it.
We respond to Jesus by being who Jesus saved
us to be in the power of the Holy Spirit. We respond to Jesus as the disciples
responded. They worshiped him as we worship him, saying, “Truly you are the Son
of God.”
And they went out into the world as we go out, to share the Good News of Jesus.
