Text: Matthew 14: 22-33
By Revd Chrys M Tremththanmor
One day a Baptist Pastor, an Anglican Vicar, and an Atheist went on a fishing trip together. They were in the boat for several hours, fishing away, and they began to get thirsty. That’s when they discovered that the thermos with the coffee had been left on the shore. ‘Not a problem,’ said the Pastor. ‘I’ll go get it.’ So he got out of the boat and walked on the water to the shore, picked up the thermos flasks, and came back.
They fished a bit longer, and it came to lunch time. Then they realised that they’d left the sandwiches on the shore. ‘Not a problem,’ said the Vicar, ‘I’ll go get them.’ And so the Vicar got out of the boat, walked across the water to the shore, got the sandwiches, then walked back to the boat again.
So, they went back to fishing. The afternoon came on, and the Vicar quite fancied a beer from the shop up the road. ‘I’ll go get it,’ said the Atheist. He climbed out of the boat, and fell into the water. As he splashed around, the Pastor said to the Vicar, ‘Do you think we should have told him where the rocks were?’ And the Vicar responded, ‘What rocks?’
Why is this story, this miracle of Jesus walking on the sea of Galilee, in our Gospels? What is it meant to tell us about Jesus? For some people the answer is obvious—it’s meant to tell us that Jesus is the Son of God, and perhaps if that atheist had been in that boat on the Sea of Galilee he would have realised this truth. But there is more to this story than is obvious on first reading it.
The four Gospels, the four accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, were not written down until several decades after his resurrection. It is commonly argued that the earliest Gospel to be written was that of Mark, perhaps sometime after 70AD. Matthew and Luke drew heavily upon Mark’s Gospel for their own accounts of Jesus. Each of these three Gospels (John’s Gospel being very different again) appears to have a particular slant. Mark’s Gospel is almost breathless in its fast pace and appears to have been written for a Greek audience because it explains Jewish customs. Luke appears to have been written for a Gentile audience because it emphases the Gentiles who came to Jesus.
Matthew, from which our Gospel reading was taken this morning, is commonly thought to have been written for a Jewish audience. Jewish customs are not explained, the Law of Moses is often mentioned, and Matthew quotes often from Old Testament sources.
So if the first audience for this story were Jewish, what would Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee have told them about the Lord?
In the Old Testament, the sea is often portrayed as a dangerous place, a place of chaos and darkness. Think of the book of Genesis. We are told that ‘darkness covered the face of the deep,’ so God first created light. Then God separated water from water to make the earth and the sky.
God’s power over water continues to be shown numerous times in the Old Testament. He raised the Great Flood which covered the earth, killing everyone except Noah and those in his ark. The people of Israel walked through the Red Sea when God’s power parted the waves. During the captivity of the Israelites by the Babylonian empire the sea is often as an illustration of destruction, such as Jeremiah 51: 42, ‘The sea will rise over Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her.’ Or Ezekiel 26: 3, ‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, O Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves.’
The sea was a place of danger. Often the Bible would refer to the great monster which supposedly lived in the sea, the leviathan, a visible sign of chaos. In the book of Job there is a long description of leviathan, his armour and his might, ending with ‘nothing on earth is his equal--a creature without fear.’ So it is a sign of God’s might over both sea and its dangers when in Isaiah we read, ‘In that day, the LORD will punish with his sword, his fierce, great and powerful sword, Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea’—a prophesy of how God will conquer the enemies of the people of God.
And let’s not forget that in both Daniel and Revelation that the great beasts which attack the people of God arise out of the sea. When Revelation speaks of the new heaven and the new earth, we are told ‘for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.’ The lack of sea is therefore seen as a good sign, a sign that all chaos and darkness has finally been conquered by God.
So the idea of the sea as a place of chaos and danger was one which the first hearers of Matthew’s Gospel would have had in mind. Remember that the writer or writers of that Gospel were addressing a Jewish audience, people who would have grown up hearing the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, every Saturday in the synagogue.
Let’s try to put ourselves into the mindset of those early Christians, listening to the story of Jesus walking on the sea. First we notice that the disciples are alone in the boat when the wind comes up and batters the boat. They are without Jesus, in the dark, battling against a storm. Chaos has risen from the deeps of the sea and this threatens to destroy the people of God.
As the sun rises, bringing light, Jesus also appears. As in the beginning of creation, when the spirit of God hovered over the waters, we now have Jesus walking over the water. Even as God separated light and dark at the beginning of creation, Jesus now appears as night disappears into dawn. And the storms calms once Jesus climbs into the boat. Even as God had done many times before, Jesus now saves the people of God from chaos and destruction.
Once before Jesus had stilled the sea whilst in a boat with the disciples. This stilling of the sea was another sign of Jesus’ Lordship over the sea. Again, early listeners of the Gospel passage would have been reminded of Psalms which speak of God calming the sea. ‘You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves,’ in Psalm 65, or again in Psalm 107, ‘he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.’
What we should also remember is that that the early Christians knew what would happen to Jesus when he left Galilee for Jerusalem. They knew that he would be crucified. Jesus could have retained his powers and place in the Godhead. He could have remained in heaven, separate from the world. He could have remained above the darkness and chaos of our existence. But those Christians then, and we today, know that Jesus decided to enter into the darkness. As that wonderful passage in Philippians states, Jesus
‘who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.’
‘Lord, save me,’ Peter called out when he began to sink under the dark and chaotic waves. The same compassion which made Jesus reach out and save the drowning Peter was the same love which drove Jesus to enter into darkness, chaos, and suffering which was the crucifixion. One of the old creeds even adds that ‘he descended into hell’, the place of ultimate darkness and evil. Only in that way, through death to the resurrection, could we be assured that our God has gained the final victory over all sin and evil.
This assurance is still important to us today. The early hearers of Matthew’s Gospel were most likely facing persecution, from both Jewish authorities and from the Roman Empire. They needed to know that the Lord whom they worshipped had actually already gained the victory, and that they were safe with him whatever might happen to them.
We all have our own problems. We may have freedom to worship, but in our complex world there can be many things which make us doubt whether God really is in control. Our lives can be affected by random tragedies, our ordered existence suddenly thrown into chaos. But we, like Peter, can call out to Jesus, ‘Lord, save me!’ And we are assured that the Lord who went through the waters of death will be at our side in our own times of danger and darkness. The God who decided to place himself into the centre of danger and destruction, who chose to undergo crucifixion on our behalf, will pull us out of the water. God will not rest until he has brought all of the people of God safely home to that place where there is no longer any sea. Amen.