Walking on water: Trinity 9

Audio version here 

Matthew 14.22-33

“It’s all in the timing”, they say. We all know how important it can be to pick your moment, whether you’re delivering the punchline of a joke, or giving some difficult news to a colleague or family member.

 As the book of Ecclesiastes puts it “There is a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh…” and so on. The problem is knowing which time is which. The ancient Greeks had a word for it, as they so often do - or rather they had two words. There was chronos, chronological time, the kind you can tell by looking at your watch, but there was also Kairos, the right moment, the opportune time, the time to act.  

 We’re all having to find the kairos moments – the right times – in this coronavirus pandemic. When’s the right time to start seeing friends and family, to start going out and about, to start going back to church if we can. It’s not simple, and everyone’s answers will be different. We all need to move at our own pace, judging what’s safe and sensible for us.

 Maybe today’s Gospel might help us, though, because it’s full of careful timing.

 Matthew starts his story with the word “immediately” ; and there are two more “immediatelys” later in the passage. But not everything happens straight away in this tale. Some things – perhaps surprising things - take time; people have to wait.

 As I said, the passage starts with “immediately”. The Greek word doesn’t necessarily indicate haste, but it does mean that there is no delay. Jesus has just fed a vast, hungry crowd with five loaves and two fish, but he doesn’t hang about with his disciples discussing what’s happened afterwards. Instead, he sends them straight back off across the Sea of Galilee in their boat. Maybe he knows that everyone, including him, needs time to themselves at this point. Whatever the reason, there’s no hanging about. They’re sent off in the boat, and as soon as he can, Jesus goes up the mountain to pray.  

As evening falls, though, a storm blows up, and the little boat, far from land, is battered by wind and waves. But this is the interesting thing, because although that word “immediately” comes three times in this passage, it doesn’t come here. In fact, the story tells us that it isn’t until the early morning that Jesus sets off to help his friends. From evening to early morning is a lot of hours to be straining at the oars, rowing against the wind, drenched by the waves, getting nowhere.

 And when Jesus does show up – finally – his first words aren’t to calm the storm. The thing he does “immediately” – there’s the second time the word appears – is to say to them “take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Hold onto that thought, because we’ll come back to it later.

 But Peter still isn’t sure that this really is Jesus. He needs proof, and he devises a rather daft test to get it. “If it is you,” he says to Jesus, “command me to come to you on the water”.  They’re about to sink. Everyone is frantic. But Peter thinks this is the moment to put Jesus to the test. Even if walking on water had always been one of Peter’s life goals, this is hardly the time to be trying it out. But Jesus does as he asks. “Come” he says, and Peter gets out of the boat, and he finds that he’s doing it – walking on water!

 For a few minutes, all is well. But then, suddenly, it dawns on Peter  that the wind is very windy, and the waves are very wavy, and people can’t actually do what he is doing…It’s like that moment in a cartoon when a character runs off the edge of a cliff. For a few seconds they just keep going. But then they look down and realise that this is impossible, and down they fall.

 Peter abruptly begins to sink. If he still had any doubts about Jesus, they seem to vanish. “Lord, save me!” he calls out. And immediately – there is the third one - Jesus reaches out his hand and pulls him to safety and takes him back to the boat.  

 And then, only then, does the storm subside.

 Jesus picks his moments to act in this story. But he also picks his moments to wait. He doesn’t take over. He doesn’t wave a magic wand to still that storm as soon as it blows up, or stop it blowing up in the first place. He doesn’t say to Peter, “this isn’t the time for walking on water. Wouldn’t you rather I stopped the boat from sinking?”  He recognises that the times of waiting and doubting and struggling and failing matter too. They have a meaning and importance of their own – for his disciples and for us - even if we can’t see that at the time, and just want them to be over.

 Many of the disciples in that boat were experienced sailors. They probably thought they could cope with storms. Maybe they needed to get to the point where they knew they couldn’t cope, and had to accept help, if they were to become the kind of people who were any use to others who weren’t coping. And Peter - poor daft Peter - needed this ridiculous experience of trying and failing and needing to be rescued if he was to become the kind of man who’d be able to lead the early Christian movement as it tried and failed, and needed rescuing again and again in its mission to spread the love of Jesus.

 It’s an important message to take hold of. When we’re storm-tossed, battered and overwhelmed by life, we all want a magic wand that will take away our troubles. We want God to put things back the way they were again. Often, often, though, it doesn’t happen like that. Our problems don’t instantly vanish. But instead of stilling the storm, God can help us to find his stillness within it, his peace that passes understanding, his voice that cuts through the howling wind, that says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And if we need time to doubt and question, like Peter, to test him out, he doesn’t take that as an insult, but as a necessary part of our journey.

 “Truly you are the Son of God” say the disciples. What is it that convinces them? It’s partly the control he’s shown over the waters of the lake. But I wonder whether it’s also the way he seems to know them; what they need, and when they need it – their kairos moments.

 Back in the fourteenth century an anchorite mystic, Julian of Norwich, who lived through the Black Death, said it better than I can. “God did not say; ‘you shall not be storm-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be distressed; he said ‘you shall not be overcome.’”  

 God isn’t distracted, as we so often are, by the outward storms that swirl around us. He sees through them to the deeper needs of our heart, and longs to help us become people who can live in the midst of the storm, and help others do so, held securely by the knowledge that we’re not alone in it. Whatever situations we face, however uncertain our times, and our timings, are we can be sure that when we need him Christ will be there, walking towards us even on the most tumultuous waters, to bring us his peace.

Amen