Footprints in the Water

August 8, 1993

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Scripture: Matthew 14:22-33

Call it a miracle story if you like. I’d agree with you, 100%. No question that there are elements of the spectacular in it, and even spectacular may not be a strong enough word. You don’t get people walking on water every day. Walking on water is supernatural stuff. It implies another dimension, another realm entirely, something reserved for only the extraordinary. When we use it about human beings, we do so with tongue-in-cheek, as an oblique way of making reference to the uniqueness, or the special quality of the person.

In Alabama, they used to say Bear Bryant walked on water....If they don’t say it about Michael Jordan, it’s only because he can float above it.

Walking on water has become a symbol of being so great, so unusual, so powerful, so special that the ordinary rules of life that limit the action of most of us simply don’t apply. When we say somebody walks on water, we’re saying they’re free, somehow, unfettered, beyond the rest of us...

We’re saying they’re bigger than life. People said it about Jesus.

Do you want to know how He did it, this walking on water business? Do you want me to tell you? Can you keep a secret? I DON’T HAVE THE FOGGIEST IDEA. I’m sorry.

But if we DID know, if we DID have a plausible, rational, scientifically verifiable explanation of the process by which He apparently defied the ordinary laws of physical property, would it really make a lot of difference?

Would it change what you think about Him, or your relationship with Him?

If some archaeologist should discover tomorrow that there were rocks out there just beneath the surface of the Sea of Galilee at that particular point and that Jesus knew where they were and the disciples didn’t...would that do anything significant for your faith?

Did He really do it?

Did He only seem to do it?

Did the disciples imagine it?

Did they make it up? Is this whole story the product of pious exaggeration?

It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened...or the last. Preachers can’t let a little thing like harsh facticity get in the way of honest sermonizing. I DON’T KNOW.

I don’t think we CAN know with certainty, and what’s more, I rather suspect that those who first told the story would be greatly surprised and probably disappointed at our even asking those kinds of questions.

To them, this was a miracle story, all right, but, frankly, not a story about physical miracle as much as a story about SPIRITUAL miracle.

That is, not a story about the setting aside of a common law as much as a story about the dealing of an UNcommon bond.

THERE’S THE REAL MIRACLE...to them...not a miracle of buoyancy, but a miracle of compassion; not a miracle of levitation, but a miracle of LOVE.

What He did was impressive...why shouldn’t it be? LOOK AT WHO HE WAS.

Look at what they had found Him to be. Look at what He had come to mean to them....THERE’S THE MIRACLE. The wonder of His performance was based on His IDENTITY.

To them, Jesus was not Lord because He could walk on water; He could walk on water because HE was LORD. Once you accept that He was SPECIAL; why would it surprise you that He could DO things that were special?

Sure this is a miracle story, but the real miracle was not that Jesus could break physical laws; the deeper and more magnificent miracle---the “good news” miracle---was that this Special Man cared for them, and in His presence with them was PEACE.

They loved this story. It was a wonderful story---still is---They loved it so much, in fact, that they told it over and over, maybe embellishing it in the retelling—(why should that surprise us?)----the story of the Christ who comes to His people in the storms of life, bringing with Him order and calm.

If that isn’t miracle, if that isn’t grace, what is?

Let’s walk through this narrative that Matthew has recorded for us. There’s a lot here, and it’s not a parable, where there’s one major point, typically, to be made, so we’re warranted, I think, in picking up nuggets along the way as we can find them.

IN the very way he tells the story, you can see Matthew’s evangelistic bent. The man is a PREACHER. He’s a master of homiletical illustration, which, given the enduring quality of his book, probably shouldn’t surprise us, either.

Now, it’s interesting. Matthew isn’t the only Gospel writer to tell this story. Mark and John tell it, too, and all 3 link it with the account of the miraculous feeding of the 5,000. This account, in all 3 Gospels, follows that one, maybe also underscoring Jesus’ identity uniqueness.

Anyone who can take a little boy’s lunch and feed a grandstand full of people with it, so that 12 baskets full of food are left over at the conclusion of the picnic....anyone who can do that just may not be subject to the usual conditions of earthly existence. THIS MAN IS SPECIAL, they’re saying.

There is a difference in the accounts, granted. In Mark and Matthew’s version, He feeds the multitudes because they’re hungry, simple as that. It’s an act of compassion. In John’s version, He feeds them so He can say, or so John can say through Him, “I am the bread of life.” It’s an act of theological proclamation.

They utilized the same incident in different ways, as preachers will, but always to focus on the SPECIALNESS of this special Man. It’s always there.

And all agree that when that long day was over, Jesus was worn out. How glad I am that they tell us that. How human it presents Him, which, I remind you, is also part of His SPECIALNESS. He was different from us, but He was also the same. And here we see that.

He was tired. Anybody who thinks ministry doesn’t drain you at times just doesn’t know the territory. Ministry has its exhilarations, those moments that set the adrenalin flowing---those are the times you live for---but it also has its times of exhaustion.

How comforting for us to realize that Jesus got tired, too, and knowing He needed to recoup His energy and His power, He sent the disciples ahead in the boat to cross the sea where He would join them later.

AND HE WENT OFF BY HIMSELF TO REST AND TO PRAY.

Now, incidentally, or maybe not incidentally, both of these miracle stories in Matthew, the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on water, are preceded by references to Jesus’ going apart to pray. I don’t think that’s accidental in Matthew’s account. It’s one of those nuggets. How did He perform those wonders, those phenomenal acts of helpfulness that the disciples remembered so clearly? They didn’t know, but they sensed somehow that the power to do what He did in public came out of His time alone with God in private.

Remember the one thing they asked Him to teach them how to do---Luke tells us this---the one request they made of Him by way of instruction? Remember?

They never asked, Lord, teach us how to preach, or teach us how to organize stewardship campaigns, or even how to heal....But they did ask, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” They knew somehow, or at least sensed, that that was the source of everything else.

We have no window into precisely what was going on with Jesus from the time He dismissed the disciples and sent them out in the boat until He rejoined them at the height of the storm, but by Matthew’s figures, the time elapse was from before sundown of one day to early in the morning of the next day, that is, probably about 12 hours. A good chunk of that time, in addition to rest, must have been spent in prayer...listening, reflecting, communing, placing himself in the Father’s hands so the Father’s will could flow uninterrupted.

Does that speak to you as it does to me? The power to cope effectively by day is rooted in resources cultivated before day.

Now, switch your gaze out into that big lake. The action picks up. See those disciples in a tiny boat struggling against the elements. They’d hit a sudden storm. Another nugget.

You’re not going to avoid running into storms. I don’t care who you are. Your virtue won’t exempt you. Your pedigree won’t exempt you. Your relationship with Christ won’t exempt you. The disciples were following instructions to the letter when the winds rose up to buffet their boat. Notice that the storm came, not when they had embarked on some foolish enterprise of their own choosing, not when they were carelessly or immaturely “doing their own thing”, not when they were disobeying at all. Exactly the opposite.

The storm came in the line of duty. It came when they were following Christ’s specific injunction. Obeying Christ doesn’t mean you can leave your umbrella at home. Storms come to the righteous as well as to the wicked. Remember that when you’re tempted to think God must have it in for you.

Does any life every lived illustrate more clearly the erroneousness of establishing a cause and effect relationship between virtue and earthly blessing, goodness and good treatment, nobility and benefit than the life of Jesus of Nazareth?

GOOD THINGS DO OFTEN HAPPEN TO BAD PEOPLE, and bad things frequently happen to good people. Maybe it ought not to be that way, but that’s the way it is. Ol’ Job found it out, even before Jesus....

AND THE NEW TESTAMENT IS UNANIMOUS IN WARNING AGAINST DRAWING TOO CLOSE A CORRELATION BETWEEN PIETY AND CONSEQUENCE, who you are and what happens to you. It’s not always a neat line. The author of the Book of Hebrews was even led to say, “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth,” the very opposite of the way you might think it ought to be.

But He said it because He’d seen too much evidence of the faithful getting into trouble.

Storms are a part of life. Both good and bad are subject to them, just as they are to God’s sunshine.

The disciples, obeying orders, are caught by the storm, It comes suddenly, with violent force. They say it still happens that way on the Sea of Galilee, where especially at certain times of the year, winds whip over and through the surrounding mountains and dip down into the Lake. According to Matthew, the boat, far from land, was battered by waves, and the wind was against them.

Remember, these are experienced sailors, now; these are not novices. At least 4 of them had made their living out on that body of water. They knew what they were supposed to do. They just couldn’t do it. AND THIS WAS NO JOKE.

Have you ever been in a storm at sea?

John Wesley in his Journal writes about being in a North Atlantic storm when he was crossing the ocean on his way to Georgia to serve as a missionary in that new colony. The year was 1735. He says the wind snapped the mast as if it were a matchstick, and the ocean billows poured over the hull and flooded the deck. He fully expected the next minute to be his last.

But there was a little band of Moravian Christians on board ship, whom he couldn’t help noticing. At the height of the storm’s fury, they were calmly praying and singing hymns together. Wesley was flabbergasted. He doesn’t use that word in his journal, but that’s what he meant.

It made such an impression on him that he sought out their leader afterward to learn from them. He knew they had something he didn’t have.

The Moravians came to be among the strongest influences in Wesley’s early career. He might have never found his Aldersgate Street experience without them. In fact, that experience itself, the experience that brought him to life, where he felt his heart “strangely warmed”, was at a Moravian prayer meeting. His introduction to them was during a storm at sea.

You better believe a raging tempest will get your attention. By his own admission that day on the ocean, Wesley was petrified out of his wits.

The disciples felt exactly the same way. They thought it was all over. Can you put yourself in their place? Have you ever been in a situation where you were trapped...nowhere to run and nothing you could do?

Now hear Matthew pick up the narrative. I don’t know how you can tell a story with greater simplicity and power----

“The boat, battered by waves, was far from land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning, Jesus came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost.’ And they cried out in fear.”

Now here’s the text, or what ought to be the text: “But immediately Jesus spoke to them, and said, ‘Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.’”

Oh, man! I can’t explain it but I sure feel the power of it. Get behind, go beyond the literal words with the questions they raise in our scientifically trained minds, and let the scope of what Matthew is saying hit you full force. Isn’t he expressing here in words so simple in one sense children can wrap their brains around them, a theme so vast and so beautiful even heaven itself has trouble holding it---

THE LORD GOD OF EARTH AND SEA COMES TO HIS OWN IN TIME OF STORM, OFFERING THE COMFORT AND STEADINESS OF HIS PRESENCE TO SUSTAIN.

“Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.” Wow!

The point is, Jesus came to them when they needed it most. They didn’t find Him. HE FOUND THEM. He appeared when their extremity was at its most extreme, and brought with Him the most precious gift a person can ever have: HIMSELF.

Exemption from storm? No! Immunity from storm? No! Protection from storm? Well, certainly not in the sense of exclusion. There are still going to be waves, and there is still going to be wind. All of that is true.

BUT....You don’t have to ride it out alone. “Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.” Isn’t that magnificent?

They are almost exactly the same words John says He said in the Upper Room the night He told them goodbye before the Crucifixion. “Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid...I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.”

It’s why we call Christianity a religion of rescue, a religion of deliverance. It’s why we call its message “gospel”....GOOD NEWS.

I don’t know whether Jesus, the pre-resurrection Carpenter of Nazareth, son of Joseph and Mary, literally walked on the water or not, whether the molecules of water on the Sea of Galilee literally supported His body or not....I don’t know. A miracle, after all, certainly in the Biblical sense, is not the arbitrary rending of natural law, but rather any event so ordered that it pierces our dullness or despair to convince us of the presence and power of God.

More than just 12 people can testify to this bigger miracle. Millions through the ages can testify to it, because they’ve been there when it happened. Whatever actually or factually took place out on the sea that morning, Matthew is talking glorious, redemptive, buoyant truth when he says in essence no storm is so raging but what Christ can bring calm into it...no life is so far gone but what He can restore it...or as Corrie ten Boom put it in a different image, no pit is so deep but what His love is deeper still.

THAT’S THE GOSPEL...and that makes all the difference in the world. AND YET…and yet. You still have to claim it. That’s the rest of the story. Glorious, redemptive, and buoyant as it is, you still have to appropriate it.

Simon Peter was just beginning to grasp the magnitude of it...just beginning.

Don’t you just love him, you have to love him, the impulsive nincompoop. AND CAN’T YOU IDENTIFY WITH HIM? He’s so human, so eager, so anxious to please, so intrigued, so motivated, so caught up in the possibilities of this new life, so in thrall to this Miracle Man, yet so clumsy and so hesitant about turning everything over to Him.

Know anybody like that? I really do want to be just like You, Lord. I want to do what You can do. I want to be a man of faith and power, too. I believe I’ve got it in me. Let me walk out there where You are. AND, BY GOLLY, HE DID IT. He actually did it...for a few, fragile steps. Look at him.

He stepped out of the boat, into the sea, carefully placing one foot in front of the other...one step...then two, out there all by himself...making his own footprints in the water...for a few tentative steps. And then...uh-oh.

Carl Michalson says New Testament scholarship is going to discover one day that it was actually here, on the Lake, not at Caesarea Philippi, that Jesus first called Peter the “rock”. And he may have something there. He really nicknamed Simon “Petros”, says Michalson, not so much for his foundational qualities, as for his sinking qualities....

Down he went, into the deep, gasping for air and bellowing for help.

BUT LOOK CLOSER. Why do I see myself here with such painful vividness? How can a story 2000 years old, from a land halfway around the world, nail me with such devastating accuracy?

My gosh, it’s all right there...the mixed motives, the internal ambiguity, the pulling in 2 directions at once...the faith mingled with doubt, the sincerity mingled with skepticism, the spontaneity mingled with reserve, the love mingled with pride, the self-giving mingled with self-interest. He’s got me. This is embarrassing. Matthew is talking about Simon Peter, and holding up a mirror to me.

He genuinely wants to be with Jesus, but he also wants to prove he can do what Jesus did. He wants to trust, but he also wants to show off. He craves the companionship of the Lord, truly he does, with all the self-negation that implies, but he also wants to be noticed....He’s perfectly willing to be last, if only by so doing, he can be first.

Maybe it’s a picture of many of us---he walks, he sinks, he trusts, he stumbles, he believes...he flounders....

He begins well, but when he sees the storm, he is overcome with terror, and so at last is immobilized, as all are without God and when they overextend themselves. Though starting out with great promise, in the end he fails, because he looked at the storm instead of at Christ. Matthew says, “When he saw the wind, he was afraid.”

I am told that in the days of the great sailing vessels, before the advent of steam, when a new sailor climbed the narrow rope ladder to the crows nest, the old hands would cry, “Look up, look up.” If the novice once looked down, he might become dizzy and fall.

It’s exactly what happened to Peter. And we see him thrashing in the water, like so many of us, halfway between self-preservation and self-discovery, lured by, and almost in the arms of MIRACLE INCARNATE, yet with not quite enough real faith to run to Him without looking back.

All that saves him from disaster is the final miracle. Is saving miracle too strong a word to express it? The tentative trust he exhibited was not complete, not full blown, not mature, but it was enough.

“Lord, save me”, he cried. At least he knew where to turn, not back to the boat, but ahead to the Master. And Matthew says, “Immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught Him.” If that doesn’t get to you, I’m worried about you.

Then he concludes the story, as only a preacher would, by observing that when they get into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”

A miracle story? I think so, only a miracle less of water than of love. It’s the GOSPEL. When the storm rages around you, He will come. Look up, step out, and take His hand.