It’s not that you can’t walk on water. It’s
that, eventually, you will sink.
When it comes to
miracles Christians have wildly varying opinions. Some people put a ton of
emphasis on the experience of miracles while others are forever trying to
explain miracles away. Some can’t get enough of people talking about how God lifted
so-and-so out of their particular impossible situation, and many of these folks
have their own stories of something incredible happening to them. Others go out
of their way to dismiss anything miraculous, spiritualizing miracle stories in the
Bible and treating prayer as a psychological tool rather than a thing that
might lead to God actually doing something. These folks are cautious about
anything that crosses the bounds of what we know and are even more turned off
by personal accounts.
Firstly, I should
say that both groups have their points and their reasons for where they stand,
and both are based very deeply on personal experience. Also, it’s perfectly OK
to use personal experience to see God at work. It’s also OK to understand that
the world tends to work in a certain way most of the time, and so it’s
natural—and not unfaithful—to be skeptical when others claim a mountain top
experience to which you cannot relate. Many of us stand somewhere in-between,
living lives in a world that functions one way 99.9% of the time with the
occasional eye toward the miraculous, but all of us need to be reminded, more
often than not, that these waters are mysterious, deep, and the moment we think
we have it all figured out, like Peter, we start to sink.
I worry about
faith that is only testimony of
personal experience because personal experience is just that—personal—and it is
inherently biased. When I tell a story about what God has done for me it is
difficult for others to hear where God’s miraculous intervention ends and my
spin on it begins. But I also worry about faith that never talks about what God
does in the world, because to be a Christian requires a belief that Jesus died
for the sins of humankind and, if I’m going to believe that he died and rose
again, then why won’t I believe in miracles that are considerably smaller? The
funny thing is: both poles on the miracle spectrum have a problem when it comes
to scripture, and that problem is laid bare when Peter steps out of the boat.
In my completely
biased opinion, this is one of the best stories in the Bible, and it is also
one of the stories where preachers have said all sorts of crazy off-the-wall
things. I’ve heard a sermon about how Peter should never have gotten out of the
boat. I’ve also heard a sermon about how Peter didn’t lack faith in Jesus;
that, instead, he lacked faith in himself. I’ve also heard the more-standard
sermon about how Peter lacked faith in God but he was lifted up by God so that
he might believe. The Holy Spirit has its work cut out in saying anything new
about this story. So, today, I’m going to talk about this story in the context
of all miracles.
It’s not that you can’t walk on water. It’s
that, eventually, you will sink.
I want to suggest
that Peter-walking-on-water is not set apart from the rest of us, or at least that
we have the potential to stand where he stood. I use this one Madeleine l’Engle
quote all the time (even when I’m not preaching on this story), but when I am talking
about Peter on the water it’s pretty much a guarantee that I’ll bring this up
because l’Engle has this wonderful image of herself sitting on the edge of a
pond, thinking, “Perhaps one day I will remember how to walk [there].” She
points out that “as long as [Peter] didn’t remember that we human beings have
forgotten how to walk on water, he was able to do it.”[1]
Isn’t that how life seems to work? When
we forget about our human limitations we occasionally slip into that mysterious
realm where possibility and impossibility collide. The testimony crowd will forever claim that there lies the truth of the
faith, and the naturalism crowd will
forever claim that it is an hallucination. But the truth is much more
interesting. Peter could walk on water—which means so can we!—but just because
he could walk on water does not mean he could make it to Jesus.
This means at
least two things.
#1. If you believe
in God only because of the miracles God has done for you, then you are putting
too much emphasis on Peter walking on water and too little on the fact that he
eventually sank. This means your faith will always be self-centered. As much as
you might give God all the credit in your words and even your actions, if the
reason that you believe is because you were given something special, then it is
most definitely about you.
But also #2. If
you take that miraculous moment—whether one you experience personally or one
you read about in the Bible—and you stand in humility because of it, and then you
admit that you can’t actually walk any further, that you will sink, that God
didn’t intercede because you are God’s gift to the world (and certainly not
because of your great faith), then your walking on water can absolutely matter.
It will matter for you and it will affect others as well.
I want to be in a
church that walks on water, but, more than that, I want to be in a church that
understands that walking on water inevitably leads to sinking. Nobody makes it
across the lake; nobody reaches Jesus. I want to be in the church that
sinks—because it means we tried—but, most importantly, I want to be in the
church that tells people about both: the walking and the sinking. You might
call this the A.A.
Church, because it’s the
church that knows that it is by the grace of God that it continues on and not
because of our tremendous faith. This is the church that lives by those words: It’s not that you can’t walk on water. It’s
that, eventually, you will sink.
I like that
church. I like people who stand in both worlds. Not because I’m lukewarm or
because I want to hedge my bets, but because a church that is only talking
about blessings and miracles—a church that is only ever after mountain top
experiences—seems fake to me. That church clearly has never experienced a
miscarriage, or counseled a drug addict or an alcoholic; that church has never
sat with somebody who has been abused. Any church that tells those who have
lived through horror that they merely need to believe stronger and they will
walk across the water is contributing further to that abuse because they are
telling only a half-truth. Yes, you can
walk. But you will also sink. And at that point it doesn’t matter whether
you try to walk again, because you’re already drowning. What matters is what is
there to catch you. Is it the strength of your faith, or the strength of your
God?
The problem with most
of the interpretations of this story is that we come to it with an agenda and
then, lo and behold, Peter walking on water shows each of us exactly what we
want to see. Focus only on the miracle and you get one answer, only on the
sinking and you get another, only on Jesus and you get a third, only on the
idea that walking on water is impossible and you get a fourth.
One thing we
absolutely need to do—and maybe this is more important than anything else I
have said—is that we need to stop focusing on the parts and see the story in
its entirety. In a world where Jesus stands off across the water, we have the
ability to remember, as Madeleine l’Engle says, how it is that we walk out to
him, but even Peter didn’t get there, and neither can we. Peter, whose name
means “rock,” walked, and then he did what rocks do. There’s a message there
for the miracle-toters and the nay-sayers alike.
It’s not that you can’t walk on water. It’s
that, eventually, you will sink.
[1] Madeleine l’Engle. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and
Art. D&M Publishers: Canada.
pp. 19
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