Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, August 13th, 2023

Have you ever taken a big risk that later on you wish you hadn’t? Ever stepped out of the boat toward some great wild dream and found yourself floundering in the waves? Ever tried to steal home and ended up back in the dugout with mud on your face and a bunch of disgruntled teammates? Ever launched a great new project at work only to have it blow up and make you look like the biggest idiot in the world?

If you have not had an experience like this, I suspect you are either not really human or not really telling the whole truth. It has happened to all of us. As we heard in today’s gospel story from Matthew, it also happened to Peter – the Rock, the one on whom Jesus said he would build his Church. Battered by waves, far from land, Peter sees his Lord walking on the water and catches a great vision. He begins to imagine that something impossible is possible, and he takes an incomprehensible risk. For a brief instant, he knows the elation of success, and then it happens. He falls. He sinks. And whether we like to admit it or not, we know what he is feeling, and not from a distance. We are there, sinking with him.

The moment when you see things going wrong and yourself going under is a terrifying moment. You wonder at what point others will see your massive incompetence and your humiliating lack of faith and turn away from you. You imagine that moment when your companions and co-workers will turn silently away and let you sink to the bottom. Peter wanted so desperately to follow Jesus, but when the waves and the water got too strong he lost his nerve. As the waters of Galilee closed in around him, he must have wondered, what did I do wrong? And then, I will never do this again. Better to stay in the boat with everyone else than die for some crazy God-delusion.

Matthew’s version of this story is the only one that includes this vignette about Peter trying to walk on the water toward Jesus. Both Mark and John tell the story of Jesus walking on water, but neither of them says anything about Peter. It is only Matthew who takes us out of the boat with Peter and into the terrifying waves. Some interpreters focus on Peter’s failure and Jesus’ chastisement of him: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” But others, myself included, are simply amazed by Peter’s willingness to get out of the boat in the first place.

Because Peter does not make it all the way by himself, is this a tale of failure? Because Peter is humiliated in his harebrained attempt to follow the Savior, does this mean he should not have tried at all? Failure is terrifying for most of us. We take it as a sign that there is something deeply wrong with us. When someone else fails we try to distance ourselves from the consequences so that it does not taint our reputation. We breathe a sigh of relief that it was not our idea or project that went down the tubes. And we pray that we will never have to experience such a thing again.

It doesn’t just happen to individuals; it happens to communities as well. We take a risk, we muster up the courage to follow Jesus out over the water, and we start to sink. Our faith wavers, and our plans fail. We look back at these times and we assume that God was not working in us, or that our faith was too small, or that we are just incompetent or undeserving. We assume that the risk of faith is simply not worth it. Better not to try at all, better to do church in exactly the same way we have always done it, playing it safe, so that we do not have to fail. Regardless of who is leading this parish, there will be failures. Risks will be taken, and not all of them will succeed. 

But what if God is in all of it, not just our successes but our failures as well? What if we need to get out the boat and what if we need even to sink, because only then will we feel the hand of Jesus holding us up? What if our floundering is not a failure at all, but the glorious first steps of toddler disciples staggering in the storm toward their Lord?

Peter may have felt rather sheepish when Jesus hauled him back into the boat. But for one glorious moment he knew the joy of the impossible, and I’m guessing he never, ever forgot that. I’m thinking that this glorious memory might have been one of the things that kept Peter going in those first heady years of the Church’s life. 

I wonder, too, if some of the power of Peter’s failure came from the fact that in the midst of his flailing and floundering, Jesus was right there, in sight, in the midst of the very storm that was trying to take Peter down. We believe in Incarnation, and that means that Christ never asks us to go where he has not gone before. He knows the fury of the storm. He knows failure, and the agony of feeling forsaken. When he says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid,” Christ is in the midst of it with us.

The United Methodist minister and artist Jan Richardson has written what she calls “Blessing on the Waves” which captures, I think, the mystery and grace that is ours if we dare to fail:

Blessing on the Waves

I cannot promise

that this blessing

will keep you afloat

as if by lashing these words

to your arms,

your ankles,

you could stop yourself

from going under.

The most this blessing

can do, perhaps,

is to stand beside you

in the boat,

place its hand

in the small of your back,

and push.

Be assured that

though this blessing

is eager to set you

in motion,

it will not

leave you forsaken,

will not compel you

to leap

where it has not already

stepped out.

These words

will go with you

across the waves.

These words

will accompany you

across the waters.

And if you

find yourself

flailing,

this blessing

will breathe itself

into you,

will breathe itself

through you

until you are

borne up

by the hands

that reach toward you,

the voice that

calls your name.*

I pray with all my heart that we will not be afraid to risk failing in order to follow Jesus in this place. I pray that we will embrace each other’s failures as signs of new life and emerging discipleship. I pray that we will find ways to let the blessing nudge us forward and breathe through us when we can’t do it ourselves. Especially, I pray that we will hear the voice that calls each of our names, as it called Elijah and Peter, especially if that voice is hard to hear over the earthquake, fire, tempest, and the wild beating of our own heart.

* Jan Richardson, “Blessing on the Waves” from The Painted Prayerbook (Reflections on Proper 14A). paintedprayerbook.com © Jan Richardson. www.janrichardson.com